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Ballistic Advantage 16-inch .308 Battle Rifle - Highest Value .308 Option
Updated
19 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we’re gonna be taking a look at a Ballistic Advantage 16-inch .308 barre.
Full disclosure on these barrels, I’m a dealer for Ballistic Advantage barrel, this barrel is actually sitting on one of my personal upper receivers that I build and sell on my website, so I do have a relationship with Ballistic Advantage and I’m gonna be a little bit biased towards my own build.
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With all of that out of the way we can get into the specifics of the barrel and why I think it’s probably the best “budget barrel” for a do-it-all .308 build.
Getting into the material, what we have here is 4150 chrome moly vanadium steel that is very strong, very durable steel, should give you a barrel life somewhere between five and fifteen thousand rounds on a .308 depending on your firing schedule and ammunition choices.
On top of that, we have a 16-inch, mid-length barrel. The gas port on this mid-length 16-inch is a 0.068, which is a fairly small gas port size and it is gassed what I would consider to be appropriate for a do-it-all upper receiver. It will cycle cheap ammunition right out of the box, it might be a little hot if all you’re doing is putting full power military loads through it, but, overall, it’s gassed well enough that it’s still easy to fix with an H1, H2, H3 buffer, if you wanted it to get a little bit softer.
This one here has a pinned adjustable gas block on it for me personally, as I do like adjustable gas blocks in general on .308 or higher calibers just because they tend to be, of course, more violent, being a much larger caliber, so you want to tune that recoil down as much as you can and they also tend to be a little bit more finicky depending on your ammunition and whether they’re suppressed or unsuppressed.
Overall, I do think that an adjustable gas block is a good idea on just about every .308 barrel on the market, it’s not needed on this barrel, and if you just want a general do-it-all gun with a standard gas block, it will be just fine, again, it’s not necessarily mandatory, but it is something that I like to see on most higher caliber barrels.
The gas block journal on this 16-inch mid-length from Ballistic Advantage is the 0.750, so all of your standard gas blocks will work on it just fine. Unfortunately, the barrel is not dimpled for gas block, so with all of my Ballistic Advantage barrels, which I am very intimately acquainted with, I have to dimple all of them. Dimpling a barrel is a very easy process, you can buy a 30-dollar dimpling jig and you’ll be off to the races and, of course, my gas blocks are also pinned, on top of that.
This is a nitride with a QPQ finish, the nitride finish is very good, all the machining, all that is very high quality, it’s a very good, very even finish on the barrel. On top of that, the twist is 1-10 twist, which should stabilize anything between 125 and 220 grain ammunition.
The basic profile that comes on their .308 barrels, at least they’re non-Hanson .308 barrels, which, of course, have a Hanson profile to them, but their standard barrels are what they call ‘Tactical Government’.
I know a lot of people don’t like Government profile barrels, however, this is not a Government profile, so basically you have, of course, a very reinforced section in the back near the chamber, it has a step down to about 0.750, a little bit of a gas block journal shoulder, of course, and then another 0.750 out to the end.
Overall, I would consider it to be a middleweight profile barrel, it is definitely not a heavy barrel and it’s not going to be like your standard Government where it’s a little bit thicker out front than it is in the middle section, it is very symmetrical in that regard to where the middle section in between the chamber and the gas block is about the same as it is after the gas block as well.
It’s a very nicely balanced barrel, it’s not what I would consider to be front heavy at all, though, again, it is a heavy barrel in general because it is 30-caliber, and a fairly middleweight profile coming in right at 36 ounces, so it’s just over 2 pounds for the barrel by itself.
Getting a little bit more specific into the shooting dynamics of the barrel, again, from the factory it is tuned in a very general way, it will cycle steel case, even the crappiest steel case ammunition you can find, at around 3.30 to 4 o’clock, depending on the ammunition with just carbine springs, carbine, you know, the short .308 buffer, and then if you’re running hot ammunition you can get up that ejection all the way to, you know, two o’clock on the high end for hot ammunition.
For some people, they will like to see that slow down a little bit, so you can modulate that a little bit with an H1, H2, H3 buffer, so on and so forth. For me, personally, an adjustable gas block solves that issue and I can run a standard carbine weight buffer and spring in the back or at least a .308 power spring in the back.
