I have to admit, I have a bit of a crush on AAC. They’re great people that make some innovative firearms, ammunition and silencers including the .300 AAC Blackout round. And they’ve come up with a fantastic way to tie it all together in a personal defense weapon called the Honey Badger. And thanks to a trip I took a few months ago to AAC’s HQ Kevin told me what it’s all about and I even got to see it before the rest of the world.
The .300 BLK cartridge was developed as one step forward towards the goal of replacing the MP5-SD with a more accurate and more powerful firearm for our troops and law enforcement officers. As John Hollister said many times when we were out on the range, when officers go in for a high risk warrant they can either take the quiet yet underpowered MP5-SD or the noisy and gigantic AR-15. AAC wanted to make something that had the ease of use of an AR-15 but the portability of a MP5, that could go from subsonic rounds to supersonic rounds with the change of a magazine. The .300 BLK cartridge gave them the round, but the Honey Badger is the final design.
The stock is based on the H&K sliding stock design but adapted for the AR-15 platform and uses a custom designed upper receiver that has slots built in for the rails to slide along. The receiver and stock were both designed by AAC’s R&D gurus at the request of a military organization that shall not be named.
The barrel is only about 6 inches in length and affixes to a .30 cal silencer that is partially hidden under the handguards. Despite the short barrel the weapon exceeds the accuracy of an MP5-SD.
The last time I saw this gun (or at least its parts) it was fresh off the rapid prototyping machine. The finished product looks fantastic, and I have no doubts that we’ll see something similar start to replace the aging MP5-SD.
The gun is beautiful and innovative, but the “Honey Badger”? Any stories behind the name choice? That sounds more like a character from Dora The Illegal Immigrant… errr.. Explorer….
Well, I stand corrected. Haha. Vicious little bastards aren’t they?
Honey badger don’t care.
Somewhat NSFW
+1 EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING OF!
Marketing guy for this company knows his stuff.
Oh hey, 1950 called. They said they want their racism back.
if 1950 called, i’m sure they’d be more worried with runaway national debt that a little children’s cartoon humor…
just sayin…
Racism? I’ll just post Ralphie May’s kid’s quote… tard tard tard tard tard tard tard tard tard tard tard tard…
How much energy are they getting out of that with a 6″ barrel and a subsonic round? What is the weight of the bullet they are using?
220gr round traveling just north of 1,000 fps for .300 BLK compared to a 147gr round at just under 990 for MP5-SD. No, the MP5-SD doesn’t use special subsonic ammo, it takes standard supersonic rounds and bleeds off enough gas to make them subsonic.
Huh, I didnt know that about the MP5-SD, that is a nifty feature.
There are supersonic as well as subsonic rounds, and whatever you load in the mag is what you get out of the barrel. The gun does not make supers into subs.
The power of intertube memes.
The .300 BLK does look cool, but the double $200 tax stamp just kills the whole thing for me. I will stick with a 16″ noisy 6.8 SPC AR15 as my alternate caliber. Farther reach, perfect whitetail gun, and compact enough for a truck / tractor gun.
I’m afraid you’re not the target consumer population.
By using an obscure round, and the associated costs, I doubt any owner would care that much about an extra $400 in taxes. MidwayUSA only has two different types of ammo, and they are priced at $1.10 and $1.75 per round.
The day you can buy a HB at wally world is the day we have won. SBRs are a poor idea without a suppressor. I agree with Ronaldo Ignacio above, a minimum legal length 6.8 SPC is close to ideal in the AR platform for a general purpose rifle.
According to legend, the honey badger is a vicious creature who launches its attack directly at a man’s privates. Ouch. “The Honey Badger” was also the title of a book penned by Robert Roark, an action-adventure writer, hunter and everyman’s Hemingway. Other titles include “Something of Value” and “Uhuru.” Roark was a best-selling writer in his day but is neglected now. The three books are all must-reads and very evocative of a bygone era.
Does it defeat body armor? Plates?
The MP5 is aging because of the availability of body armor. If the .300BLK can defeat body armor, then it should win some contracts.
The answer is probably for level 3, almost certainly for levels 1/2, and probably not for level 4.
Other things I have seen on .300 blk imply that it was designed to match or exceed the performance of an AK (presumably full size) firing 7.62×39, and this out of a 9 inch (iirc) barrel. Given that the honey badger has a 6-inch barrel, it is likely it maintains at least some of it’s terminal performance…
I read somewhere (possibly here) that the subsonic rounds might have trouble with lvl 3 armor, but you can switch right to the full power rounds which will defeat lvl 3. I googled to no avail.
I’d be in heaven if this drool-inducing stock and integral fore-end became standard on all ARs. A bit too late to retrofit to mine, but I wouldn’t mine if my next one looked like that.
Foreend? Yes. Stock? No.
“Despite the short barrel the weapon exceeds the accuracy of an MP5-SD.” Why would the barrel length hamper accuracy? Wouldn’t a short, rigid barrel be just as accurate, if not more so, than a flexible 20″ tube?
Generally I don’t learn post on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very pressured me to check out and do it! Your writing taste has been surprised me. Thanks, quite nice article.
“Despite the short barrel the weapon exceeds the accuracy of an MP5-SD”
Barrel length has little to nothing to do with accuracy. In fact, shorter barrels are MORE accurate due to an increase in l vs w (stiffness)