New GI Magazine Follower

AR/M4 AR General Discussion
1

These are new to me anyway. The follower is a mustard/tan color. It’s design is more anti-tilt than the green follower and is almost on par with magpul, but seems to tilt more in the rear if that matters. The follower fills the mag body better than a magpul follower, and it makes me wonder if sand and dirt will be more problematic than with a magpul. The most notable difference to me is that the cartridge placement portion (the part that looks like a fake cartridge) is on the left side, opposite any other mag I have seen. This may be problematic to those who rely on round recognition for loading or ammo count purposes, being easy to mix up, confuse, or forget. I probably won’t be able to test these mags, at least for awhile, other than a couple mags worth of ammo anyway. I wonder if they will seat fully loaded better than others.

These may not appeal to many who have caught the pmag wave. But there are a few no doubt who run pmags and GI mags, and probably still some who run only GI mags. I have yet to see any of these available at gun stores. Made by center ind., with elkay plastics name on the packaging (maybe the makers of the follower?).

Has anyone been able to locate these for purchase or had the chance to use them?

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2

Interesting, how made the mag?

3

I remember these being announced a while back. A lot of discussion revolved around the amount of R&D that went into these when they are still not as effective as a Magpul follower.

4

For the engineers at Picatinnny who might be reading this, you guys are an embarrassment. I have no doubt that you received a proficiency bonus for this, even though the existing design was already on the market.

For the rest of the team at Picatinnny, you’ve got some great people there at the Aresnal, remember you are there for the war fighter, keep up the good work, especially the EOD crew.

5

WOW!
Stick you kick ass.

6

yea it would have been a lot nicer to see the US military award a contract, or pay for the rights to Magpul’s design.

7

What Stickman said. There was also a big discussion at The Firearm Blog when these were announced, about what a complete waste of time and effort it was to create these mags which are, it seems, basically a knockoff of a Magpul follower (the one that’s about a decade old now) and a slightly improved spring. In other words, almost as good as what us civvies have been buying since the very day the federal AWB expired, and inferior to a lot of the newer options such as the Pmag and Lancer L5.

8

Here’s the most relevant article at that blog:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/12/16/new-us-army-m16-tan-magazine/

Note the discussion from more than a year ago.

I’m under the impression that most infantryman carrying an M4 or M16 in combat theaters are using Pmags purchased with personal or unit-level funds.

9

Somehow I managed to miss all the fuss on these. I guess it’s no surprise they would spend serious money redesigning something poorly rather than adopt a civilian upgrade at a minor expense. When I first saw them I wondered why they didn’t just have magpul followers. But I was happy to see something different than green followers. So, for anyone who is stuck using these, at least say they are better than the green followers.

10

How’d that happen, you CATM guys should be on the cutting edge! :smiley: Have you seen the feed lip gage yet?

11

I’ll stick to Magpul followers in my USGI mags and PMAGs.

Great waste of money, fucktards.

12

“NIH”, Not Invented Here, is a powerful force.

13

As of November10, I have yet to see these mags. We are still using the green followers.
Regardless, I have Magpul followers installed in all my USGI Mags

“I’m under the impression that most infantryman carrying an M4 or M16 in combat theaters are using Pmags purchased with personal or unit-level funds”

Yeah, that will be the day. Sadly, most other infantrymen aren’t “gun guys”. They could care less what kind of weapon or magazine they have. There are maybe 2 other people in the Company running PMags, A few other with Magpuls, and one guy with ranger plates. The general consensus is that what the army gives you is good enough and if you go out buying high speed shit you are a gear queer.

As for unit level funds: Sorry, money for PMags went to a 40" Flatscreen and cable in the training room under the category of “Unit Morale”, even though no one below E-6 ever goes in there.

14

Cutting edge my ass. I’m lucky to be in a unit that paid for real armorer training and shooting instruction for me. I haven’t seen the feed lip gauge outside of the linked firearm blog article. It’s no use to me, if a mag begins giving a shooter a problem I destroy it on the spot so it doesn’t get mixed in with the other (equally shitty but working mags).

I’d like to see what other mags LTC Lehner is referencing. And if pmags didn’t make the cut, why not just the follower?

“NIH,” I’ll remember that.

15

.

I haven’t seen the new Followers for sale individually yet but at the New Orleans Gun Show a few weeks ago, some dealer had a ton of Brownell Mags with the new tan Follower installed for $12.00 each. These were sealed in a plastic bag with all of the CAGE Code, NSN #'s and such printed on the outside.

.

16

Interesting.

As an engineer for the warfighter, I would have liked to see a contract awarded instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Yes, there are quite a few of us .gov engineers that DO care about the warfighter and are doing things right.

I’m trying to find information on these new followers. Any reason as to why they (whoever they is) decided to have the odd rounds load from the right side of the mag? I imagine this will impact some of us that have built up muscle/mind memory that run followers other than these while doing press checks.

17

There was a metric buttload of them for sale @ the Fredericksburg, VA goon show this past weekend.

NIH, as mentioned, is strong. It’s a metal mag with an anti-tilt follower; nothing of note about it, except for the hump, which they shifted to the other side (like the ARC mag) to avoid a patent pee-pee slap from Magpul, I imagine. Still should load to 28, along with the rest of the metal-mag boilerplate.

They work okay. IAR’s getting fielded with these, so they’re gonna get common pretty quick.

18

I have not found any reason for switching the side the first round goes on. Best guess is that it’s another arbitrary change, like the stupid yellow-brass color choice, intended to distinguish these from the superior, preexisting COTS alternative. But maybe there is some better reason, somewhere. I just haven’t seen it.

19

Sorry, money for PMags went to a 40" Flatscreen and cable in the training room under the category of “Unit Morale”, even though no one below E-6 ever goes in there.

I see things haven’t really changed at all in the past forty years.:sad:

20

Yeah, my USAR Unit ran into this last July when we ordered a bunch of new mags. They were installed in magazines marked as coming from Brownells and where individually packaged in brown paper with NSN and Cage codes. I was wondering why they would introduce such a change.

I assumed that this was done in keeping with the TD ARC mags.