I'm going to throw my hat in the ring here..... Don't buy MRAD. No one should. There's no reason. There's nothing MRAD does better than any of it's contemporaries. Even in the ASR/PSR program, I don't think it was the right call. It's a bad gun.
I've got somewhere in the ballpark of 1400 rounds on the MRAD 308 barrel and 300 on the 6.5 Creedmoor. I've had it since 2022.
What I like about it;
The finish, fit etc etc are top notch. The way the gun dismantles for cleaning is amazing. My favourite thing the MRAD does is the decocking lever on the bolt shroud so it can be removed. Peak. There's no break in period for the barrels either. I don't understand what it takes to make a barrel. All i know is that according to my log books, it can take between 100 and 200 rounds to break in a barrel. The MRAD is rock solid and stable from the second you install the barrel. There's no break in. MV doesn't change. The barres are amazing.
What I don't like about it;
LOP. The Minimum LOP is 14.1". I'm 187cm. My typical LOP is 13.25-13.75 depending on the platform. 14.1" is too long even for me. To make this comfortable, I actually have to go LONGER and prop myself up on my elbows. What I then find is because i've elevated my position, I'm now less stable, meaning my groups open up.
The Size. With the 300nm Barrel fitted, the gun is 126.9cms long and weighs 8.72kgs. The captured bolt and the poly shrouds increase the size of the receiver beyond what is required for the calibres the gun is intended to fire, which all add to a very long, very heavy, very tall rifle.
The trigger is dog shit. DOG. SHIT. For a $15k (AUD) rifle, there's no excuse for the trigger to be this shit. If you've used a trigger tech, you'll feel the MRAD trigger and want a refund. The trigger itself is shaped odd which doesn't help me be consistent. It's long. I don't know how to explain it. It just feels long. As in it's size so I feel like getting my finger consistent on the trigger is harder than normal. Then there's the break. I measured it 10 times, I got 1.2kgs minimum, 1.7kgs max, and a shotgun pattern or results between them. The trigger has a set screw that you use to adjust the trigger weight. It's useless. I have it backed out all the way and it's still 1.5kgs ish average. I can not stress this enough. This trigger is a fucking embarrassment on a rifle this expensive.
The Magazines are bad. Poly so they are cheap to make but they'll charge your first born for one, but the biggest issue with them is they bind. Slightly forward, back, left or right will result in the mag not going in. The magwell is too small or the mags are too big, I don't know. I made the mistake of taking the MRAD to a Prac Tac match where there were mag changes under time. Fucking forget it. AICS, AW, CTR, FN, Ruger, Accurate Mag, these are ALL infinitely superior magazines. Because they are metal. Metal mags are better. Poly mags are P-Mags or GTFO, but the MRAD mags literally feel like they are trying to grab the mag well mouth and the walls as you're trying to insert it.
The design. THIS IS A 2010 GUN. This is a gun that was designed around 2010 thinking. There's no built in Arca Plates like on the DTA or AXSR, so you have to go for the after market. But the clamping section for where the barrel is fitted robs you of the first 4-5 inches of space under the barrel... you know.... the balance point where you want to mount your tripod? So you have to put the arca plate out in the middle of the fore-end. Well, in 2010, when we were clipping in using a sling to offset the ass heavy nature of guns and the fact that the tripod is mounted forward of the centre of gravity, this would be on Chic. But it's 2025. We know better. So we rush out to area419 and buy an arca rail, increasing hte cost of the gun, only to find out that.... oh no.... turns out when you shoot the MRAD off the tripod, it's own weight and it's shitty mounting areas for Arca mean that the gun is going to flex. Flex where you might ask? Well only right at the weakest point where the barrel is clamped in. This is anecdotally causing issues in the field regards POA/POI, but I haven't shot it enough to really ascertain as to whether it's flex or just the fact that I can't shoot this gun well.
One other thing with the handgaurd or barrel shroud, whatever, it's under size. There's not enough clear space around the barrel to enable the use of the MLOK slots. The pic rails that come with the gun are fine, but if you add pic rails, arca plates or QD sling points, they are going to interfere with the barrel. In order to avoid this problem, you have to file down the screws on your attachments so they don't touch the barrel. $15k gun dudes.
