Note: We have updated story from earlier in the week.
I was finally able to get my hands on Surefire’s new High Capacity Magazines yesterday at the Pre-SHOT Show Aimpoint military shoot. I wanted to see how they worked and what the production fit and finish would look like. They seem to be well conceived and produced. They are available in 60 round and 100 round sizes. You will notice that once you get about 20 rounds into the magazine you can begin to feel the spring tighten up as the rounds are separated. Additionally, the design is quite reminiscent of a US GI mag in that it has a removable base plate for maintenance and cleaning. Also, ATS Tactical is working on a magazine pouch for them but Surefire expects many companies to have their versions of pouches available once these begin to proliferate.
Surefire High Capacity Magazines
Finally, despite numerous articles stating that the new magazines would be a perfect match for the USMC’s new M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle manufactured by H&K, they aren’t. As in most things H&K the engineers overdid it and came up with a better way to build a mousetrap. In this instance, the mag well has a different cant to it and the portion of the magazine that flares to accommodate the increased capacity is too high to seat in a 416-style mag well. This is the same reason you have to use Magpul’s EMAG rather than the PMAG.
Added: Much like the PMAG, the HCM will fit in some 416s. In fact, one of our readers brought to our attention that a 416 was used in a SureFire produced promotional video (see below). Unfortunately, the HCM currently does not work with ALL 416s and their derivatives so, it would not be in anyone’s best interest to pair them with the M27 at this time since there is no way to tell which guns will accept which magazines. H&K reps informed me that they will be doing some testing with the HCMs in the coming weeks. SureFire is going to work through this issue.
Overall, the new magazines will definitely have a place although anti-gunners are taking advantage of the recent tragedy in Arizona to once again introduce legislation to ban high capacity magazines. Unfortunately, we went down this path once before and it hurt the commercial base to the point that issue 15 round magazines for the M9 Beretta were junk because there was no profit-based incentive to produce quality magazines.
If you are at SHOT Show see them at booth #13968 or visit www.surefire.com
