The Armalite AR10 Super SASS

welcome to smart solutions today we're talking about the Armalite super SAS rifle this is one of my personal rifles and one I'm really really find of before we get into the stats program I want to talk a little bit about the company Armalite now as you all know the arm light was the originator of the air tennis wear jeans donor worked in the 50s well the name is has gone through several changes the name he had intellectual property and so forth in the late 1900s a the late-1980s mark westrom mark westrom is a it was a former colonel u.s. army ordnance officer he did a lot of work with Rock Island Arsenal and he had done a lot of work on the m16 programs themselves he's done a lot of very very interesting work throughout the years and he still done work with Rock Island Arsenal after he left the military mark purchased a company called Eagle arms Eagle arms was looking at a Geneseo Illinois they manufactured a AR type rifles under the EI name he had done some parts as well for other companies around the the early 1990s he had had the opportunity to purchase the trademark Armalite and along with the arm White was its logos its name as well as some intellectual property not really all that much but just before he got into the part of the procurement of the Armalite name he had been working at his own version of the ar-10 no Reed Knight had already released his sr-25 around 93 that error in there when Mark was looking at designing his own ar-10 type rifle he's looking what his options were his actions were one he was to make it off of the original air ten drugs from the 50s and it really wasn't gonna fly just due to the fact that the kind of looked very strange by current IMI current trends and there's a lot changes that have been going after as far as the flattop receivers and so forth turning the rifle into more of a dedicated wife lura sniper type rifle to was to come up with his own design or three start of piggyback off of one that was just being released that was the sr-25 by knight's armament now if you look at the sr-25 there was a lot of similarities between the original AR 10 but it had a lot to do with the m16a2 there so there's a big push to have as much parts commonality with the m16 82 as possible so you have what's called the sr-25 now first off mark do that read knight was going to charge vast amount of my scene it's very very expensive to buy parts to get anything out of out of there now he knew if he was to take the sr-25 and to look at the base parks yielded the major components he would already have a customer base for that the original sr-25 utilized Armalite original magazines the original in the 1950s however due to the sullivan man nice was no longer able to manufacture those for commercial sales and certainly the ones from the 50s pretty much dried up so mark decided he wanted his customers to be able to have it's one of your own magazine and mark was very fond of the m14 magazine due the fact that it was extremely durable in fact mark felt that it was more durable than the sr-25 magazines or the original air ten magazines due to the extremely large numbers of these magazines that were available you'd be able to convert this to be used in his rifle and at this time it was called the AR time because he now had the are my trademark his AR 10 would be able to utilize a modified m14 magazine which basically what he would do is he would the magazine he would cut kind of notch in it for the magazine release he would modify the feed angles of the feed lips and he would also changed the follower he also made a modification to the follower in there so it would lock open in the last shot and all you had to do was take these magazines set him into harm light and they one could hurt him because these magazines were you know pre you know it's all up in ban you could make as many as you want and they were perfectly legal so he built his based off of the m14 magazine instead of the sr-25 at that time i probably would say right up through mid 2000s arm light manufactured more ar-10 rifles or 7.62 versus this rifle than anybody else in the industry and mark also as a former infantry officer he wanted to get out some military contracts and he knew that his rifles with the accuracy the precision that he had he was ready to compete for the for the big time so that gives a little bit of a background on mark westrom and what he had done but now we're gonna go forward to 2004 early on in the global war on terror there was definitely a deed that came out to have a new sniper rifle even within the sniper community realized that there was a much bigger benefit of having a semi-automatic my rifle with a 20 round magazine it was just as accurate pretty much as most bolt action rifles that you're able to engage your targets you know you would be able to engage at least double or at least a 50% 75% more speed and target engagement than you would with a bolt-action rifle so that enables you to take to be able to engage multiple targets very very quickly without having to read adjusters at your site without having to manually work the bolt being able to use the sounds and pressors it was basically a win-win situation and also at that time during the Global War on Terror 2004 the Navy was already looking at a rifle called a mark 11 which was an SR 25 base rifle that was being used as a sniper rifle with Navy SEALs and was so calm and the rifle was extremely successful the longer engagements you had in Afghanistan just using you know anything is a sniper rifle you know they had it had been a test that would show that if you were to have a guy with a bolt-action versus the semi-automatic but the guy with semi-automatic could engage two or three times faster and that many more targets than the guy with the bolt action and what little difference there was an accuracy you know whether you have a bullet that touches each other you know 100 yards or five bolts to touch each other that's really irrelevant when it comes to engaging human targets out to for 500 yards that