#.224Valkyrie

Photo Of The Day: There’s a lot of talent (and firearms) behind the wonderful stream of images produced by Down Range Photography. Above you can see a New Year’s shot of a few of his blasters, certainly a bit out of the ordinary from what you’ll find in a gun shop. The State of Arizona at its best?

The .224 Valkyrie cartridge has been around for a few years now to give distance shooters a smaller cartridge offering in the MSR (modern sporting rifle) platform to compete with all of the larger cartridge AR-10 shooters. To feed that niche of long-range shooting, Federal Premium has debuted NEW Gold Medal Sierra Tipped Matchking ammunition in 224 Valkyrie for all of the shooters launching that relatively new, hot-rod cartridge. All of the specifications for the NEW Gold Medal Sierra Tipped Matchking ammunition can be read below as presented by Federal Premium:

Berger Bullets, a member of the Capstone Precision Group, announced the release of their new .22 caliber projectile.  Weighing in at 85.5 grains it is the second heaviest bullet Berger offers for that caliber. It’s lighter weight allows it to be pushed a little faster than the 90 gr offering as well as allowing it to achieve better stabilization in slower twist rates.  Additionally, the hybrid ogive should help to make it less jump sensitive than the older VLD (Very Low Drag) design.  

The Savage Arms MSR-15 Recon was one of the original, staple models they introduced when they first got into the game of modern sporting rifles, or  Modern Savage Rifles ( MSR). As more and more people want to test their long-range prowess and see how far they can truly engage a target, companies like Savage Arms get requests for more accurate MSR platforms. To give the people what they want, they have now introduced the MSR-15 Recon LRP. A long-range, precision version of their original MSR-15 Recon in cartridges that can truly fly. The specifications for this new rifle can be read below as presented by Savage Arms:

Brandon Herrera, The AK Guy, has just published a video showing the world’s first AK chambered in .224 Valkyrie. No, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. The AK-224 does exist!

What a nonsense! What in the world is a non-existent standardized cartridge? OK, let me explain. At the beginning of 2018, a new Nosler cartridge was added to the list of SAAMI standard cartridges – the .24 Nosler. However, as of the moment of writing this article (early January 2019), I couldn’t find any place which had this cartridge available for purchase. That’s why I call it a non-existent standardized cartridge. Now let’s discuss the idea of wildcatting this cartridge and creating the .224-24 Nosler.

Magpul PMAGs designed for the 6.8mm Remington SPC cartridge were developed in partnership with LWRCI. These magazines are larger than the standard GI mags and so far they were only compatible with the LWRCI Six8 series of rifles which receivers were built around these magazines. Apparently, now there is another option on the market – Sulzer Firearms MK1-SPC AR-15 receiver set.

I have yet to experience the .224 Valkyrie caliber, but technically it looks very interesting. TFB has covered the .224 Valkyrie in several articles, for instance here and here.

Seekins Precision has joined the list of companies that make .224 Valkyrie products. They launched a variety of products for this caliber including barrels, complete upper receivers and complete rifles. Perhaps the most notable product in this new line is the VKR20 rifle which we will talk about in this article.

If you have not jumped on the .224 Valkyrie bandwagon yet there is no need to worry. The bandwagon circles around regularly about every 15 minutes. There seems to be a new flavor of ammunition, new tricked out firearm, or as is the case with Black Rain Ordnance (BRO), a new complete upper assembly for your AR-15 platform coming out constantly. They just announced their NEW BRO Spec15 .224 Valkyrie Complete Uppers being sold in addition to the complete firearms they offer as well.

TFB reached out to Federal for an additional comment on the issued letter:

Our Fourth Installment of Build of the Week was contributed by BKKSW.  Clearly, the new hotness in many circles is the .224 Valkyrie.  I’m hoping we can get a couple variants in to run for review in the near future. BKKSW’s rifle comes in at just over 7 lbs with a reported 0.12 split time on shots.

Wilson Combat has announced that their Recon Tactical and Super Sniper rifles are now available chambered in .224 Valkyrie. The rifles are built with Wilson Combat barrels that feature a fast 1:6.5″ twist rate which allows stabilizing some of the heaviest (90 grain) .224 projectiles currently available on the market. Let’s take a look at each of these rifles.

Patriot Ordnance Factory USA ( POF USA) has always implemented unique styling and tremendous quality into their Renegade+ series of modern sporting rifles. To build on that success, they now are deploying the newest craze-worthy cartridge, the .224 Valkyrie, to the platform for even higher performance and flatter shooting.

At the annual NRA Show weeks ago Savage Arms introduced a couple new AR-15 rifles into the fold of their MSR 15 line. One of the newest iterations is the MSR 15 Long Range rifle in .224 Valkyrie. While easily falling into Savage Arms‘ line of the MSR 15, this new model still has unique attributes that should hopefully differentiate itself from other competitors on the market. We will dive in and see if this is something tempting enough for you to try and locate your wallet, or just leave this gun hanging on store shelves.