Barrett has three new products that we discussed in this video, the largest being the .224 Valkyrie is being chambered in an AR platform in coordination with the launch by Federal Ammunition. In addition, the same round is being chambered in their Fieldcraft line of lightweight hunting rifles that the company first debuted last year.

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Normally I don’t think twice about posting industry awards: a bunch of well-dressed fat cats smoking cigars and slapping each other on the back (that’s a joke, people). But after seeing the Inceptor Ammo in person, color me impressed. I can’t wait to get some of their Sport Utility Ammo in for testing and reviews. Have a need for frangible rounds? Give Inceptor a good look.

In today’s episode, we follow Miles to Shot Show 2018 Media Day at the Range and visit the Ashbury Precision Ordinance booth.

The golden age of polymer cased ammunition has probably already begun. Certainly, Norwegian-Finnish ammunition manufacturer Nammo seems to believe that, as they recently took a significant stake in American company MAC, LLC, makers of polymer-cased composite ammunition, some of which has already been type-classified by the United States Navy. MAC, LLC will continue as an independent company.  Nammo announced the acquisition via a press release, which is embedded below:

Until now, the US Army’s 7.62mm XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round has been a mystery. The round, which was rumored to be the basis for the now-cancelled Interim Combat Service Rifle (ICSR) program, is supposed to allow existing weapons in the 7.62x51mm caliber to defeat advanced body armor out to combat ranges. Speculations about its configuration ranged from an improved traditional tungsten cored round to a discarding sabot design firing uranium flechettes, but the answer to this mystery was recently revealed in an issue of the Picatinny Voice. The ADVAP, it seems, is built on the technology of the 7.62mm M80A1 EPR, but using a tungsten core. From the Picatinny Voice article by Audra Calloway:

Russian archaeological team called “Yuri Gagarin” publishes on its  YouTube channel videos of excavations of WW2 relics from the battlefields of the war. In several recent videos, they show how they retrieve many really well-preserved firearms and other items from a swamp. Even after being in the swamp for about 75 years, these relics are in amazingly good condition. Below is a set of screenshots of the most interesting weapons and other items shown in their latest videos.

Ascendance International has introduced the Dark Horse line of ammunition. This ammunition mainly consists of frangible rounds. However, among a selection of frangible loads, the company also showed a door breaching bullet loaded in the .308 Winchester (7.62x51mm NATO) round.

The Big Freakin’ Cartridge Test’s first batch of 6 rounds is through, but there’s more to come. In the last post, we reflected on the test methodology, and some possible solutions. In this post, we’ll talk about what you can expect in the future.

We’ve seen how the 6 different .223 Remington and 5.56mm loads have fared in the Big Freakin’ Cartridge Test, but we still have more to talk about. Specifically, we need to discuss what I did wrong (or what I am not satisfied with), and what I plan to do next. This post will concern the former, and a second installment will cover the latter.

Last year Wolf announced the they were bringing in a somewhat rare cartridge, 9X39. For the longest time the 9X39 round was somewhat shrouded in mystery. It is supposedly armor piercing and so banned from importation. Well last November they started to import the commercial version of 9X39 into the US. They originally imported older steel cased versions of 9×39 but those will be phased out for brass cased ammo as seen in the photo above.

In a surprise announcement at the 2018 SHOT Show, gunmaker Weatherby revealed that they will be leaving the state of California, where they have been based since their founding in 1945. The company’s new home will be Sheridan, Wyoming, the sixth largest city in the state, nestled beside the Bighorn Mountains, and close to the border with Montana. The move was announced with little notice on the floor during the afternoon of the show on Monday, with the Wyoming Business Council in attendance. Adam Weatherby, founder Roy Weatherby’s grandson, cited strong economic incentives from the Wyoming Business Council, as well as more freedom to develop new products without onerous legal restrictions as reasons for leaving California.

FD Munitions was up in the NEXT area of SHOT Show. These are the small kiosks just outside the Press Room and often have some really interesting firearm development products at the show. FD Munitions is developing a caseless rifle. At least that is what they claim it to be. True caseless ammo does not have a metal container to hold the propellant. The FDM L5 rifle uses charge block ammo. It is a block of metal with five rounds in it. The block acts as one giant casing. The blocks are stackable and go into a giant magazine that is inserted from the left side of the L5 rifle.

Winchester has a new label of ammunition to catch the wave of silencer popularity. It is called Super Suppressed and it is tailored to make your suppressor experience more fun than ever. It is going to be initially offered in 6 calibers with the potential for more to come.

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of World War II and to honor those firearms of old Winchester has some new throwback ammunition. With packaging appropriate for the time period as well as correct grain weights, pressures and components they are now proudly announcing their WWII Victory Series.