What about eye relief for your scope? Not so much of a problem when you're running something like an ATACR that's longer than a weekend at your inlaws, but with other scopes, it's a problem. The LOP being so long pushes people back and away from the optic. The height of the gun and the fact you've traded height for reach by reaching forward to the pistol grip, means that your head and body are generally in a sub optimal position. This forces you to take a high elbows approach and really lay ON the gun. At 187cms, this is annoying, but for shorter people, you can run into a situation where in you CAN NOT attain eye relief. On the rear of the upper receiver, there's about 5-6" of empty receiver space where in the Pic Rail could have kept going, but Barrett cut it short. I'm 187cms and with the Mark 5 i'm back as far as I can possibly go, and i've only JUST got eye relief. $15k gun made in 2020.
And this brings me to the biggest issue with it. I can't shoot it. Not just me TBH, most people I put behind it struggle to get comfortable and if you can't get comfortable your groups are going to be shit, but this is a hard gun to shoot well. And why I think that is, is 2 fold. For me, I learnt to shoot on platforms that allowed me to adjust the gun properly for me to get comfortable. MRAD doesn't allow this.
So I have to learn how to shoot MRAD, vs every other gun out there where i've just picked it up, applied the fundamentals, and shot. This is frustrating for me. Instead of adjusting the gun to me, I have to adjust myself to the gun. This is old thinking. This is what the military did in the early 2000s where the armourers installed your scope and when the gun went out, that's where the scope stayed and if it wasn't right, well you can kindly fuck yourself. We aren't here anymore.
Attached is the average group i'll get from MRAD with the 308 barrel. I did the fault finding. Ammo is 185gr FGMM Factory Ammo. Stinking it up with the MRAD, thought it might be the ammo. Did a 5 shot group with AI AW, .6". Maybe it's the scope? Swapped the Mark 5 for an ATACR. Nope, same groups. Checked torque, checked setup, checked everything. 1 MOA is the best I can do with MRAD. OK, must be the shooter (which it is), but I've put over a dozen people behind it now. 2 have shot it well enough, everyone else doesn't like it, and the common outcome we see is horizontal stringing of the group, and we attribute that to people having to reach forward further than they otherwise would which changes the angle of the collarbone which in turn causes the gun to string to the left (for a right handed shooter). The consistency here was really interesting. Even with people that we would have bet would have this thing singing, didn't. The only bloke that has managed to zero effort this gun into a half MOA group, was a dude that spends most of his time shooting WW1 guns, in Particular, a Mosin. I don't know what that says really.... I guess if you've got a lot of trigger time with a Mosin, you'll feel at home with MRAD? This changes when the 6.5 Creedmoor barrel is installed. Groups universally tighten up. Therefore it HAS to be the firing position. And usually (and it's funny when it's not me), but we see the groups get WORSE as the shooting goes on as all confidence goes out the window, the position keeps changing as people try to get comfortable, and then invariably not want to shoot MRAD again.
So, to summarise, MRAD is a gun that defies the lessons learned and knowledge gained form the last 15 years of precision shooting for both prone and tripod shooting, doesn't have modern features like built in ARCA, requiring you to source your own, increasing cost, has an awkward barrel swap system made worse by the narrow MLOK channels, it's uncomfortable to get behind it and it can't be adjusted to suit a broad array of shooters, it's tall, it's long, it's heavy. It robbed itself of rail space for what appears to be no reason other than a design choice, it's folding stock is stupid, too long, too far from where it should originate, and captures the bolt which could actually be what has lead to the LOP being so long. Again, design and form over function, and for all those short comings, it's also super expensive.
God damn... I knew this gun wasn't my favourite. I started writing this to give my opinion on it because I just feel like there's better options for your money.... But having just really thought about this.... There's LITERALLY NOTHING MRAD does, that a different gun doesn't do better..... I think I hate MRAD.
When I look at guns that have served, I really like looking into why some design choices were made, and TYPICALLY it's because of who the premier shooters are at the time. M40, basic hunting rifle. Those were your experts. After 'Nam, lessons learned were applied to the M40A1, then you have the A5 (because the A3 is interim, It's not a real gun, fight me) we see an evolutionary shift. FFP scope, Mil turrets, magazine feeding, adj LOP and Cheek, muzzle brake that doubled as a suppressor adaptor, etc etc. These are SMART additions that fundamentally came from lessons learned. If you take the M40A5 when it was designed, and put it next to a PRS gun, you can see the influence. This is really really cool. And why I like my clones etc. MRAD though? I got nothing. There's nothing about it that says 2025. There's nothing about it that says lessons learned. There's nothing about the MRAD that makes it a 2025 gun. It just isn't. If this was 2010, MRAD would be right at home. But it's not 2010. DO NOT spend 2025 dollars on a 2010 gun. There's far FAR better out there for whatever it is you're doing. Unless you're that committed to the hard lard.
