The great sniper rifle replacement across the Army, Marine Corps and SOCOM has begun with the newest sniper rifle and it’s the Barrett Multi-Role Adaptive Design rifle chambered in three calibers.
Over the next five years, the MRAD will replace the Army’s existing M107 sniper rifle and M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle under the Precision Sniper Rifle program, and all bolt action rifles in the Marines, delivering conversion options so that snipers can choose from 7.62mm, .300 Norma Magnum and .338 Norma Magnum, depending on their shooting needs.
The military designation for the rifle will be the Mk22, which is the nomenclature for the PSR.
“The Army plans to purchase Multi-Role Adaptive Rifle (MRAD) systems for Foreign Military Sales and Precision Sniper Rifles (PSR) systems for Army Snipers and EOD personnel,” PEO Soldier spokesman told the website Task & Purpose. “The MRAD is one component of the PSR.”
Marine Corps budget documents from early 2020 noted that the “ASR will replace all current bolt-action sniper rifles in the Marine Corps.”
Those documents cited a purchase of 250 MRAD rifles for the Corps.
That means the decades-old M40, which has been in service midway through the Vietnam War. The M40, was scheduled to be replaced by the Mk13 Mod 7.
SOCOM awarded a contract for the MRAD back in March 2019 and deliveries were scheduled to start this January, according to a Barrett company release.
The search for the convertible rifle began back in 2016 with a SOCOM request.
The original plan was for the Army to buy 536 MRAD rifles under the previous program, a PEO Soldier spokesman told Task & Purpose that the new plans will include purchasing an estimated 2,800 rifles over the next five years.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.