Big Game Black Rifle Cartridge: 30 Remington AR
October 13th, 2008
Learned about a lot of new stuff today at the Remington New Products Seminar here at Buck Ridge Plantation near Orangeburg, SC. I’ll be going over a lot of them in the coming days, but the biggest news fit to print from day 1 was probably the new 30 Remington AR cartridge developed for a new model of the R-15 rifle.
The focus was to develop a new cartridge capable of .308 performance from AR15 length magazines in a Remington R-15 rifle. They looked at the 6.8 SPC, the 22-250 Remington, and the 450 Bushmaster as starting points, and ended up with a squat cartridge that fits in modified 450 Bushmaster mags. The R-15 has only been available in .223 or .204 Ruger until now.
Remington R-15 Rifle
The round will be available in AccuTip Boat Tail, Core-Lokt Pointed Soft Point, and UMC Full Metal Jacket. The two hunting rounds will be 125 grain bullets while the FMJ will be 123 grains.
.223 and 30 Remington AR
I had been hoping to shoot a little of this today at the range, but no ammo was available for us. Bummer.
No doubt there are going to be a lot of opinions about yet another AR round.
One thing I’ve heard brought up a number of times already is the cartridge’s name. Some have taken to calling it the 30 RAR, one of them John Snow over at The Gun Shots.
I will have more on this in the coming days.
UPDATE: The Firearm Blog has some more, too.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Looks like the reinvented the 7.62 Russian round to me. Great round, and I’m sure this has a bunch of differences balistically and whatnot, but its damn similar.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:13 am
[...] Pics and specs at GunPundit. [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Nadnerbus:
The .30 RAR may be the same length as the 7.62×39mm, but it is definitely fatter than the ComBloc round: ~0.500″ vs. ~0.443″.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Also the .30 RAR is moving much faster than the 7.62×39. From the reports I’ve read it’s moving some 450-500fps faster. Looks to be a single stack round, which is fine for the hunting crowd.
October 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
[...] A couple more points that I’ve seen questioned or that I thought were interesting about this new round and the rifle designed around it: [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Sounds like a winner, is it going to be available in a lever action, or single shot for us poor folks (i.e., NEF, H&R, etc.)
October 15th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Deepwoods: I just got back from the Marlin/H&R/New England Firearms seminar, and the short answer is “no,” there wasn’t anything about the 30 RAR in any of those brands.
However, I was checking out a fairly cool new offering by Marlin called the 1895SBL, sort of a short lever-action guide gun with a rail on top (and Ghost Ring integrated) and one of the other guys came up and said “Now this is something they should be putting that 30 caliber in.“
October 15th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
[...] new 30 Remington AR’s specs. real close to a .30 BR - except for a .500″ base dia. instead of the BR’s (and [...]