little benefit that you would get from the bolt action rifle was not enough to to say that you know we would take the bolt action over it just wasn't there's just so much more benefit to the some animatic rifle the m110 trials had several companies that were involved with it of course Knights I mean Knights was a given being the fact they already had the government kind of tracked for the mark 11 he also had DPMS you had armor white and you had JP enterprises in you had Remington and when it all came down to it there was a winner and unfortunately it was not armed light it is the rifle that we see here which is the m110 service rifle manufactured by knight's armament discuss lobelia the rifle was entered by Armalite there is a specific set of requirements that the rifle did have so the rifle that arm light actually showed you're gonna see a photograph photographs of this rifle I was the first person to put any photographs up of the armor lights ass some articles I did for small arms review small arms defense journal and nobody else has ever done it since so what you're seeing here is probably your first time ever seeing a picture of armed whites entry so as you can see from the picture you're going to see a sixth position stock with a Baltimore clubfoot the gun is in coyote tan which is what it was required to be the trigger was a chip McCormick two-stage trigger so we want to have a two-stage precision trigger now arm light had some of their own makeshift front and rear sights they they were not impressive I will give you that but one mark did this he wanted everything to be done by armed line he didn't when he's any more subcontractors than he actually had to now the hand guard was a free-floating hanger that was a quad 1913 rails it was manufactured by arm light and of course for a precision rifle you want to have the ability to have a free-flowing barrel which gives you moisture you actually have the Harbach should not interfered with that gives you all that precision accuracy which this air time system with your arm light system was was known for us for precision accuracy specifically the AR tendon in the 50s it was known for its accuracy so I was chambered for 7.62 by 51 millimeter 20-inch barrel 11 1/4 inch twist Barrett had basically a seven to ten thousand service life it was taken care of properly there's a gas film located the front of the Armand lights s that was three suppositions he had suppressed normal and complete gas shutoff the muzzle device was set up for a surefire flash hider it did utilize the modified m14 magazine now something else you have to understand was there was no standard magazine even even by today's standards there is no standardized 7.62 magazine you have the sr-25 that specific reticle utilized that magazine for the new m1 10 C lies as a proprietary Agent K magazine so there is no factory standard or industry standard magazine for Spurs military use and I will say again my Western believed that the m14 magazine being of steel construction was far stronger than the aluminum ones or even the stables were to be manufactured by Knights at the time the optical was chose it was the same optically it was used on the mark 11 it was a little pulled three and a half by ten match scope now additional thousand dollars add to this gun by request of the military furs for as far as having a Harding polymer case which had you know several things had magazines it had spare parts a head cleaning kits it has all the things that were set up for the requirements of the SAS program well September 28th 2005 the contract was warned nights so you know I guess it wasn't really surprised to see that nights would win my sis head it had a very long relationship with Special Operations with so calm with Naval Surface Warfare Center you know they were also a US government manufacturer you know there's a lot of requirements that come up when you have US government contracts there's even even for your facility itself it has to have certain requirements that you know arm I probably didn't fit a lot of that Armalite was still a very small business compared to what Knights was but it did not end there for the SAS I remember I introduced in the shot show 2006 what they referred to as the super SAS which you see here basically the super SAS was it was a combination of lessons learned from the SAS rifle and to make another rifle that had many modifications to make the rifle that much better than what he originally had had and quite frankly if you were to compare this particular rifle here to any sr-25 any LMT or anything that i've shot along those lines which you would consider high-end sniper rifles this one is right up there first far as the group size there they're all about the same they're all old well that's well some of them away this particular one here I was about was just under an inch with the suppressor on with m11 8lr ammunition if I probably taking the suppressor off would've had some 168 I would have expected it to go you know get a little bit tighter also but this rifle is up to par with anything else that's out there so as I said it's introduced at the SHOT Show in 2006 and incorporated many many of the features from the exits for the xm-10 now looking at those from back to front we're gonna see we have a Magpul PRS stock that came out it now the original rifle utilized a telescopic stock well when they went to the 20-inch precision rifle they decided to go with the Magpul stock and I have to say the Magpul stock in my opinion is the finest precision rifle stock available for the air type rifle now it is heavy we have to give me that it is a heavy stock you do have an adjustment for the cheek weld on here adjustable by a dial here you have a dial in the rear which gives you some adjustment to your like the pull on the rear you slide out this carburetor here you have a 1913 rail to install a monopod so you know this this is fully adjustable to get your cheek up to where however you have your your optics set up upper and lower receivers now both of them are 7075 t6 