The Firearm Blog

A few days ago Confederate Yankee wrote that Remington were not developing a 6.5mm cartridge. This contradicted what Adam Heggenstaller reported a couple of weeks ago. I checked with Jessica Kallam (Freedom Group - Remington's parent company), and the statement Confederate Yankee posted on his blog is the official statement regarding the ACR and 6.5mm round ...

We are not currently in the process of developing our own 6.5mm round for the AR platform. We have mentioned the 6.5 in our communications on the ACR simply because that platform is capable of handling the Grendel or something like it. At this point, there are no plans to chamber the ACR for the Grendel. However, that may change if we receive enough input from the marketplace to make it seem necessary.

Remington Military Products Division still list it as a caliber on their ACR webpage.

Screenshot of the Remington ACR webpage.

I expect this has generated much confusion as the company now has an official statement regarding the issue. For now the only 6.5mm cartridge in the Remington stable is the .260 Remington¹

Many thanks to rootman for sending me the top link.

Back in July, when the specification for the original Remington ACR specifications where announced, I said one of the cartridges it would chamber was the 6.5mm Grendel. Remington said "6.5mm", and in the context I assumed it was the Grendel.

Not long after posting it, I was emailed by a well placed industry insider who told me that he very much doubted Remington would ever produce a gun chambering the Grendel. His reason? The management behind the development of the cartridge left a lot of bad blood in their wake. He suspected that the listing of "6.5mm" was a marketing ploy.

His prediction that Remington would not offer it has come to fruition. Adam Heggenstaller reported (emphasis mine) ...

Ongoing development will focus on the 6.8 mm Rem. SPC, 7.62x39 mm, a yet-to-be-disclosed 6.5 mm round and, get this, the .30 Rem. AR.

Will we ever see this cartridge? I don't know. At least we know why Remington are not just saying "Grendel".

UPDATE: My original source just emailed me to suggest that the .30 Remington AR necked down would make a lot of sense! He has a good point. (This is just speculation - not inside knowledge).

7.62x51mm NATO, 6.5mm Grendel and 5.56x45mm NATO

Alex Robinson sent me an email saying that the Robinson Arms XCR 6.5mm (I assume it is the 6.5mm Grendel) caliber conversion kit will be shipping in the second week of February and the 7.62×39mm kit near the end of February.

Robinson Armament XCR

Robinson arms recently caused some controversy over their support of Mitt Romney.

DEMIGOD has written a comparison of the 6.5mm rounds: the .260 Remington vs. 6.5×47 Lapua vs. 6.5 Creedmoor.

It’s been a good year for 6.5 mm. The .260 Remington has hit full stride after a ramp-up of several years, with top competitors at most field-style long-range matches shooting it. Lapua’s 6.5×47 saw the first wave of custom LR rifles built around it in 2007 and proved to be just as good as people hoped. Finally, Hornady is announcing its new 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge at SHOT 2008. How do these three mid-size 6.5 mm cartridges stack up against one another? I spent much of 2007 figuring out the answer to that question.

6.5mm Creedmoor

More here.