DD5 V5 260 Rem: A Firing Solution for the COVID Crunch

I am finally getting a review in on something I have wanted to try for a very long time, the Daniel Defense V5 in 260 Remington. Why have I been so anxious to lay hands on this rifle? Mostly because of the caliber. Yes, we are going to talk about the gun. But at this point, we should all know that if it says DD on the side, it is going to be a winner. 260, however, is a caliber I had yet to touch. And for all kinds of 2021 reasons, that needed to change.

The DD5V5 is the large frame semi-auto rifle from Daniel Defense, colloquially known as an AR-10. While an AR-10 is actually a very specific rifle from Armalite, it has basically come to mean any AR-style rifle in a real boy caliber. 308, 6.5 Creedmoor, 260 Rem, 338 Federal, anything non-poodle shooter but also not Magnum. (Perhaps we should rename the NEMO 300 Win Mag an AR-5? I don’t know, I just work here.)

Like every other Daniel Defense semi-auto, the gun is an engineering marvel. It features a 20-inch barrel, in-house-made 15-inch slimline rail, M-LOK attachments, and Daniel Defense’s own absolutely excellent furniture. It comes with a 6 position collapsible stock, which is debatable on a big boy gun. I tend to prefer fixed buttstocks, but I have known a lot of other snipers that prefer collapsible, so I can’t fault the option based on shooter preference. And if you want it, it’s an easy swap to a wide variety of fixed stocks.

If I was going to lodge one complaint about the DD5, it would be the trigger. Inexplicably, the DD5 ships with a mil-spec trigger, which is French for “sucks”. This is kind of a system shock since the DD AR-15’s (pro models at least) ship with a Geissele. Even that I can justify though. Large frame guns are essentially semi-auto sniper rifles when we are talking Daniel Defense accuracy, and I would assume they deferred to customer preference. That is to say, when we start talking long-range, the consumer is going to have a very specific preference usually. Geissele, AR Gold, or Trigger Tech. You can tell which one is mine by hitting that hyperlink. And since they can’t very well ship a rifle without a trigger in it, we could call that mil-spec one a place holder. It comes out of the box capable of shooting, but it is assumed you ordered your flavor of good trigger in advance.

The DD5V5 also has an excellent muzzle brake, in house once again, known as the DD Superior Suppression Device. It works great and is useful for a wide variety of tactical and long-range scenarios. The rifle feeds from any SR-25 magazine, an important point. That is pretty much a must-have in the modern world, but something that you still need to check before you buy.

Hey, that’s a pretty lame gun review Clay! It’s like half a gun review actually! Yes, correct. Like I said above, this review wasn’t really about the gun. It’s a Daniel Defense, and at this point in my career, I can just say it’s awesome like the others and point to past work. I could have told you that before the gun arrived and not been wrong. I really wanted this, and from DD, to answer a question I have had for a long time.

While 6.5 Creedmoor has absolutely trounced 260 Remington in popularity, 260 remains. SOCOM famously chose 6.5 Creedmoor, and yet a very small segment of the DOD chose and still uses 260 Remington. My boy Kevin Owens, one of if not the absolute best long-range trainers in the world today, prefers 260 Rem for many purposes. And I really wondered why? Which started this journey, and was the reason it had to end with Daniel Defense.

6.5 Creedmoor vs 260 Remington is a showdown much akin to Beta Max vs VHS, or Xbox vs Playstation for you young guys. And it makes me feel really old to type that, however true it is. The rounds are very similar, to include a .264 bullet diameter, and were created to fit the magazine of a semi-auto rifle. So how did we get to a point that both even exist? It went a little something like this….

260 was created by, duh, Remington. And long before the 6.5 Creedmoor was even dreamed of by Hornady. And the two companies’ overall design philosophies would very much come into play. 260 was introduced in 1997 and should have absolutely taken the world by storm. However, it got a dose of what we in the business call “Remington’ed”. Which in the Freedom Group era at least, means doing 80% of the development, calling it good, and releasing it on an unsuspecting public.

