If you are going to shoot a lot of 50 from bolt guns, the only reason to NOT suppress it with an Ultra 50 RR (or another can that has similar overall sound & recoil performance... if any exist??) is for concerns of cost, or weapon overall length. The difference in shootability is dramatic, like a 100x difference in how many rounds you can shoot in a day and still retain good trigger presses. We are spotting our own hits at any distance (like including sub 300 yards) and an average taken from a variety of shooters the reticle movement off the POA is typically in the 1-5 mils range (depending on shooter, position, etc, etc).
Now, as far as why our demo gun runs short barrels, it's because we used the same AX ELR rifle with a series of barrels that we burned through for endurance testing, IE, worst case heat cycle with shorter-than-final-rating barrel length. While doing that we found out that at anything shorter than true ELR distances it didn't really make a big difference in ability to get hits, and obviously the rifle was a lot easier to cart around, which we do a lot with demo guns.
That said, a lot of departments, etc, have 50's for vehicle interdiction at what we (as SH forum members) consider close or even point blank distances. There is no need for long barrels in this application. All those cool guy photos of guys shooting 50's at boats (or specifically boat engines) from helicopters are at pretty close range -- and they are running short barrels on those guns already.
