Not sure who made that purchasing decision, but really question why they chose LMOS bolt carriers. I love mine on my competition gun, and they're great to minimize recoil, but most "duty" type guns are running heavy on the gas with full-mass bolt carriers to ensure reliability. Alternatively, the use of the adjustable gas blocks and an H2 or H3 buffer (preferably Geissele) would also help slow down the bolt carrier speed and reduce recoil.
There are also other ways to mitigate the gas blowback from suppressor use. This isn't a knock on JP, just need to understand the limitations for the application of the features they offer.
I had the same conversation. The decision was made by a couple guys who wanted to Gucci out the gun, and didn’t want to include other guys into the decision about what actually went into the rifles. They also refused to delay the order one month so that we could be the first agency to run JP’s new MLOK handguard, so we still have their old tube handguards with their proprietary attachment system. Which means running picatinny attachments.
How did they run (once tuned) compared to other 11.5"s that your department has tried?
For agency-wide patrol rifles, we got a massive deal on contract overrun Sig Sauer 516 11.5” SBRs that Sig cut us, along with optics. We have a relationship with Sig, so that was always going to be the new patrol rifle and at first it was supposed to be the MCX until the deal on the 516’s came around. Suppressed those as well and we’ve really had no problems with them. Granted, the patrol rifles don’t see nearly as much use as the SWAT rifles. We’ve been running the Colt 6940 for a while on patrol, and 6942 11.5” for SWAT until SWAT shot out their rifles. The Colts were not great. We tested some MCX’s when we were looking at agency-wide patrol rifles instead of individually-certified rifle operators, and the MCX for the most part was pretty solid.
At my last agency, we tested a lot of rifles and the winner wound up being the HK416D 10.5”. I hate HK for a lot of reasons, but the HK416 runs when it’s supposed to run.
Most problematic rifle has always been DPMS. They’re pure garbage, but since they were a MN brand, we had a lot of agencies that kept picking them up because they didn’t know any better and harkened back to the old days of the rule of ABCD (Armalite, Bushmaster, Colt, DPMS) for AR15s, which we know stopped being relevant in about 2005. As an armorer, I’ve had to help problem solve with these rifles, and the irony is that it’s relatively easy to diagnose DPMS problems because they all have the same problems (usually related to poor QC).
SCAR 16 CQC was cool. It ran well. It’s also a novelty and financial money pit.
And then I’ve tested various other custom ARs, including years ago when my agency played with a 7.5” PDW concept for us to use in undercover/drug task force operations. A 7.5” rifle in 5.56 is a gong show, to say the least. This was when 6.8SPC had come onto the scene, but well before .300BLK, so has .300BLK been out at that time, we’d have a couple of those.
Hence the problem with jp rifles with adjustable gas blocks and low mass carriers. Your average person can barely find the controls on a rifle, let alone get a gas block adjusted properly.
To call these guns gun game guns is pure ignorance. To say giving these rifles to 1000 infrantrymen is too big of a task, and it will
require training and checking, possibly so.
I’ve put tens of thousands of rounds though Lmt rifles very few issues I’ve put thousands of rounds through jp rifles no issues either
JP makes good guns, and we like that they’re made a couple miles away. You can see the quality in them. I would have no issues running it for A duty rifle, and many agencies here in MN do. The key is getting them outfitted properly, which tends to be a bit more problematic when you outfit the gun like a game gun and not a duty gun. Adjustable yes, LMOS no. It’s only a game gun if you outfit it like a game gun.
The JP15 is duty capable. I would never run a LRP07 as a battle rifle, but there are in fact some being run overseas as SASRs.