LAS VEGAS — The company that finally got polymer magazines adopted for widespread use in the services has a 50-round, 7.62mm drum version of its popular magazine available for purchase.
Magpul’s D-50 weighs just under 2 pounds empty and comes in at about 4.5 pounds fully loaded. But the design puts this package in the same height profile as the 25-round 7.62mm magazine the company currently makes.
The 5.56mm, 30-round PMAG was adopted by the Marine Corps as an acceptable magazine for use in 2017 after years of rave reviews from deployed Marines, some of whom faced punishment for taking the magazines on deployment but did so anyway.
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Among civilian shooters, the 60-round, 5.56mm drum has been popular, though it is not yet a common inventory item for active-duty personnel.
Scott Creed, Magpul marketing director, said that the higher capacity magazine was being reviewed by the military.
The D-60, the company’s 5.56mm version, was being evaluated last year for use with the Marine’s M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle.
For more than three years now, the Corps has been looking for a higher capacity magazine to use with the recently adopted M27. But standard drum magazines often have feeding problems and can add a lot of weight to the weapon.
D-60 designer Tim Roberts told Marine Corps Times last year that the magazine was designed for certain types of missions.
“This is a no-compromise, double-capacity option,” Roberts said. “It’s designed for missions that are likely to have a long, controlled first engagement situation.”
The idea for an IAR gunner, Roberts says, is that he’d load the M27 with the D-60 to go out on a mission and carry standard 30-round capacity mags for subsequent reloads.
The new D-50, 7.62mm drum mag is built for SR25/M110-type rifles.
“Its unique drum configuration gives it roughly the same overall height profile as a standard 25-round 7.62mm PMAG, making storage easy and shooting from various positions — including prone — no different than with smaller capacity magazines," according to the company’s website.
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.
