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.