looking forward to Beretta following FN's lead, showing off a 5.56 pistol version of the ARX for 7 years, & releasing it after the market has moved on.

Yikes. And I thought my 8.3 5.56 was uselessly short.

It might be a fun novelty at $2500. But screw 4 grand for a pistol. I’d be looking at SIG 553s at that point.

I guarantee this will do 87 percent of what that thing will do and at half the price too.

4 grand? MSRP is $3699, they’ll be $2999-3200 all day long.

Not exactly a bargain for what you’re getting.

That sight must zero the rifle itself without firing a shot.

It's sort of like when the ACR came out and was $3000+ but eventually settled to around $1600; only FN is going backwards.

Maybe not to you but for me the ability to go from 5.56 to 300blk with just a couple clicks of a torque wrench for $3k(+probably $1k for the other barrel) seems like a deal when the alternative is buy a second whole rifle(KAC SR-30 $$$$) or the LMT MARS platform for about the same price as the SCAR.

I don’t see the barrel for these going for  less than $1k like my SCAR-16 SBR barrel. EDIT: changed this response because you’re well aware of pricing. Maybe it’ll cost even more because these are new and exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, I like FN products but as I’ve stated repeatedly, what we get as consumers doesn’t justify the FN markup. It’s crazy expensive for guns that have just as many stamped steel and MIM internals as any other brand.

Yup, SCAR barrels are stupid expensive and it's the reason I personally have never SBR'ed my SCAR-16.

7.5 inch barrel 5.56?

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I know right. I bet the bullets just dribble out of the muzzle.

Europeans love short barrels, HK and Sig have made shorties for a long time and the FN SC has been around the block. Just messing around with Applied Balistics it looks like the bonded bullets I already use will still work as advertised from the 7.5” to any distance I’d want to use an SBR for.

Half dozen of them already on gunbroker. https://www.gunbroker.com/All/search?Keywords=Scar%2015p&Sort=13 Only $1000 over MSRP, better deal than a new car.

Edit: the one with a buy it now of $4299 is gone

Can't wait to see a Rocke Guns deployment kit price for this

5.56 LMTs have not been at SCAR pricing for a while. They can be found at $2K or less now, unless you want something fancy like an Estonia reference rifle. LMT barrels are also half the price of FN SCAR barrels.

Looks like you’re right. I see Mars-L 16” 5.56 going for $22-2300, I figured they would’ve kept pace with the large frame price increases. The short 300blk barrels seem to be oos everywhere still.

Vast majority of people aren’t swapping barrels on a gun to change caliber.  It’s a PITA requiring a second optic or a re-zero plus any other ancillary accessories like LAMs.  You also have to factor in carrying a second bolt and possibly some other small parts unless you don’t care about differing wear patterns.  

On top of all this, you have to consider what that capability (swapping from 5.56 to .300BLK) in the field actually does for you?  Best I can come up with is a longer 5.56 barrel with a magnified optic for distance shooting and then a shorter .300BLK barrel and suitable optic for close range stuff, which definitely means two optics and other ancillary equipment, plus two different mags and ammo (with all the risks associated with storing 5.56 and .300BLK ammo intermingled with one another).

It sounds good on paper, but in practice I’ve come to realize it’s way easier to have a secondary upper or rifle.  Two MCX upper conversion kits would provide the same thing with the same features (piston, simple adjustable gas block, folding stock/brace, etc) for right around $3000 plus the cost of some stripped lowers and LPKs.  Plus all the major components are readily available on the commercial market at reasonable prices and you can shoot it suppressed to your heart’s content.

I think this is one of the reasons people just stuck with the AR over the ACR, ARX, SCAR, etc... aside from cost and the actual availability of conversion kits.

Having an upper that's already sighted and ready to go makes more sense even if it is a little bit more bulky. Especially when most of the modular guns have serialized uppers and an AR upper can be mail ordered without an FFL.

