Marines are free to use the PMAG at last.
In welcome news for many a Marine (and Magpul employee), the Marine Corps has finally approved the high-performing PMAG magazine for use on the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, as well as the M16A4 and M4 carbines.
As readers of this blog are well aware, the magazine is one of the best on the market and has long been used by special operations forces and soldiers.
The Corps banned the product in 2012 because of compatibility issues with the first-generation version of the magazine and the IAR.
The announcement to reverse this decision leaked out Monday. But it's important to understand why -- and as my colleague Matthew Cox explains over at Military.com -- the reason is because the M27 with its existing magazine ran into reliability problems with the Army's newer M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round.
To be clear, the decision was to ensure that some Marines receiving the M855A1 who are headed downrange wouldn't face those reliability issues.
As Cox reports:
"The reason they did that is because when Marines are deploying forward, they are sometimes receiving M855A1, and we need to ensure they have the ability to shoot that round," Chris Woodburn, deputy branch chief for the Marine Corps' Maneuver Branch that deals with requirements, told Military.com in a Dec. 20 telephone interview."In terms of the cause analysis and failure analysis, that has not been done, but what we do know is that the PMAG works," he said.
Officials at Magpul Industries Corp. were excited, to say the least.
"In light of the results from an enormous body of reliability and durability testing and 4 years of combat use, today it was announced that the PMAG 30 AR/M4 GEN M3 Window, in Black and Medium Coyote Tan (MCT), would be the official magazine of the entire United States Marine Corp," the company said on its social media accounts on Monday.