For me, that’s the optimal way to do it on .308 because, again, it is going to be finicky or a little bit more finicky over a wide variety of ammunition choices, so allowing it to run as clean as possible, which will also allow it to be a little more reliable just by letting less gas back into the system. For me, that’s the optimal way to run it, I wanna see M80 ball ejecting at about 3 to 3.30, and then steel case ammunition all the way back at like 3.30 to 4 o’clock, right towards that bleeding edge of reliability. Personally, that’s where I like to see my gun. So, from the factory, again, a little bit over-gassed for some people, but, again, it’s a very general purpose sense.
A 16-inch .308 also makes a lot of sense in general for that general role, you can take this out to6, 700 yards, as we did in this configuration. On top we have a Primary Arms GLX and a 2.5-10 that they sent out for me to review, but we’re using it for quite some time, already did a review on this channel of this optic. Very capable, very easy to put shots exactly where you want at 5, 6 and 700 yards, and as we’ll get into accuracy right now, with the right choice of ammunition, the barrel will maintain that Ballistic performance out to extended distances.
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Primary Arms GLx Rifle Scope - 506351
$749.99
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PA-GLX-2.5-10X44F-RAPTOR-5.56
818500013914
Primary Arms GLx Rifle Scope - 403238
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PA-GLX-2.5-10X44F-GRIF-MIL
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PA-GLX4-2.5-10X44-SS
818500014348
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So, getting into accuracy, with just 145 grain Wolf Military Classic, which is actually pre-Rona Wolf Military Classic, so it’s like two, three years old at this point, that was shooting very consistently at about 1.5 MOA, which was actually the ammunition that we chose to take out to 600 yards with this specific barreled upper receiver because that’s the ammunition that I happen to have a lot on hand.
On top of that, we also tested some Hornady 155 grain A-MAX, which came in right at 1 MOA, which I was very happy with, 160 grain Hornady Black, 168 grain Hornady ELD Ms or something like that, I forgot the exact make of the ammunition, I’m sure it’ll be annotated in here. Both of those came in at about 1.5 to 2 MOA, not great, not bad either, and then we also, of course, ran the terrible MagTech M80 ball, which came in anywhere from 3 to 6 MOA, depending on the group that we shot, very poor accuracy from that ammunition in every barrel that I’ve tested it in, and from what I’ve heard from other people as well it is usually anywhere between 3 and 8 to 9 MOA.
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And then the last ammunition choice that we were able to test through this upper receiver was going to be Federal Gold Medal Match 168 grain Sierra Match Kings. Now, that load in general has been the most consistent over the most barrels, the most uppers that I’ve tested it in, and we were able to get five rounds of that just under 1 MOA with this upper receiver.
With the right ammunition choice you are definitely getting that MOA/sub MOA, slight sub MOA groupings with 5-round groups. For me that is pretty acceptable and if I can get a ball around somewhere between 1.5 to 2 MOA that would also make me very happy. Again, with this just crappy steel case ammunition we were able to take it out to 600 yards without any issues whatsoever.
For me personally, the performance of this barrel makes it the best entry-level/do-it-all barrel, especially, again, if you’re on a little bit of a budget, usually you can find these barrels on sale for the low 100-dollar range, somewhere between 120 and 150 dollars, which for a .308 barrel, for a quality .308 barrel is not too bad.
You can get cheaper barrels from like Bear Creek Arsenal, which, you know, those are gonna be a little bit more over-gassed, probably very similar in terms of accuracy, most of the ones that I’ve seen personally have been fairly accurate as well. You can probably also get barrels from a few other manufacturers that might be close to the same price point, but, again, for the money, I think the performance is definitely there, the shooting dynamics are good, especially if you’re running an adjustable gas block, though that will solve it for any barrel on the market, and the accuracy, for me personally, is more than enough for anything outside of a PRS style application.
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So, again, if you’ve decided on building or buying a 16-inch .308 I think that this barrel is one of the first ones that you should look at, especially if you’re looking for the most performance per dollar that you can get out of a barrel. This is going to be very close to the top end of that stack for, again, a 16-inch .308 barrel.
How about an accompanying deal to go with this review…