Quick change barrels are pretty common in precision bolt guns where barrel life is much worse and optics much more expensive. I like the feature on my SCAR 20 and think it’ll be handy on the 15P also. Everything is a compromise but not having to buy and store a spare upper and optic(or completely rifle) is worth the small inconvenience of having two different zeros. The barrels return to zero repeatedly so you only have to re-zero once, then it’s just a matter of remembering the difference.

I don’t have any reason to swap barrels “in the field” and the big advantage is the price difference between 5.56 and 300blk. I can shoot 5.56 at the range and then swap to 300blk for HD or “truck gun” duty. I don’t see the point in a magnified optic on a micro carbine, a rds will work just fine for both, same with an extra bolt, seems unnecessary. I can still suppress to my hearts content because I don’t give a shit about muh warranty.

This

It’s understandable on a precision bolt gun (or semi-auto) for the reasons you laid out.  I’ll also add that prior to the recent explosion in semi custom actions and pre fit barrels, a barrel swap was for the most part a “gunsmith required” affair.  “Quick change” barrel systems make a ton of sense when that is the reality.

On a shorter gun meant for short ranges with something like an RDS, you’d better plan on rezeroing every time.  Do a test on an RDS next time you get a chance.  The adjustments are in no way as repeatable as a quality precision optic (they’re not horrible, but nothing I’d trust after a half dozen series of back and forth), because they really don’t need to be.  Same for most IR LAMs I’ve used.  Counting clicks and swapping between two zeros without live confirmation fire is a recipe for missing what you’re shooting at.

If I’m doing more of an admin type barrel swap in the comfort of my own garage, I don’t need a “quick change” system.  A quick change systems main selling point is an easy swap in a location where I don’t have the benefit of a workbench and all my tools (the field).

Believe me, I’ve tried similar systems and they’re more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth and frankly I never ended up using the capability once I looked at everything that was involved with it (not speaking about a precision rifle, as I have no experience there).  

Outside of some very specific niche areas, an entire separate upper receiver group or rifle is simply easier, for not much more money, if any extra at all.  That may not be the case with the SCAR specifically, but there are plenty of other comparable platforms that don’t suffer from retarded pricing and unobtanium components.  There is the extra cost of a secondary optic too, but I’d argue you’d be better off with a secondary optic even when swapping barrels to ensure you retain zero, and if we’re being frank, it shouldn’t be too much of a leap for someone spending $4k on a rifle and extra barrel.  People on a budget aren’t buying this stuff.

Lastly, you may not care about warranties, but many people do on a $3k+ gun, especially when components are impossible to source.  I have direct knowledge of two cracked carriers in two 17s from suppressor usage that FN denied the warranty claim on.  Both rifles had under 1k rounds through the them.  Yeah, I’m going to be concerned about a severe durability/longevity issue when using the gun with an extremely common accessory.

$3700?  Lol

I love my 8.3" 5.56 blaster. Don't be scared

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That's swell and all, but you can build an AR pistol (with parts you can actually get replacements for if it did break), add an optic, light, and whatever other accessories, and still come out far ahead monetarily while firing the same cartridge.

ETA: or, build a pistol in .300blk, build a carbine URG and swap to a stock when you switch uppers...put an optic on each upper, a light to swap between them, and still afford a case or two of ammo.

The ability to change barrels in the field is a detriment as it means proprietary parts. Swapping uppers is a much better way to go if you truly need that capability.  Personally, screw all that, I'll take two separate weapons, please.

He FN

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I'm a SCAR fanboy. Currently have two 16s and a 17. But God damn FN is getting retarded. The price increase on the parts really twists the knife in your side. Thankfully I had buying small parts here and there for the last few years but it's now just ridiculous. They could sell so many more if they just came back down to reality.

Like a lot of firearms manufacturers who make a large portion of their money on sweet, sweet government contracts, the commercial civilian market is a sideshow to make a few bucks, nothing more.  Commercial demand will never drive product decisions for FN.

There are a few others who operate under this principle as well.

