After retiring from the Marine Corps in 2004, I attended the DDM Course (Designated Defensive Marksman\ Sniper course) when I worked for Blackwater. The 7.62 semi-auto rifle that was used during the course was the DPMS Panther. There were a lot of problems with that rifle. I personally saw 4 different rifles that when you took the upper receiver off the lower and inspected where the bolt moved through the upper receiver, there was an "extreme gauge" where the bolt cam pin was eating into the upper receiver. Tolerances were bad to say the least. Unless DPMS has come full circle on quality control, I would certainly be very careful on what you purchase.
DPMS no longer exists as a company. It's a name only, retained by the Freedom Group, with some of the DPMS operating capacity retained, combined with Remington and the shell name of Bushmaster, with the addition of purchasing the largest machine shop that makes AR15 receiver sets from forgings, namely LAR Mfg.
I also had issues with my DPMS LR-308, which required a new extractor and polishing of the very tight chamber.
This GII should really bear the Freedom Group logo, but it makes more sense from a marketing perspective to use recognized name brands, rather than try to introduce a new company name, in addition to a new rifle. I have come to the conclusion that the Randy Luth era DPMS guns were rack-grade vismods, capable of looking like an AR15, or vaguely looking like an SR25, but are nothing of the sort when you find out what each and every component is. For rack-grade guns, many of them had highly accurate barrels, but other than that, I wouldn't go near one.
The GII is a different animal entirely, designed by experienced and formally-trained engineers, as best as I can ascertain. The 1990's-2011 DPMS/Panther Arms could never have thought up and executed something like this.
Whereas the older LR-308 and AP4 line of blasters were extruded receivers of 6000-series aluminum, with PTFE coatings, the GII is 7075 T6 aluminum with hard anodizing, 4150 CMV chrome-lined barrels in the AP4 and MOE models, an in-house forged and finish-machined bolt carrier, radial lugged bolt and extension, and a new gas key design that I feel is superior to any of the existing carrier key arrangements from a manufacturing and long-term reliability standpoint. On top of that, they actually torture-tested this system, kept the lid on it, and had product shipped to dealers before SHOT this year.
I have become the type of guy that simply can't bring myself to buy off-the-shelf guns anymore, as it's a trust issue, and I don't trust anybody but custom shops to get it right, with very few exceptions, and then I still verify. This is the first gun in a long time that I have actually considered snagging if I came across one, but I would pull the barrel anyway and replace it with a custom .260 Rem pipe, get the firing pin hole bushed, and have the pin turned down to fit in the new hole, in addition to some other tweaks to the bolt (lapping, de-edging, radius the ejector face, truing and polishing the bolt face...).
They could really kill the market even more if they shipped kits with everything but the barrel and furniture, to include the unique barrel extension, and charge maybe $100 less than a complete AP4 model, since they are already providing barrel nut dimensions to handguard manufacturers. Let those of us who are going to build anyway pay more than full price for equivalent components, let us handle the completion with the barrel work, and make even better margins with no liability for Freedom Group.
Lawyers win, board room wins, discerning customers win, while they still crank out the production models, which will be back-ordered if they aren't already.
