Machine guns among the military’s missing firearms

The Ministry of Defence has disclosed that 23 military firearms were recorded as lost or stolen over the past five years, including two general purpose machine guns and a standard-issue SA80 rifle, although more than half were deactivated, airsoft or cadet weapons incapable of firing live ammunition, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The figures were set out by the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, in response to written questions from the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty, who had asked how many UK military firearms had been lost or stolen and not recovered over the last five years, broken down by year and weapon type, and how many had since been recovered.

Pollard said the security of small arms was taken very seriously within the department, with robust procedures in place to deter, detect and prevent loss and theft that were constantly reviewed, but that given the frequency and dynamic nature of military training, exercises and operations it was “impossible to mitigate against all risk of loss”. When a loss was identified, he said, a search would be conducted and the loss reported upwards, with all losses and thefts investigated in partnership with the Ministry of Defence Police, Service Police and Home Office forces as appropriate.

Of the weapons listed, around ten were functional service firearms, with the most sensitive losses including a general purpose machine gun lost in 2021 and another in 2022, and an SA80, the British Army’s standard-issue rifle, recorded as lost in 2023. The remaining functional weapons were pistols and rifles, among them a Glock 17 lost in 2021, a Glock 43X lost in 2022, a Glock 19 stolen in 2023, C8 carbines lost in 2024 and 2025, and a further Glock pistol lost in 2026.

The larger share of the total was made up of weapons that cannot fire live rounds, including a string of deactivated rifles stolen in 2024, among them a Mauser, an AR15, a self-loading rifle, an AKM, a MAS 36 and a Lee Enfield, alongside deactivated historical pieces lost in 2023 such as a First World War German machine gun, a Second World War Sten gun and a Luger pistol, a deactivated AK47 lost in 2022, two deactivated SA80 cadet rifles stolen in 2021, and an airsoft Glock lost in 2024.

The general purpose machine gun and the SA80 are among the more significant items on the list, the GPMG being a belt-fed 7.62mm machine gun issued across the armed forces and the SA80 the standard individual weapon of the British Army, while the deactivated and cadet weapons, though they cannot be fired, are still recorded and investigated when they go missing. The department noted that most of the figures had already been published, and that the totals covered losses from military establishments, ranges, training areas and operations.