I'm not seeing it

LMT MRP-L LM8 AR-15 Upper Receiver Assembly - 7.25" $549.99
LMT MRP 5.56 NATO Chrome Lined AR-15 Barrel - 10.5"  $374.99
Seekins Precision Stainless Match Grade 300 Blackout AR-15 Barrel - 10.5" $229.99

LMT MRP Barrel Conversion Your Price: $145.00

They probably just sell based off of excess capacity on their lines not going to current contracts. Then the commercial BD guys just YOLO the prices to see what kind of performance bonuses they can get.

I knew the barrels were cheaper but I thought the price of the rifle was closer to the SCAR, I didn’t realize you could get a MARS-L for a bit over $2k. I thought their prices were tracking with the MARS-H. I remember looking at the MRP a few years back and it was just under $2k while a MWS was ~$2500.

To each their own. If your builds suck I don't know what to tell you...buy better parts?

You should educate yourself on firearms laws if you own them. Here is a link you should read, straight from the FedBoisRUs gay bar: AR pistol to rifle

If his concern is features, an MCX upper on an AR lower does everything a SCAR 15 or 16 can do (and more), at a significantly lower cost, with a wide variety of readily available components.  This allows for greater customizability at much more sane prices.  Plus no issues with a suppressor destroying internal components.

The SCAR 16 (and now 15) was a decent (albeit expensive) option a decade ago.  It has since been surpassed by other platforms that can do the same things just as well, or better.  The only thing it has left is “cool” factor (which I will admit is a sales point all of its own, every few months I contemplate picking up a 16 and going the F1 route with a 10.5” barrel).

The 17 and 20 still kind of sit in a class of their own, but it’s only a matter of time before viable alternatives are available for them as well.

All builds suck regardless of the quality of parts used, no matter what it will always be a one off Frankengun. That’s an advantage of buying from a large manufacturer that caters to institutional customers. Their products have a ton of R&D and T&E behind them, something a home built gun can never replicate.

Didn’t know you could make a rifle into a pistol and go back and forth, seems to make too much sense for the FATF. I thought it was once a rifle always a rifle.




An MCX upper on an AR lower is gross. The new Spear LT seems kinda cool but a quick look on Gunbroker shows they are all $2700+ so there’s no significantly lower cost there.

Again I’m not worried about a suppressor destroying internal parts. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Scars out there with Surefire cans and no issues.

“Gross” is a great GD quip, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really mean anything functionally.  If you want to talk about “cool” factor (which I already stated still belongs to the SCAR), great, but it doesn’t mean the SCAR is offering any material benefit to you outside of that category.  The MCX/AR lower combo obviously works well enough that some have been seen in use with JSOC elements, which makes sense when you look at the internal mechanics of both components.

You could go the complete MCX rifle route if it really bothered you, but it’s still going to be cheaper than most SCARs (even if only by a little bit), and all the components to modify/repair it (barrels, handguards, etc) will be significantly cheaper, more readily available, and of a wider variety, so you’re still coming out ahead.  The complete rifle price will likely drop a bit as time goes on as well, the SPEAR LT was just released, so it’s suffering from high demand and low supply driving up the price, which should level out as Sig ramps up production.

As for the suppressor, that’s great if you have an SF SOCOM can, which tend to be on the lower side for back pressure.  A lot of people have higher back pressure cans, though, so once again versatility still goes to the MCX.  As I posted previously, I can cite a handful of first hand accounts of people’s SCAR carriers getting peened to death and cracking when used with higher back pressure cans, one of them with an aftermarket reduced gas jet.

lol at there being “hundreds of thousands” of SCARs in use anywhere with SF cans.  They’ve seen limited adoption within the US SOF community with most of those being the “H” variant, and about the same abroad.  A lot of those are seen with FN manufactured cans, so you can’t count those.  There’s no way they’ve sold enough on the commercial market to get anywhere close to “hundreds of thousands,” especially combined with an SF can.

I'll take "what is a subcontractor" for $500, Alex. Do you suppose the manufacturers of quality parts throw the specs out the window if the part isn't going to be assembled into a complete rifle? Are they running two separate production lines for the same parts?

Buy quality parts, assemble them properly. The people on the assembly line aren't sprinkling them with magic fairy dust and lubing them with unicorn jizz. Building rifles isn't rocket science.