.224 Valkyrie? Future competitor to the 6.5 Grendel?

[BluntForceTrauma]

It might well be, but I consider this cartridge to be still in the Marketing Hype Phase. Need about a year for a consensus on real-world performance.

For pure long-range ballistics within the confines of the standard AR double-stack magazine and mag well, we've already had the 6mmAR, for example.

6.5 Grendel has its place doing many things very well, without needing to absolutely specialize in any one thing. It's like the F/A-18 Hornet. Damn good multi-role weapon.

We've got 85-grain varmint bullets for prairie dogs; 140-grain bullets for moose (about the same as traditional 6.5 Swedish). And all the other bullets and applications in-between. If I could have only ONE gun. . . .

I challenge Federal's lofty claims that 224 Valkyrie is the best MSR cartridge EVER. If the AK47 with a 123-grain bullet was good enough to serve the world's militaries for — what, 70 years? — the 6.5 Grendel with a 123-grain sure as hell is good enough. And that's without hardly trying to develop specialized projectiles. So 6.5 Grendel is still the best MSR cartridge EVER. Of this I have no doubt.

Plus, we've got cheap Wolf steel-case by the pallet-load.

Having said that, 224 Valkyrie still has my seal of approval, for all the reasons I've mentioned earlier in this thread. Probably should have been based on the Grendel case for even better performance, but it's a solid design in its own right. Put it this way: It's what the 6.8 SPC should have been.