aircraft grade aluminum forges early AR tens this is a very interesting piece of information here now all of you guys have heard me talk about how I'm not very fond of the forward assist on the ar-10 it wasn't supposed to be there now mark westrom just like Jean stoner just like Carl Lewis just like read Knight they knew the rifle was not designed to have a forward assist and it shouldn't have been there so the first rifles of America Western produced did not have a forward assist I do have one of his early rifles then I got around here I'd say 2000 when he didn't have those on there well he got a lot of feedback from customers now they wanted it why do they want it we have no idea the m16 has it so therefore it has to be needed so therefore it should be out of this rifle I think mark just got tired of fighting the City Hall so he finally said fine I'll put one on it so this particular one here has the former assist added to it you'll see we have a fire cartridge case deflector we have ambi safety on here we have standard location for magazine release now if you look at the way he did his lower receivers that is market Armalite you went with more of the m16a2 type features if you look at the geography on this or if you look at the features of it it looks more at the end of the m16a2 compared to like an SR 25 the sr-25 has more of its own look to it this gives you more of a service rifle or ocurred service rifle look to it so we have the m14 type magazine the bolt carrier group is one of the parts that was manufactured to be compatible with that of the sr-25 the upper and lower receiver partially I would say we're compatible but due to the fact they used the m14 magazine there were some cuts that were up in the upper receiver as well as the magazine well that did not make them common with the sr-25 because of the different magazine so the upper and lower receiver were not for as far as the interface for the magazine but if you look at the back it was very much similar to that of the sr-25 now looking at your triggerman ism you have a Armalite manufactured to stage-matched trigger a very very nice trigger it's got a little barf spring to it and like a guy's Leawood but it was a very very effective trigger getting back to the bolt carrier group the bolt carrier group is compatible with that of the sr-25 you could drop one and drop one out the other one this particular one here has the former cystitis obviously because it utilizes the pharmacists the earlier ones that were made by armed line did not have forward assist notches because it didn't need them bolts are very very well made in fact uh and all the times I've been to Armalite and talked with mark and talked with customers I've never heard of a bolt breaking I'm in the air time and I'm like I think I've never heard of sr25 or the LMT either these are just very very well built components now we take a look at the handguard we have here again we have a quad 1913 rail handguard now I'm sure that the current production ones probably new utilized the keymod and then of course the a block now let me say that this rifle here I purchased this one in 2008 or 2009 around that time period again that was what Mark westrom owned the company no mark westrom had sold the company and once he sold it I sort of lost track with the company it was very different and we will get into that later but the right four that we're seeing here is an original rifle this was when I know for sure these rifles were made awesome so the hang Guard military 1913 quad rails completely free floated attaches from the back here dive into the barrel nut we have a rifle length gas system for fires backup sites the sites that I have out here are the nights micro because they sit down really really flat and when you have your scope mounted on here it doesn't interfere with the scope either get back to the back here as well we have a appear I guess muster charging handle out here to all these rifles come with that because of the fact that we have on this barrel adjustment valve now this sort of changes up a little bit from the one on the xm-10 this one here only has a normal in a suppressed position and I have to say as much as I've used this rifle this thing is never carbon froze on me so that's pretty cool a lot of these ones you'll actually get carbon freeze on there and it will cause problems later on down the road you know you really have to get something on there to break that carbon freeze just have that problem it just it does come with three panels and the lower here we do have a Harris bipod on here this is on the arm so lever mount do we have on here and Harris bipod you're probably one of the staples of most of the US military but you'll see everybody using everything you'll see Atlas you'll see you know pretty much anything the way the rifles were to leave Knights they would have Harris bipod on the way they would leave crank for some of the other versions of the rifle they would have Harris bipod so I just I just stuck with that now the barrel the barrel is extremely unique on this sucker again we have a 20 inch barrel rifle length gas system it's a very heavy barrel man a 416 our stainless steel it has a 1 in 10 inch twist right hand the triple nth ceramic coated barrel while that means is this is an extremely accurate barrel now pretty much the military staple when it comes to sound suppressors is Jeremy the Knight's armament in the case of SOCOM the five five six bar 12 utilized in Elma engineering or an OP sink but this particular one is the Silencerco I've been using a lot of silence for Coke products and I have to say I've been very very impressed this particular one I've been utilizing on 300 blackout 308 up to 300 Win Mag I've been very very happy with it now the suppressor is a sound sarcone mega 300 or obviously 30 caliber utilizes the ACR break this will go from caliber 5.7 to 300 Win Mag has the overall length of 7.9 inches in waist 14 ounces as a 1.5 6 inch diameter and your basic decibel is about 130 3.9 decibels nice manufacture and a titanium