.308 Battle Rifle Accuracy

Most battle rifles are designed to be rugged, reliable, and accurate in that order. Repeatable accuracy depends on controlling variables, semiauto rifles have a lot more varibles than bolt guns and are usually less accurate. Some semiauto types can be made to be more accurate, usually with lots of money and or labor. My experience with milsurp rifles and from what I read, 1" to 2" groups from a bolt gun is good, with semi's grouping about twice that size.

Like Jlmurphy said MBR's (308 Battle Rifle) are not meant to be as acurate as a bolt gun. The Rifleman's standard is 4 moa @ 100 yards, that means your shots will group within 4 inches at 100 yards, 1moa=1 inch at 100 yards. 4 moa at 100 means a 20 inch or "man sized" target can effectively be engaged at 500 yards the traditional "Riflemans 1/4 mile". Thats what an MBR is designed to do.

I have seen several men shoot the M1A w/South African Surplus at 4moa or better. I once saw a guy shoot an FAL that well, dont know what ammo he was using. I have approached 4moa with a PTR 91 (HK91 clone) shooting old/tarnished Hirtenberger surplus. The Saiga, I have not encountered I suspect that with proper instruction and practice that 4moa would be well within the capability of the Saiga.

Different guns from the same manufacturer can be partial to the same brand of ammo or different ammo. You really gotta get your gun to the range and find what it likes to eat the best.

Of the Rifles you mentioned the M1A has perhaps the best sights 1 click = 1 moa at 100 yards.....the sights are from a time when our military was taught to the Rifleman's standard. M1A National Match sights are 1/4 moa adjustable, and might be the Rifle for you to investigate if you want to approach better than 4moa performance. Though I would be quite happy with any you mentioned at 4moa.

take a look at the Appleseed program to get training to the Rifleman standard with any of the rifle's you mentioned.

http://www.rwva.org

I am helping to host a shoot in Orlando here

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?p=2812448#post2812448

HTH
Mike

It's about tradeoffs. A nice tight DPMS or Armalite .308 will run sub-MOA with the right loads, but they have match chambers and don't like crappy surplus ball.

Some service type rifles don't do much better with match ammo than they do with ball, either.

Thing of it is, if it's good enough to hit a torso to four to six hundred meters, it's good enough period, especially if you're running irons or a reflex type sight.

For real world shooting from standing, kneeling, or prone, you're not going to be getting 1" groups anyway.

Time to show off our groups??

This not your standard battle rifle, but it is based on one.

Supermatch at 200 yards, benched, iron sights;

Don't use the bench!

Don't forget to get off the bench, and learn to shoot prone, kneeling and most importantly offhand. "X MOA" is useful when sighting in, but after that learn to use a rifle properly and get off the bench. Keeps the splinters out of your butt too.

Nightcrawler
It's about tradeoffs. A nice tight DPMS or Armalite .308 will run sub-MOA with the right loads, but they have match chambers and don't like crappy surplus ball.

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the armalite 10T has a match chamber chrome moly barrel, freefloat tube, and will shoot sub moa groups with match ammo, I'm told by some owners that they shoot surplus with no feeding problems, but I don't know I've never shot one with surplus ammo,

the standard A4 models have chrome lined chamber/barrels, mines a box stock older model 10A4carbine with the chromelined lotherwhal[sp?] heavy barrel,std fiberglass A2 handguards,

I have a springfield armory G'vt model 6x40mm rangefinding scope mounted,

once it was broken in it is reliable as any battle rifle I've ever had, only more accurate, it'll shoot either match or good surplus with about the same accuracy,

just about 2" for five shot groups at 100yards, and just over an 1" for three shot groups,

even with the india 762x51 surplus crap it'll do 3" five shot groups,

I've shot 12" plates at 500 yards shooting SA 147gr and aussie 144gr surplus with it, the range finder is dead on out to 300 yards, but velocity begins to fall off enough that at 500 yards I have to put the 700yard crosshair at the top of the target to hit center,


I've only shot one of DPMS panther rifles, it had a heavy SS barrel and with the ammo the guy had it was very accurate (sub moa), but had feeding difficulties due to the plastic mag, DPMS is selling 20 rnd steel mags for its rifles now,

price wise the DPMS is several hundred less than the armilite, I've seen the bullbarreled panthers listed online for approx. $850, most of the A4 armilites run $1100+ and the T models going $1700+,

mag prices are the high for both, 10rnd armilites run $25 and 20rnds run $40, the DPMS 20rnds are $40+ also,

what both got going for them is ease of mounting an optic, drop in aftermarket FCGs and parts availability.

