Beware! Grendel Lurks Nearby
Hornady’s 123-grain 6.5 Grendel A-MAX target shooting load.
The cartridge itself is designed to take advantage of the long, narrow profile and energy efficiency (called the ballistic coefficient) of the 6.5mm class of bullet, which has long been popular in Europe but had never really caught on in the United States thanks to the established preference of American shooters for .30-caliber rifles. A key development took place when competition shooter Arne Brennan took the nearly dormant 6.5 PPC cartridge developed in the mid-1980s in 1998, and spent two years testing thousands of rounds.
By 2002, Bill Alexander, who was then working for the British Ministry of Defense, heard about the 6.5 PPC cartridge and discovered it would would fit the .50 Beowulf bolt he’d already developed. After some collaborative work between Brennan and Alexander, Alexander took their work to Janne Pohjoispaa to finally devlop specs of what became the 6.5 Grendel cartridge, tweaking to work off an existing .220 Russian case under manufacture by Lapua.
As an ardent Grendel shooter, (I’m on my 3rd and 4th rifles), there is at least one point that probably should be clarified.
You can chamber WSSM cartridge in the AR15, and they will carry heavier bullets at higher velocities than the Grendel, so the statement that “It has more down-range energy past 700 yards than any other known factory loading chambered in an AR-15.” is not correct. In fact, there are 6.5 WSSM uppers available. However, the WSSM cartridge only single stacks, so there is a huge disadvantage to using it. There is also a significant increase in recoil.
That said, the Grendel is the most efficient use of the AR 15 to date. The cartridge makes the AR15 a legitimate 700-1000 yard rifle.