steel light and table steel now the MSRP is 1130 and I had to state worth every penny these are excellent sounds oppressors if I've utilized these on many many rifles and you're gonna see from the video that you're gonna see very shortly how well it works with the rifle this copula is I'm this is a basic military scope this is pretty pretty much one of the ones that's used on a regular basis for the bolt-action as well as the semi automatics it's the Leupold mark 4 three and a half to 10 it is illuminated reticle with 11 increments of brightness I also have the 7.62 a bullet drop compensator this particular one's compensators for the the m1 1/8 which is a 168th grain load you can also get a turret that is for the m11 8lr which is a 175 grain open tip match so take to get a parking take a little bit of a look inside is to remove the sound suppressor lock the collar as you see here we have the ACR flash suppressor now a lot of these rifles they tend to want to use muzzle brakes on them I'm not I'm not one of those I prefer to have the flash suppressor around here I think anytime you look at any kind of a military type rifle you look what's more important to you or to enhance recoil reduction or its flash well I think any soldier would sit anywhere I reduce flash there's not enough muzzle blast on here to really cause you that much of a problem now looking at the magazine now we had a couple different generations of magazines during the band we had basically they were standard US government or standard m14 magazines that were modified well then came 2,000 forwards the son sanity assault weapon ban now armed light was able to manufacture their own magazines with several enhancements those may enhancements were as you see there's a spine here and a type of this spine here you have a follower that engages the bolt release the original magazines that were modified you didn't have the spine in the back you have a plunger in here that would be would push in as you would load your rounds and then when it come up to the last shot the plunger would stick out and will lift upward on the on the the bolt lock so this is an enhanced magazine it's manufactured specifically for this rifle with everything being optimal on it one of the areas where I thought I felt my question was sort of ahead of Knight's armament was his development of his bolt catch and his gas tube now as we spoke the sr-25 was supposed to have 80 percents of parts commonality with the m16 82 when Mark Western built this rifle he was not concerned about any kind of parts a compatibility you want to make the best seven six to that he could and right off the bat he knew that the standard m16 our five five six bolt catch was not nearly hefty enough to halt the heavy mass of the 7.62 caliber bolt carrier group so right off the bat he made and enhanced a much heavier bolt catch your thing that he did was he realized that if you look at the gas system that was on the ar-10 that if he were to use a standard m16 gas tube then it was too short it didn't sit all the way back in the carrier key so you could have issue was with gases that were leaking so he had a special gas - that was made that was longer specifically for the 7.62 your system so we can see here is the two-stage trigger this is a arm light very very well polished on the on the top here they're very stubborn in field to the to the LM t for as far as the way the more spring you know you no more than a second on the first stage but once you get to that second stage you have a really crisp break very nice now for as far as the buffers concerned utilizing the exact same receiver extension as you do on a standard m16 type rifle but you have to use a shorter buffer and a more a more powerful recoil spring because of the 7.62 caliber and we can see as the magazines inserted we can see how that bulk actually lifts right up with this design you already had the the trip built into the magazine with the original magazines you had a spring-loaded detent that popped out which lifted up on the bolt catch now what makes this rifle upper receiver not compatible with that of the sr-25 is do this cut right in through here with this cut in here it makes sure that the there's no over travel of the m14 magazine due to the fact that it's cut out for the m14 magazine it will not fit the sr-25 type magazine so that's why the upper receiver is not compatible now the new AR 10 bees the new ar10 bees that are utilized with the arm light today they used the sr-25 type magazines to my knowledge they're no longer manufacturing in the original marquest room and before teen magazines are all using the sr-25 type magazines so of course the current production upper receiver from armored light and low receiver would be compatible with that of the Knights this is the gas Buster charging handle by PRI now so far as I am concerned anybody who has a sound suppressor around any AR type rifle this is an absolute must-have this was sold on the original Mark twelves and on the original market Elevens if you notice how you have these flares that come now this does is it covers up the back of the receivers burns gas from hitting the operator in the face if we look in the bottom we'll see how we have this round cutout here well that does address the path of the gas right off the side of the rifle rather than back into the shooters face and we also have a far more aggressive and more easily - to manipulate charging handle latch no we have here is a standard AR 10 bolt carrier group this is compatible with out of the sr-25 unlike the sr-25 this utilizes a manganese phosphate instead of a chrome plating it's basically the exact same design you have two embedded Springs in here here you have a large frame pin retaining pin unlike that of the sr-25 that's captive and into the firing pin another thing the armed light does on their framing pins at nights doesn't do is they install a a firing pin spring now there's a reason for this the reason was was when this rifle was first developed there was a lot of ammunition that they would