Since most .308 "battle rifles" on the commericial market are based on parts and/or designs from military suppliers, it might be easiest to use the acceptance standards for these rifles as supplied to the original users to get a relative comparison of the capabilities of their AS-ISSUED configurations.

For example, acceptance standards for the M1 Garand and M14 were about 4" groups when firing US military ball ammo. (The average rifle did about 50% better than this, but the numbers I quote are the accept/reject standards applied by the original customer.)

The FN-FAL had, IIRC, similar standards, but tended to perform, on average, slightly worse than the US rifles against the similar standard.

I don't know what the H&K G3 had for standards, so what could have been expected "out of the box" is unknown to me.

Of course, ALL of these rifles could be improved by some TLC, hand fitting and hand selecting of parts, and feeding of something more consistent than ball ammo.

One major consideration is the use of the sling. If you have a sling that is attached to the barrel, then slinging up tight will drastically affect your point of impact. If you don't use a sling, you lose the bracing effect it provides, and your accuracy suffers accordingly.

That's one of the reasons the M1A and M1 have been so popular for long-distance shooting, but an AR10 with a freefloated handguard would enjoy the same freedom from POI change with a sling.

1. AR10 (Some versions like the DPMS 24" SS model have accuracy that rivals most bolt guns.

2. HK G3 and it's clones ( I have a PTR91 that will consistently do 2MOA with surplus ball, scoped. Had a POS Century Cetme that was similar and a friend who is a much better rifleman than me that could do 1 inch with it.)

3. M14/M1A, (Spend some money Accurizing it and it will compete with any of them)

4. FAL, (I think it brings up the rear among these four top varients in accuracy, but as an OVERALL battlerifle this beauty is tough to beat.)

BTW The HK and clones due to their design could be right up there with the AR10 with trigger work, the factory trigger is horrible.

I dunno if you can call the AR10 a true 'battle rifle' since it's never served. But what I can tell you is that my bone-stock Armalite AR10 would routinely keep 1.5" five-shot 100 yard groups with several brands of factory ammo and handloads. That same rifle would print 1" or less groups with that same ammo once I installed a free-floating forearm and Jard trigger in place of the stock bits.

That's accurate enough to be interesting to me.

While I don't have any pics my M1A will do a 1 1/2"-2" at 100 yrds from a solid rest.

rbernie
Senior Member
I dunno if you can call the AR10 a true 'battle rifle' since it's never served.

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it was the standard issue infantry rifle of the portuguese army, and is being currently used in limited numbers by the US army in iraq and afganistan,

look here in the AR10 section forum, and you can see the pics http://www.ar15.com

M1A National Match sights are 1/4 moa adjustable

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The NM sight is actually 1/2MoA.

I understand that the Bushmaster A3 in .308 is a very accurate semi-automatic rifle.

1.5 to 2.0 inch groups at 100yrd. with my M1 rebarreled in .308 using portug.
ball ammo.

I don't know what to tell you other than my M1A Loaded, and my SOCOM both will group sub 2 inches with iron sights at 100 meters all day long. When I mount a scope on either one, the groups shrink. I shoot Portuguese or SA mil surp ammo.

My JLD PTR-91 will consistently shoot MOA with a 3-9x scope, and Aussie surplus. It's not as accurate with any other surplus, but I believe it would only do better with some quuality ammo. It shot this way from the box, I did learn to run it a little heavy on the oil the first few times out. The new JLD does not like a dry-ish mechanism! My only other experience is 30 odds years past with an M-14, but tackdriving was not a priority to me with it...
SatCong

An MBR with surplus ball ammo will generally shoot 4MOA out to 500 yards or so.
Since most people can't shoot even that well, go buy one and shoot it and solve the loose nut behind the trigger problem first.
Read MKH100's post, I agree with everything he said.