Mk 13 Rifle

Origins

By the late 1990s American special operations snipers wanted more reach than the 7.62 mm NATO round could give. The Army's M24 Sniper Weapon System had been built on the Remington 700 long action partly so that it could one day be rebarreled for a magnum cartridge, and the .300 Winchester Magnum offered a flatter trajectory and more energy at long range while still fitting a manageable bolt-action rifle. The Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Indiana, which builds and supports small arms for the Navy and for US Special Operations Command, assembled a .300 Win Mag rifle on that long action for Naval Special Warfare. It was designated the Mk 13 Mod 0 and entered service with the United States Navy SEALs around the start of the 2000s.

Design & Construction

Every Mk 13 shares the same basic layout: a Remington 700 long-action receiver, a heavy precision barrel of about 26.5 inches chambered for .300 Winchester Magnum, and a bolt-action feed. Sources differ on the stock of the original Mod 0, with some describing a McMillan fiberglass stock and others an early Accuracy International chassis. The Mod 5 settled the question. It mounts the barreled action in the Accuracy International Chassis System (AICS), a rigid aluminum chassis with a folding stock, adjustable cheek piece and length of pull, and a detachable 5-round magazine. A long top rail and side rails carry a day scope, typically a Nightforce, with clip-on night sights and other accessories in front of it. The barrel is threaded to take a sound suppressor, and a folding bipod is standard. The Mod 5 weighs about 11.4 pounds without its optic and is about 47.5 inches long. The Mod 7, built for the Marine Corps, keeps the Remington long action and AICS chassis and is fielded with a Nightforce ATACR scope.

Service

The Mod 0 was carried by SEAL snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan, where engagements across open desert and mountain valleys often stretched past the comfortable range of 7.62 mm rifles. Chris Kyle, the SEAL sniper whose memoir American Sniper describes the fighting in Ramadi and Fallujah, wrote of relying on a .300 Win Mag rifle for much of his work. The Mod 5 then spread across US Special Operations Command as its standard magnum bolt-action rifle, and Marine special operations units under MARSOC used it as well. It often served alongside the semiautomatic M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System, which handled faster, closer work. In April 2018 the Marine Corps announced that the Mk 13 Mod 7 would replace the M40 Rifle, which in its various versions had armed Marine scout snipers since the Vietnam War. Marine officials said the new rifle extended their snipers' reach to well beyond 1,000 yards.

Legacy

The Mk 13 bridged the gap between the 7.62 mm rifles of the late Cold War and the multi-caliber rifles that followed. Its use of a commercial action in a modular chassis, with rails for night optics and a suppressor, became the normal pattern for military precision rifles. The Mod 7 had a short career with the Marines. In 2019 Special Operations Command chose a Barrett rifle with interchangeable barrels for its new Precision Sniper Rifle, and the Marine Corps and Army later adopted it as the Mk 22 Advanced Sniper Rifle, which can fire 7.62 mm NATO, .300 Norma Magnum and .338 Norma Magnum and is replacing the Mk 13 in front-line service.