The 260 Rem is necked down 308 case-based very much on the wildcat 6.5-08 A-Square. The Remington principle was to keep this proven 308 shoulder angle, have a bigger overall case capacity, and put a light fast bullet in this bad johnson. IE, let’s make it so that we can slam a powder charge into a smaller bullet like a linebacker on both a ‘roid rage and two bumps of meth, and lob this bullet into the stratosphere. So far so good.

The Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor principle (2007), reflects the “Hornady Principle” we see in a lot of other cartridge development. Okay, a good idea exists, but it was poorly executed. What if, and it’s a big if, we brought in some super big brain long-range shooters, and then we let them do whatever they want? Which they did. And the correction was a shorter overall case, with slightly less powder capacity (2% ish), but the ability to properly seat very high BC bullets. Modern high BC bullets tend to be long and skinny, which forced the shorter case length to fit in a semi-auto.

And there we see the difference start to take shape. It has been an arms race across the years, with lots of changes over the years. When it started, you had two schools of thought. The 260 Remington came out of the muzzle with 5% more speed, but the Creedmoor had a higher BC. Which meant that inside of 600 meters or so, the 260 was the clear winner. But past that, the 6.5 CM both caught up and bested the 260.

For a while, the 260 was also plagued by the curse of light bullets. The above was true when the common bullet weight was 120 grains for either. Then Hornady figured out a way to give 6.5 CM 130, 140, and up to 143-grain bullets. The curse of Freedom Group struck again. The 6.5 Creedmoor had a higher  SAMMI spec chamber pressure, not by much, but enough factory 260 couldn’t keep up.

And so 260 Rem started dying off. The number of available semi-auto guns in 260 was and is dwarfed by 6.5 Creedmoor. In fact, part of the reason I chose Daniel Defense for this review, is that DD is among the few that make the same gun in both calibers.

Fast forward to 2020/21, and what do we find? 260 is once again catching up, thanks to the aftermarket. As well as 260 Remington can be found on the shelf, even when 6.5 CM and 308 are long gone. Development by ammunition companies has given us bullets comparable to the 6.5 CM, most likely via magic. Even my test loads, made by Hornady, are 130-grain match. Barnes makes a 140 grain, with a ballistic coefficient on par with heavy 6.5 CM. So we find ourselves at this point.

A 260 Remington once again packs at least a little bit of an advantage. Especially if you hand load, and aren’t afraid to push the limits a little bit. I do not, nor do I endorse that, but it does make the 260 a contender. And worthy of taking a deeper look into.

There is also one last reason I chose Daniel Defense. Sometimes in firearms, we get a problem or solution that can only be summed up as magic. 300 Win Mag should not fly straight according to science, and yet it is known as a very accurate round. 22 Creedmoor should be a layup but creates such problems with twist rates and load tuning that no major player even makes a factory load for it. And 10mm should dominate the handgun world, except that the FBI was collectively too much of a Nancy Boy to shoot it.

And there once again we find the 260. I know a lot of custom gunsmiths, and they all told me a similar tale. 260 Remington is difficult to chamber correctly. One of them put it best when he told me this. “I could cut a 6.5 Creedmoor chamber with a Dremel tool and a hangover and have a very accurate gun. With 260 Remington, for reasons I can’t figure out, EVERYTHING has to be perfect. From tool chatter to cutting temperature, it all has to be 100% correct.” This also explains why there is very little or no low-cost option on 260 Remington. Daniel Defense is legendary for accuracy, so I knew they wouldn’t let me down.

And they didn’t. Even with a 5^th rate trigger, our DDV5 turned in ½ MOA to ¾ MOA groups consistently.  I am confident that with a good trigger, we would be down near .3 to .45 on the regular. Which makes the 260 Remington still a very viable option. If you waited till now to get a long-range blaster, or are just sick of looking for primers and factory 6.5 CM, check into 260. I have found it available nearly everywhere I look, and at prices that aren’t that bad considering the market. With the Daniel Defense to throw it, the 260 caliber is a very good choice for here and now.

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