have issues with slam fires meaning just from the inertia of the bolt going forward firing pin would tap on the back of the primer and ever be enough inertia to set the cartridge off that's because you have primers that were too soft or non military-grade primers so just to cope with that to make sure didn't happen with his guns mark westrom and put a firing pin spring on there so that would ensure that would never happen and I can tell you this rifle and other are my travels I have they've shot any kind of a mission from hard military primers to soft match primers I've never had any kind of slam fires with it campin if you look at the bolt now all the arm light rifles came with the one-piece gas ring as well my question was very fond of these his five five six rifles didn't come with it but he did prefer them on his seven six to you pop on our extractor and when we look at our extractor we'll see we have a very heavy red buffer we have the extractor spring plus we have the doughnut the extractor doughnut which basically increases your extractor force by a factor of four and that's excellent verse far as any of these rifles I put these on all of my rifles it's basically insurance you literally can remove the spring and just put the doughnut in there you know in your weapon would still function without a problem so quite frankly you're the tractor spring is doing a little bit of work you have a pretty a pretty good crud group right here as well as you have the a very good strong extractor quad there as well to engage more of the rim of the cartridge case see we have our breech nice on here very very very well made marquess have been a wonderful job building these things and you know this this is a very strong very durable design to it unfortunately didn't get it to do back in the 50s but it has now so reassembly very very simple and they broke the ball carrier groups just like any milspec m16 type you have a chrome-plated inside the bolt carrier and inside the carrier key nice thing about these you don't have to rotate these a quarter turn you just drop that right in place so it's nice about here you can push forward in here with your finger to depress that because you do have the spring tension on there and that will ensure that's not going to drop out sorry assembly for our charging handle now looking close you'll see we have an ambidextrous safety on here this does not come that way this is something that I added onto there I do tend to like this we have a very short throw lever on here but you can't sweep it down with your right hand if you so chose let me take a look at the opposite side if we look at our markings on here we have the the Armalite lion now those of you are familiar with the Armalite logos the very first arm light logo was a Pegasus and then once it was sold the first time they switched it over to a lion so heat Eliza's the Pegasus those were too funny I always told mark I like the the Pegasus barely did the lion but he chose to go with the with the line you can see the bolt catch on here as well is very very aggressive so you're definitely icannot your fingers not gonna slide off it this compared to a lot of the other bolt catches that are out there for the air times it's very easily engaged so I think where does we're going to take the arm only super-sized to the range we're gonna see how it shoots you saw from the range footage this rifle was absolute pleasure issue I really do enjoy shooting an unsuppressed in fact it's one way generally shoot it the ammunition I tested was a manufactured by Black Hills it was both the 168 green otm as well as the 175 grand otm and the best group that I got with us with the can on that day was point 9 8 inches now this rifle I've had for quite some time and this started this rifle has been very well known to do a half inch groups so that particularly that day that was just me if this rifles capabilities are much better of course back when I first got admirers grace was not nearly as bad so I was a lot more steady myself so that group definitely doesn't say what the rifles capable of that says what I also capable of doing that day now I'm just gonna go over some of these statistics for this thing as well we haven't start p4 this was $3,100 it is manufactured it is available today basically the only difference you're gonna have is instead of utilizing me m14 magazine you're going to utilize the sr-25 type magazine the muzzle device on here is a 5/8 by 24 thread it comes with a a two-type compensator on it you go overall length of 41 inches with these stock completely closed with back fully open you'll add 42 inches and weighs 11 point 8 pounds now if you consider what the m14 zwey and what everything else weighs this weighs about it this is not designed as a lightweight barrel like the originally our tends run it were 6 pounds this is a full heavy barrel designed for long range so for overall performance this rifle I'm extremely happy with it again I've had it for quite some time and this definitely won't be going anywhere in my collection this rifle shoots very very well it's been always been reliable never had enough functions with it whatsoever this rifle has had four military sales you're sick you see a picture of mark westrom talking to some Slovakian soldiers showing him the ar-10 and we in a trade show in Croatia that I was with him at this rifle has also been purchased by the Brazilian police and was used to guard people during the Olympics that were held in Brazil so there has been other military contracts arm is also equipped to Canadians with the 7.62 hyper rifle as well so arm light has had its fair share of law enforcement and military contracts with the Souper SAS rifle so I really hope you guys enjoyed this video if you do please click like please subscribe and even better share thank you you

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 30,136

Rating: 4.9744291 out of 5

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Id: 8aTzjCJIBzQ

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 02 2019