The Advanced Tactical rifle from Kimber is ready to blow away all the myths and misconceptions that made the push-fed rifle the king of the battlefield.
By Mike Nischalke
It always seems to come back to the "Ford or Chevy" debate. Which is better? The Model 70 or the Model 700? Controlled-round feed or push feed? And the debates go on.
In terms of tactical rifles, the M70 found a little niche in the military sniping trades in the 1950s, but in 1966, the Marine Corps went with the Model 700 as it's official tool for clandestine precision marksmanship. The Marines designated the new rifle as the M40. Since then, the Army followed suit, replacing its accurized M14 (XM21) with a 700 called the M24, and it's been pretty much nothing but Chevys on the battlefield, or so goes the analogy. Even an overwhelming majority of the law enforcement community has adopted push-feed variants as its standard tactical rifle.
Granted, it's gained a few pounds, but 41 years and numerous overhauls later, the push-feed Model 700-based Marine sniper rifle still reigns supreme. The moniker of the latest version is the M40A3, and it boasts a McMillan A5 stock and a detachable box magazine.
Desert tan Storm Hardigg case,manual (optional Advanced Tactical accessories kit: Leupold 3.5-10X 40mm LR/T M2 TMR IR Dark Earth scope,heavy tactical rings in Dark Earth KimPro II, torque wrench, Versa-Pod bipod, sling with quick-release swivels, cleaning kit and tactical log book; MSRP: $2,575)
Price:
$2,497
Several months prior to the InterMedia Spring Roundtable, Kimber's Dwight Van Brunt promised me the very first sample of a brand-new custom .308 Win. rifle off the company's production line, the Advanced Tactical. When the Roundtable finally came around and that beauty was handed to me, my anticipation had turned into pure giddiness and excitement, reminiscent of the day my dad threw his then-14-year-old son a set of keys to a shiny black '77 Pontiac Trans Am, telling me, "Your car's out front."
Forget Fords and Chevys, we're talking 400 cubic inches of pure Pontiac muscle now.
At the Roundtable, just as back then when Chevys were tops in my mind, I had my engrained predilections about how things should be. I admit, years of brainwashing ... errr, umm ... experience have taught me that it's not a tactical rifle without push feed and a detachable box. Who am I to kid, though? While a fair portion of my time in the Marine Corps was spent with scout/snipers, I was holding a Nikon F3, not an M40A2 (the A2 was the A3's predecessor).
So I took the Advanced Tactical in hand with an open mind. Later, I'd be happy I did because this new Kimber wiped away all of my predispositions about tactical rifles.
Creating A Long-Range Warrior
The Advanced Tactical started in early 2006 as a sort of side project of Kimber engineers. Early prototypes based on the Model 84 started showing up at military and police expos about a year ago, and the law enforcement community was very receptive of the archetype rifles.
Wanting to use a slightly heavier barrel profile, engineers redesigned the rifle to utilize the thicker-walled Model 8400 receiver.
The receiver, which measures 1.355 inches in diameter, is mated to a 24-inch heavy barrel. Tapering from 1.22 inches at the receiver to 0.75 inch at the muzzle, each cold-rolled 4140-steel barrel is made and button-rifled in-house, being held to half the SAAMI minimum tolerance (plus 0.001 inch, rather than plus 0.002 of the SAAMI numbers). Each barrel is stress relieved and is given a step-down crown 0.08-inch deep with an 11-degree chamfer down to the bore.
Inside the receiver is where the real custom nature of the rifle takes shape. Most of the rifle parts are the same as those found in standard 8400 rifles, but unlike the regular production rifles, each piece on the Advanced Tactical is handfitted by a custom gunsmith at the Kimber factory. A bolt is paired to the receiver, and the dual opposed lugs are handlapped. The boltface is trued to the axis of the bore, and then the ways inside the receiver are smoothed. The chamber is finished, once again, by hand to minimum headspace dimensions.
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