My interest in testing was to see if the short pistol could outperform the more traditional 223 AR pistols. Dedicated subsonic loads for suppression are from 180 to 220. Most of the plinking ball is in the 110 grain range. Again, the shooter skill is the weak point with most pistols.Ī huge variety of ammunition is available in this caliber, with bullet weights ranging from 110 to 220 grains. Accuracy is quite good: under one inch at 10 yards from standing and much better than that with an optic from support. Recoil is minimal, so the cheek doesn’t get slapped by the buffer tube. Since the pistol itself is balanced well enough for support by the right hand only, the left hand keeps the muzzle from rising during rapid fire. The high sight placement allows cantilevered hold on the forend. Spike’s sights don’t obscure too much of the environment, so both eyes can be kept open when aiming. Unlike PLR16, it’s not designed to be tensioned away from the body for stability: the rear aperture sight cannot be used far away from the eye, so the fabric-wrapped buffer tube has to be used for cheek weld to ensure proper sight picture.
The gun comes equipped with a forward QD sling loop but not one in the rear. The 8.1″ barrel is enclosed almost entirely with a heavily latticed forend, giving a long iron sight radius and a place for light/laser where the light beam wouldn’t be occluded. Since the round was designed from the ground up to run well with short barrels, it doesn’t suffer from the typical reliability issues of micro ARs.
Considering the relatively short-range nature of pistols, the increase in bullet weight could be well worth the reduction of longer-range performance.
The trade-off is the reduced flatness of trajectory and almost doubling of the ammunition weight. ST15 weighs only 5 pounds empty, but a full 30-round magazine adds over pound and a half. 223, throwing a great deal more metal using the same magazine and breech face. 7.62×35 ( 300 Blackout) runs well out of 8″ tubes and doesn’t lose as much velocity as. 223 pistols: the inefficient internal ballistics. Spike’s AR pistol addresses the main drawback of. Comparative Performance of Three Rifle-Caliber Pistols, Part 3: Century Arms M92.Comparative Performance of Three Rifle-Caliber Pistols, Part 2: Spike’s Tactical ST15-LE.Comparative Performance of Three Rifle-Caliber Pistols, Part 1: PLR16.Comparative Performance of Three Rifle-Caliber Pistols, Part 2: Spike’s Tactical ST15-LE