One of the items Mark Larue brought to show at the Big 3 East Media Event was his Ultimate AR-15 Upper Kit.

The kit is basically like IKEA furniture. You buy it and assemble it. The only thing you need are the tools and a stripped lower receiver. The Ultimate AR-15 Upper Kit provides everything else. Even the lower parts kit to complete your stripped lower.

The kits include Larue’s Stealth 2.0 Uppers. It has a truly free floating handguard. As you can see in the photo below, there is a large flange on the front of the upper receiver. The handguard has a similar flange that bolts together. The handguard does not touch the barrel nut at all.

Below is an example of what you get in the Ultimate Upper Kit.

The kit comes with the Larue RAT stock which they mold themselves in house.

Inside the stock there is a 16″ cleaning rod stored inside. Each aluminum rod has steel threaded inserts for strength.

You screw the rod into the buttpad to aid in tapping out stuck cases.

The Upper Kits comes everything you need. The barrels even come with Larue’s Tranquilo muzzle brake.

Over the past two days I have been shooting Mark’s guns a lot. All of them suppressed. I shot his 6.5 Grendel, SURG 5.56, and the new .224 Valkyrie. The most amazing aspect of those guns is that there were zero emissions. For those of you who have shot a suppressed AR-15, you will know all to well the gasses that leak out of the back of the receiver and sting your eyes. Sure there are some band-aid solutions but they only minimize the gas. Somehow Mark was able to eliminate the gas entirely. It is nothing short of a miracle.

I am not sure if these rifles were different than the Regular Upper Kit or if they are the same performance wise. I do know that they all had the SURG muzzle device on them. Due to concerns of baffle strikes, Mark lengthened his tranquilo muzzle brake to run the entire length of the suppressor.

The SURG rifle has a slightly modified handguard that allows a honeycomb Burn Guard to be quickly mounted directly to the handguard.

I shot the SURG a lot. I even got into a small shooting match with James Grant of Burst Review. Mark had set up 10 of his metal auto resetting steel target systems. 5 of them were painted blue and the other 5 was painted red. We shot the string about 8-10 times. Only stopping for Mark to hand us fresh mags. The handguard was warm to the touch but nothing compared to touching a hot suppressor after 40 quickly fired rounds went through it.

So how much is the Ultimate AR-15 Upper Kit? If you go with black, then it comes out to about $800. If you choose FDE or UDE, then the price goes up by $99. You can get the kits in a variety of combinations. You can choose any length barrel. 12″ all the way up to a 20″ barrel. The AR15 kit comes in either 5.56, .300blk, or 6.5 Grendel. If you go with the AR-10 option then you can get .308, .260 Remington or 6.5 Creedmoor. While the AR-15 kit is around $800, the AR-10 kits are around $1200. Still very reasonable for basically a Larue rifle. The reason behind this is due to passing the savings onto the consumer. There is an FAET (Firearms & Ammunition Excise Tax) placed on firearms and ammunition. Selling you a kit does not constitute as a firearm and therefore not subject to the 11% tax.  That is quite the savings in the long run. If you think of a typical $3000 Larue, the FAET comes out to over $300. Makes the NFA $200 tax stamp seem more reasonable doesn’t it?

I asked Mark, and the SURG may be offered up as a kit in the future. Just having that handguard with detachable honey comb burn guard seems like a great idea and you can run your own suppressor of choice.

You can check out the Ultimate Upper Kit on Larue’s website here.