The .224 Valkyrie may be the most interesting AR-15 round to come out in years, but the question many have been asking in my comments section is: Cool, but where are the rifles? Approaching the 2018 SHOT Show in Las Vegas Nevada, we are already starting to get answers, [Read More…]
Those eagerly awaiting the market for the new .224 Valkyrie round have something to celebrate. Gunmaker JP Enterprises recently announced that they are now offering three different barrels for the new cartridge, in 20″ light, 20″ medium, and 22″ medium [Read More…]
Earlier this month, the Serbian Army debuted a new 6.5 Grendel weapon system, developed by Zastava. The rifle, called M17, is a heavily modified variant of the M70 AK family that has been developed by the company for decades. It incorporates a number of significant new [Read More…]
If we can make a round that is significantly better than the existing 5.56mm or 7.62mm ammunition, shouldn’t the military just bite the bullet and switch, to the benefit of the servicemen and women in harm’s way? What’s stopping the powers that be from [Read More…]
Ammunition maker Federal Premium recently released its full bundle of press info on their new .224 Valkyrie round, coming on the heels of teasers released at Big 3 East. The .224 Valkyrie is a high performance .22 caliber round for the AR-15, which uses heavy, low drag [Read More…]
Let’s start off with a question: What is the best round for the AR-15? At the Big 3 East conference this week, a new caliber was unveiled for the AR-15. Called the “.224 Valkyrie”, it is based on the .30 Remington/6.8 SPC case, necked down to .22 [Read More…]
In the rush to augment the infantry’s firepower with new advanced small arms technologies, we may be on the precipice of crippling their ability to fight wars. The push to equip the infantryman with more powerful rifles and machine guns risks reducing his mobility [Read More…]
What we writers have seen as an extended trend towards the “new” 6.5 calibers has indeed been a long-time coming just based on the sheer logic of the near ideal mix of weight, velocity, ballistic coefficient, barrel longevity, etc. While every caliber has [Read More…]
So far in the Modern PDW Calibers series we’ve talked about small caliber, high velocity PDW rounds like the 5.7mm FN and 4.6mm HK, and we’ve tackled larger, punchier calibers like the 10mm Norma Auto and the 7.5mm FK. However, we still have not tackled the [Read More…]
Arne Brennan, arguably the real “brains” behind the 6.5 Grendel cartridge, has announced the release of his latest caliber, the 375 RAPTOR. Building on the knowledge gained from the 45 RAPTOR (an improvement over .458 SOCOM), the 375 RAPTOR is, in-short, is [Read More…]
The 6.5 Grendel is in many military small arms enthusiasts’ eyes the ideal military caliber, in theory combining the best characteristics of both 7.62mm and 5.56mm rounds. However, in the thirteen years since the round’s introduction, it has found little [Read More…]
It looks like it could be back to the future for the US Army, if Textron’s new carbine design is any indication of what’s to come. The company unveiled its latest prototype of a cased, telescoped ammunition-firing rifle at Modern Day Marine 2016 in Quantico, [Read More…]
We’ve discussed a lot of different rounds in this series so far, but today we’re going to discuss a round that actually has a shot of being adopted (at least in some form) by the United States military as a next-generation small arms ammunition [Read More…]
On the heels of the 7.62x40mm WT, we are now going to take a look at another former wildcat based on the 5.56mm case, the .25-45 Sharps, a round I’ve discussed before. This .25 caliber round existed for years as the .25-223, a niche quarterbore caliber used mostly [Read More…]
One of the most ballistically interesting intermediate calibers ever developed is the 6.5 Grendel, developed by Arne Brennan with the assistance of Bill Alexander, and promoted heavily by the latter’s company, Alexander Arms. The 6.5 Grendel is interesting because [Read More…]
Not content to have their current products always out of stock, Kel Tec is pushing to release new products this year that will likewise almost always be out of stock. Sitting down with Tim from Military Arms Channel, Kel Tec front-man Chad breaks down some of the [Read More…]
One of the more interesting developments in the ammunition world from the past few years has been the growing interest in Russia for the 6.5 Grendel cartridge. Kalashnikov Concern’s new AK-12 rifle is rumored to have a 6.5mm variant, and the CIP standardized a [Read More…]
Now here is a wildcat that I can get behind. The .30 ARX is an immediately semi-auto AR-15 compatible cartridge. It’s nothing special from a manufacturing standpoint; as the cartridge creator claims, the .30 ARX is simply a necked-up 6.5 Grendel to accept common [Read More…]
For those, like me, who didn’t know about the Grendel P-30 well now you do. George Kellgren designed the Grendel P-30 back in 1990. It is a 20 oz pistol chambered in .22 WMR. It is the predecessor to the Kel-Tec PMR-30 The P-30 isnt the only predecessor. Kellgren [Read More…]
Les Baer Custom has cloned the 6.5mm Grendel and named their creation the .264 LBC-AR. So why would Les Baer, who were well known for producing quality licensed 6.5mm Grendel AR-15 rifles, start competing with Alexander Arms? Let me tell you why. Back in the late 90s [Read More…]
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 [Read More…]
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 [Read More…]
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 7.62x39mm kit near the end of February. Robinson Armament XCR Robinson arms recently [Read More…]
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