With the new Springfield Armory long-barrel Hellion rifle release, it has increased my fervor for the platform even more. Daniel Y. is reviewing the 20″ barreled Hellion for TFB while I am reviewing it for our sister site, AllOutdoor.com. Playing with the long barrel Hellion got me thinking “What If?” with regards to alternate Hellion carry handle options? So I whipped up some Photoshop mock-ups to see what could be possible if someone was to make a new carry handle for the Hellion platform. In this article, I photoshopped my ideas and in some cases crudely placed handles on guns as a rough draft.

More Hellion @TFB

• Manticore Arms’ Hellion Enhanced Safety System
• TFB Review: Springfield Armory Hellion 20-inch (Part 1)
• Long Barrel Hellion Rifles (18″ & 20″) From Springfield Armory

Over a year ago I assembled this cursed creation. It has been a running joke between me and my friend Greg in Austria, aka @Scaarat on Instagram, to mount our G36 dual optic carry handle on as many guns as possible. Do you like carry handles? We added a carry handle to your carry handle. So you can carry while you carry. With the new 20″ barrel Hellion I have started to look at the potential for alternate Hellion carry handles.

This starts with removing the factory top rail. Easier said than done. The top rail is held in place with eight screws. They look like Phillips but they are not. The slots are too shallow and curved. I eventually got them all out. One was so difficult that I had to use one of the freed screws, clamp it in a bench vise and use that to turn the stuck screw still in the Hellion carry handle.

Once the factory Hellion carry handle is removed, it is actually just a top rail with integrated front sight, this is what you are left with.

More importantly, you can see the potential of alternate Hellion carry handles with the factory carry handle rail removed.

I revisited the G36 dual optic carry handle and zip-tied it to the Hellion.

When you think of carry handles on bullpups, it is hard not to think of the iconic FAMAS.

The carry handle is very large on the Famas. If I scaled the carry handle to match the FAMAS the back of the carry handle would sit somewhere in the middle of that island on top of the Hellion.

Out of curiosity, I scaled up the FAMAS carry handle so the back reaches the back of the island on the Hellion. Still not great.

Then I scaled the FAMAS handle so it sits between both islands and photoshopped a Picatinny rail behind it. Then placed a Vortex UH1 behind this possible Hellion carry handle option. The optic would see through the carry handle.

The style above was inspired by Tommy Built’s Carry Handle Top Rail for the G36 platform. Here it is photoshopped as another possible Hellion carry handle.

Manticore makes a carry handle as part of their CZ Scorpion extended handguard. So I photoshopped that to see how it would look. Not too bad.

Of course, we should look at the original Hellion carry handle. Not the Springfield one but the HS Produkt VHS-D2 CT.

The 20″ barreled Hellion is getting closer and closer to the Croatian-issued rifle. I scaled and laid the VHS-D2 CT image over the Hellion. You could see the potential for a replica Hellion carry handle that looks like the VHS-D2 carry handle.

The biggest hurdle is figuring out what to do for the integrated sight. The factory optic is a 1.5x scope.

I think for the sake of simplicity, I would leave the Hellion carry handle open and mount a small red dot behind the carry handle or make space to fit a pistol optic inside the Hellion carry handle.

I will leave you with this little gem. I zip-tied a G36 top rail to the Hellion and it surprisingly looks good.

What would you want as a Hellion carry handle? What features would it have?