Nammo to Produce Polymer-Cased Ammunition, Acquires MAC, LLC

@Patriot Gunner Some of your criticisms are valid, some not so much.

Cost more to manufacture? For now. Thats mainly because the infrastructure and economies of scale aren't in place for this sort of manufacture at the moment. There's no real inherent reason this design should be more expensive than an all-brass case. As production increases and process improvements are made price will drop precipitously.

Have less case capacity? Sure... but if they have enough thats not a problem at all. Having unused case capacity in a brass case brings no benefit, so losing it has no detriment.

Adhesive bullet "crimping"? Again, no reason that cant be done as quickly/easily as crimping a brass case. Its just a DIFFERENT process. Might take longer at first since its a new process but once its established and the kinks are worked out, no inherent reason you can't do it just as fast/easy. And I can't possibly imagine that barrel fouling from this adhesive will in any way have any impact on the guns. I haven't seen any studies on this though, so I'll withhold judgement for the moment.

I get that "cookoff" will still be an issue, but I don't see how it can possibly be made worse, if anything it should improve. The polymer will conduct significantly less heat to the powder charge than an all-brass case would, so replacing even some of the brass with poly should improve the situation. If your concern is that without an all-brass case to heat up and remove heat from the chamber the chamber will heat up faster, thats largely an exaggerated phenomenon. Assuming a specific heat for brass of 0.38 J/gm*K, a case mass of ~21 g (for .338 lapua), and assuming the brass enters the chamber at about 100F and leaves at about 350F (thats based on measurements I've actually taken at the range), that means the brass is "extracting" only about 1.1 kJ of thermal energy from the system. Thats, well, not very significant. So the chamber might be running a tiny bit hotter, but thats likely more than offset by the reduction in heat conducted to the power due to polymer's WAAAYYYY lower thermal conductivity when compared to brass.

The last one is your best point. Yes, this requires all new machinery, and processes, and supply chains, and all that. And all that costs a lot of money to setup. It may even be that when its all said and done the new loaded cartridges cost more than traditional all-brass ones (though I'm skeptical about that, plastic is a LOT cheaper than brass, and a lot easier to shape). But thats all offset, in my mind, by what you blow off as insignificant. They're seeing a TWENTY PERCENT weight reduction. That's not insignificant, that's huge. That means 20% more ammo for same load. 20% longer you can shoot before exhausting your supply. 20% savings in fuel to ship the same amount of ammo. No matter how you look at it, from the military point of view, cutting ammo weight by 20% is HUGE.

@Patriot Gunner 100% agree. Putting thin plastic in super-high pressure and temperatures environment is stupid idea. Casing like shell-shock is way more viable, especially with some tweaks in base+body coupling method.

@RocketScientist Your response was cogent and thank you for taking the time to write a lengthy rebuttal...However, I do think that you are overestimating its benefits and downplaying the drawbacks.

Case capacity is a huge benefit as it allows you to use varying kinds of powder with various densities...This gives you the power to substitute multiple powders and have the ability to retain the same performance. From a logistical standpoint (especially during wartime) you don't see that as a benefit?

With regards to the adhesive "crimping" talk to guys who are into ultra long range shooting who use adhesives to secure the bullet to the case in order to get a consistent pull weight from each cartridge and they will show you how this adhesive gums up the barrel. Now these hybrid cases may be using a different adhesive but the fact remains that you will have a buildup of this stuff in your barrel and very quickly in a machine gun.

With regards to cook-off, CTA is much more superior than these hybrid cases. Even if these hybrid cases will perform marginally better than your standard brass.

The last point about all new machinery should not be taken with a grain of salt. I worked for a machine design company doing just that, designing machinery for the ammunition industry from loading machines, to annealing machines, to groove extractor machines and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that these hybrid cartridges will never be able to load as fast as a standard cartridge. We designed a system for a major company that does 2200 rounds per minute...yes per minute not hour...There is no way of physically handing adhesives at that speed...you can't skirt the laws of gravity...And even though polymers are cheaper than brass now, the crude oil market is volatile, I'd like to see the cost of these cases when crude is at 150 a barrel or 200...

Keep in mind that the legacy system has been engineered and paid for more than half a century. All the big names, Winchester, Remington, Federal etc have mostly WW2 era machines they bought for pennies after the war and have amortized them for decades. The investment in new slower machines alone is going to make this a much more expensive proposition.

@Patriot Gunner Your right and what about increase breach pressure from no brass only poly? Seems technology could first come up with a recoilless Rife & Pistol first light weight with breaches to handle higher pressure? And how about recycling this poly case? Or make it biodegradable at least fertilizer? Oh well next will be electromagnetic driven bullets weighted plastic from 3D.

@Jon Van Dellen Exactly. You hit the nail squarely on its head with regards to recycling. Currently, recycling brass is very cheap to do, I have a feeling trying to recycle these hybrid cases will not be economically viable.