During the range day of SHOT Show 2018,  Hailey Ordnance Company has introduced a new line of ammunition. The company is specialized in making silencers and suppressed weapon systems and the ammunition they are now making is subsonic which, as you know, is more efficiently suppressed due to lack of the sonic boom produced by the supersonic bullets. They are going to start offering 9mm Luger, .45 ACP and 12 gauge cartridges loaded to subsonic velocities and with projectiles heavier than it is normally seen in this calibers.

What did we see at Range Day? Valkyries, Valkyries everywhere. Federal’s pint-sized long distance runner has already outstripped the market purchase of its direct competitors in the high performance AR-15 market, testified to by the sheer number of .224 Valkyrie rifles peppered across the booths and stalls of Range Day ’18.

ITW Nexus brought the companies latest version of their FastMag at Pre-Range Day, in addition to a pack strap quick release. Both products are distributed by Hudson 4 Supplies. ITW Nexus products are used in numerous tactical and even non-tactical products such as packs, plate carriers, and all sorts of other gear. The magazine carriers on display are dimensioned to accept both 5.56x45mm NATO STANAGs and interestingly 6.8x43mm SPC magazines. In addition, they also had 7.62x51mm NATO magazine carriers as well.

I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, especially as the doors to SHOT Show are about to open and a new year has just started.

At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range capability. The rifle, Milley said, will give a 10x improvement in capability through the type of ammunition, optics, and degree of chamber pressure specific to it, with the aim of providing the soldier a weapon with much more accuracy and range than the current M4 Carbine. Milley also clarified that the term “10x” was not intended to be a precise measurement of the capability growth, but rather a term indicating significant improvement. The new rifle will come as part of an effort that also includes new artillery, tanks, aircraft, and virtual reality training facilities, Milley said.

Hodgdon Powder Company announced the introduction of a new smokeless powder for 2018 under the Winchester Smokeless Powders brand. Called WinClean 244, this new ball powder is formulated to be a good powder for handgun cartridges like the .38 Special, 9mm and .45 ACP.

The Army Marksmanship Unit’s .264 USA – a medium-sized 6.5mm round in-between the 6.5mm Grendel and 6.5mm Creedmoor in size – is not yet dead, it seems. The round, about which little had been heard in official channels for a couple of years, is the subject-in-part of a new solicitation released by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office’s Technical Support Working Group (CTTSO TSWG). The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) describes a need for a Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) and an “Individual Weapon System (IWS), designed to “overmatch” targets out to 800 meters. The specifications for the new weapon are quire ambitious, with a threshold velocity requirement of 2,650 ft/s with a 108gr bullet, and an objective requirement of 2,750 ft/s with the same, both from an 11.5″ barrel!

Browsing through the CIP cartridge standards while doing a research, I noticed several cartridges named PICRA. The name was unknown to me and apparently, it is unknown to many others too. So I thought why don’t I do a little research to find out who has designed these cartridges? It was a matter of simple web search to find that company’s website. It turns out, that there is more than a couple of cartridges developed by them. In this article, we’ll learn about the PICRA company and take a brief look at their cartridges.

Gold Dot has been a leader in defensive handgun ammunition for more than two decades. During that time, the Speer rounds have shown to be effective in both ballistic gelatin and in real-world lethal force encounters.

This is cool and somewhat unexpected. But if the Swedish Armed Forces have and use them perhaps there should be manuals in the local language.

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That looks like a serious headache. I found this photo on Facebook it was reported that Rodrigo Moreira was a victim of a motorcycle robbery and the robbers shot the him in the head after taking his motorcyle at gun point. There is little information as to the circumstances of the robbery. Was the Rodrigo wearing a helmet? How far away were the shooters? When did they shoot him? Was it point blank or did they shoot him as they fled?

Next up for  the Big Freakin’ Cartridge Test is RUAG Ammotec’s version of the NATO-standard SS109 round (equivalent to US M855). I believe the ammunition I tested may have been made in RUAG’s facility in Thun, Switzerland, although I have not confirmed that.

Lapua from Finland begin the year with expanding their range of quality brass for hunters and long range competition shooters.

CCI Ammunition is rolling out two new variations of rimfire ammo leading into SHOT Show 2018. One offering is a tweak to their bread ‘n butter Mini-Mag ammo. They gave it a segmented hollow point tip that splits into three equal-sized projectiles upon impact. This 40-grain bullet should be even more impactful and lethal than previous versions for varmints. The new flavor of .17 HMR ammo features a thinly-jacketed Speer bullet capped with a polymer tip. This results in flat, repeatable accuracy and significant expansion upon impact as well.