Courtesy of Tactical Life
The AR-15 is a great platform. It’s light and mobile and can be fired quickly and accurately. It just doesn’t have much of a punch. But what if you could take the best attributes of the AR-15 and chamber it in .308? Wouldn’t that be revolutionary?”
I was sitting in Frank DeSomma’s Phoenix, Ariz., office. The president and founder of Patriot Ordnance Factory, or POF-USA, DeSomma had invited me to see his new rifle—the Revolution, a lightweight AR in .308 Winchester.
“Everyone talks about new calibers that shoot almost like the .308,” DeSomma said. “The 6.8 SPC and 300 Blackout shoot kind of like a .308, and they fit in the AR-15 envelope. But they really don’t perform like the .308, so I decided to build an AR that does shoot the .308. I figured out a way to put 10 pounds of crap in a 5-pound bucket.”
Innovation comes naturally to DeSomma, who spent most of his adult life in the aerospace industry. Nearly every part he designed and manufactured was made from a lightweight alloy with some kind of coating to reduce friction, dissipate heat and prevent corrosion. In the firearms industry, innovation is stymied by tradition and herds of me-too engineers who do things the way they have always been done. DeSomma was unhindered by these constraints, however, and applied his extensive knowledge to create new paths, leaving others in his dust.
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