WI the EM-2 Rifle along with the .280 round came into UK service Instead?

ASSAULT RIFLES AND THEIR AMMUNITION: say this
The EM-2 was a carefully-judged attempt to produce a weapon which could replace both the 9mm Sten SMG and the full-power .303 Lee Enfield rifle in one compact package. A GPMG based on the Bren mechanism but with belt feed, the TADEN, was also developed to use this round and replace both the Bren and (at least partly) the Vickers MMG.

The EM-2 + 7x43 combination appears to have achieved all that was asked of it, and in 1951 the cartridge was briefly adopted by the UK as the '7 mm Mk 1Z', at the same time as the EM-2 was adopted as the 'Rifle, No.9 Mk 1'. However, it faced insurmountable political obstacles. Previously, it had been submitted for comparative testing in the competition to select a new standard NATO rifle/MG cartridge. The 7x43 was regarded by the US Army's testers at Fort Benning as a better basis for development than the new US .30 cal round with which it was competing, and other NATO countries (Canada and Belgium, at least) were very interested in the concept. The British and Belgians made great efforts to meet the objections of the US Army, who thought it wasn't powerful enough, first by stepping up the loading to 2,700 joules, then by developing a longer cartridge (the 7x49 - which actually saw service with Venezuela in the FN FAL rifle). Despite this, the Americans insisted on NATO adopting a common round which had to be of .30 calibre and powerful enough to replace the .30-06 in MGs - which meant by definition that it could not be used in an assault rifle. A change of government resulted in the British giving way and cancelling the EM-2 and its cartridge in favour of the FN FAL in 7.62x51 NATO, which apart from being half an inch shorter than the .30-06 cartridge represented no progress whatsoever over this fifty-year old design.

The TADEN was a British experimental light machine gun firing the .280 in (7 mm) intermediate round. Alongside the bullpup EM-2 rifle design, it formed part of a proposal to reequip the British Army with new small arms which would use a round smaller than the .303 inch which was shown to be impractical for use in a modern assault rifle.
The Taden would replace the Bren gun as the light machine gun and the Vickers machine gun as the medium machine gun. The Taden used elements of the Bren. The EM-2 would replace the Lee-Enfield rifle and 9 mm submachine guns.

my opinion is that the UK and for that matter the Commonwelth would still be uesing bothe, and only now looking for a new type. it would be hard to say how the EM2 And taden would have changed things other than a slight change in infantry tactics.
 
One possible way to get the EM2 into service without going against Churchill's decision to addopt the 7.62 NATO round would be for the Army and Marines to argue that the Commando's and Para's need the smaller.280 round because the nature of their role puts them behind enemy lines. The smaller round would allow them to carry more ammunition reducing the danger of them running out. Once the first rifles had been issued the troops in Malaya and later Borneo could make the argument that the Jungle makes the standard Lee Enfield 4 and later L1 A1 SLR impracticle. This would leed to Australian and New Zealand troops being issued the weapon which inturn would see the weapon taken to Vietnam. This leeds to the possibility in light of the unsuitability of the M14 for the Jungle and the many problems with the early M16 of the EM2 being taken into US service. Unlikely I know given the US refusal to give fair consideration to non US sourced weapons.
 
In my opinion the .280 round is the biggest missed oportunity in military hardware of the 20th century.

I cant see the EM2 being adopted outside the British Army simply because it is a bullpup and was too radical for most armies of the time. However I can see the .280 FAL being the universal western rifle in a way it never quite managed as a 7.62 weapon.

People who have fired the .280 FAL say it was beautifully balanced, accurate and easy to fire on full auto. No one who has ever lugged an FAL (SLR if your British) around would ever say those things about it, reliable was about the only nice thing we said. It seems that the original rifle designed around the .280 ammo was never quite the weapon it should have been when sized up to the 7.62 Nato.
 
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