More on the Remington R51

We wrote about the R51 back in Issue 12, and recently shared the news that Remington would be replacing the problematic post-SHOT R51s with new guns. There's more to the story, however, than reports of bad manufacturing and numerous operating failures. The original, senior R51 engineer left the project before prototypes could be turned into production models.

Transitioning the product’s development from AAC to Remington occurred in mid- to late-2011; and not everyone involved was happy about it. This was just as things were getting ugly between parent company Freedom Group and AAC’s leadership. According to another former AAC employee, the senior AAC R51 project engineer left the company at this point, forcing Remington engineers to pick up the work in progress and translate AAC’s prototypes and drawings into a mass-production ready pistol.

Gear Scout has more details, from how the .45 R53 model was a part of the design to how things when awry. You can read about it here.