Sneak Preview: Hornady 75 grain 5.56 NATO Superformance

[Molon]

Hornady 223 Remington 75 grain Superformance





The new 223 Remington version of the 75 grain Superformance ammunition is loaded with the Hornady 75 grain BTHP bullet; the “T1”. This bullet does not have a cannelure, but a slight taper crimp at the case mouth produces a crease in the bullet jacket. Naturally, this load is charged with one of the new “highly progressive” Superformance powders.







Hornady claims that this load obtains a velocity of 2930 fps when fired from a 24” SAAMI test barrel. I chronographed this load from an AR-15 that has a 24” stainless-steel match grade Krieger barrel with a 233 Remington chamber. A 10-shot string fired from the Krieger barrel produced a muzzle velocity of 2881 fps with a standard deviation of 14 fps.

An accuracy SnapShot of this load was obtained from my AR-15 with the 24” Krieger barrel that has a 5.56 Match chamber. This barrel was chosen as the test vehicle because it shoots the Hornady 75 grain BTHP bullet extremely well. Previous testing with factory loaded ammunition from both Hornady and Black Hills ammunition topped with the Hornady T1 bullet produced 10-shot groups from 100 yards in the 1 MOA spectrum. My match grade hand-loads using the T1 bullet fired from this barrel have approached half-MOA 10-shot groups from 100 yards.







The Superfromance load was fired from the Krieger barreled AR-15 from my bench-rest set-up at 100 yards. The 10-shot group had an extreme spread of 1.878”.





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[Molon]

The varminters will probably appreciate the "boost" that the 53 grain Superfromance load gives over the standard 55 grain V-MAX load.

[Molon]

The Superformance powder. The individual squares of the red grid measure 1/10th of an inch.










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