Cry Havoc Tactical And Luth-AR

The Concealable Precision Combat Rifle
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The holy melding of the Cry Havoc Tactical QRB kit and a top-flight AR15
build kit from Luth-AR makes for a reliable and accurate takedown sporting rifle par excellence.

Cry Havoc Tactical has built their business around designing the perfect takedown gear to transform your favorite black rifle into something half as long and twice as easy to tote. Their Cry Havoc QRB (Quick Release Barrel) Takedown Kit consists of a pair of interlocking collars allowing you to separate the front and rear halves of most any AR-style weapon with nothing more than a standard set of human fingers. Their rig is actually so cool it is currently riding in the ejection seat survival kits of every tactical aircraft in the USAF inventory. It turns out the Cry Havoc QRB Takedown Kit has applications even if your other car isn’t an F22 Raptor 5th generation stealth fighter plane.

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The Cry Havoc Tactical QRB kit produces a takedown rifle that breaks
down and assembles in seconds yet reliably retains its zero.

Expect the Unexpected

Mindy Parker was a 107-lb. perambulating nuclear reactor. At five foot two she kept trim via Pilates and chasing her two twin sons. She was raised on a rural farm and had been the captain of her cheer squad in high school. Thursday was Mother’s Morning Out at her local church so she had a rare few hours to herself. On the recommendation of a friend, she thought she’d drive into the city to help out at a homeless shelter. That’s the way she rolled.

Mindy typically cared little for the city. She did not feel comfortable in crowds and her husband usually did the driving when they were together. SIRI found the shelter easily enough, but securing a place to park was the bigger challenge. Before she knew it she had accidentally pulled her minivan into a blind alley. As she put the vehicle in reverse a pair of muscular young men appeared from nowhere and blocked her path. Two more now approached from the front of the vehicle. One carried a baseball bat and the other a tire iron. The final two had their hands menacingly in their pockets. Mindy felt her heart rate double in an instant. The sketchy guy nearest her side of the van broke into a wide grin when he saw who was driving.

The grinning man swung his bat and shattered the driver’s side headlight just to show he was serious. Without saying a word he motioned for Mindy to get out of the van. With a skill borne of multiple iterations, Mindy reached behind her seat and retrieved her gym bag. Twenty seconds later she opened her door.

The compact little takedown AR had been a birthday present from her husband, himself a former Navy SEAL. The grinning man’s eyes were suddenly roughly the same diameter as the blast can on the front of the gun. Mindy had the four young men on the ground and controlled in less than half a minute. As they waited for the cops, she had the opportunity to explain the seminal aspects of predator/prey relationships in nature to the four misguided young miscreants. By the time Law Enforcement arrived, two of the four had committed themselves to full-time Christian ministry while the other two promised they would get real jobs and be more respectful to their grandmothers.

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The Cry Havoc system allows the rifle to be stored in a
backpack yet retains zero when reassembled.

Ballistic Philosophy

A gun is a tool, but it is a very special tool. Most folks of reasonable dexterity can run a crescent wrench, but a crescent wrench doesn’t readily change the calculus of interpersonal conflicts. A firearm deftly wielded, by contrast, will transform the most petite soccer mom into the tactical equal of a 220-lb. gladiator. Nothing else in the world does that.

I honestly don’t know of any other human pursuit offering more unfiltered options than the modern world of defensive firearms. The spectrum of caliber, format, features, ergonomics and accessories is adequate to support the superlative periodical you currently seem to be clutching. I’ve made a decent career out of just talking about it all. So with all those rifles, pistols, shotguns, whatever out there, why would you ever need or want a takedown black rifle that will stash in a gym bag? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s not my place to impose my views on others. This is one of several aspects of modern life upon which Chuck Schumer and I most fundamentally disagree.

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The GAU-5A is a selective-fire takedown survival arm carried in all USAF
combat aircraft in the ejection seat survival kit. It uses the Cry Havoc QRB kit.
Photo: USAF

Details

The Cry Havoc Tactical QRB Takedown Kit takes about 20 minutes to install and about 30 seconds to use. The latest version is available for AR10, AR15 and pistol-caliber blowback AR-style weapons. The AR15 version demands a barrel with a maximum external diameter of 0.985″ and free-float handguards with a maximum width of 2″. With those parameters as a foundation, the QRB kit does some epically amazing things.
The beating heart of the QRB kit is a pair of patented mating collars. One threads onto the front of the upper receiver, while the other accepts the barrel and handguard. The latest version interfaces via a pair of steel pins keeping everything nicely aligned. Once these two collars are mounted, you simply slide the barrel extension in place and secure everything with a pair of throw levers. Mounting and dismounting is easy-peasy.

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Serious Combat Cred

After a competitive trial involving most of the AR takedown systems on the market, Cry Havoc’s QRB Kit won the day. USAF armorers mounted these kits up on existing M4 chassis using a 12.5″ and folding pistol grip from FAB Defense. The resulting collapsible weapon was christened the GAU-5A.

The disassembled GAU-5A fits into a standard ACES II ejection seat along with four 30-round magazines. This rig gives the downed aviator escaping and evading through hostile territory a significant advantage over the traditional 9mm handgun. With the formal adoption of the GAU-5A, Cry Havoc Tactical joined the ranks of serious defense contractors. The Wing Nuts bought 2,700 copies of the weapon for a cool $2.7 million

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The beating heart of the Cry Havoc Tactical QRB kit is this patented
collar system mating the barrel assembly with the upper receiver.

The Build

I already had a little micro-AR I had built up on a registered SBR lower using an early version of the Cry Havoc QRB kit. This thing is cooler than Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. However, the new version is even easier and smoother to use.

For this build I used a set of parts from Luth-AR. Randy Luth is really the father of the American Modern Sporting Rifle. He was the guy who first bolted a length of Picatinny rail onto an AR receiver and subsequently changed the world as we know it. He is also personally responsible for the modern phenomenon of hunting with black rifles. We all owe Randy a great debt of thanks. His is indeed a fascinating story.

Luth-AR parts are still the top of the line. Randy really does have more experience producing custom AR components than anybody else on the planet. For this build I opted for a Luth-AR MBA (Modular Buttstock Assembly), Chubby Grip, Palm Handguard and Lower ENHANC-AR kit. The barrel is a 16″ fluted tube with a heavy profile.

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Assembly and disassembly had no noteworthy effect on zero.

Trigger Time

The obvious question is whether or not such a takedown rig will hold its zero. To test this facet of the design I shot three different strings using the same ammo and the same parameters. Between each string of fire I fully disassembled the weapon and put it back together again at the shooting bench. This operation requires no tools. As you can see in the photo, group size and point of impact were essentially unaffected.

The finished rifle runs just like any other AR, only better, thanks to Randy’s top-flight build components. Once the rifle is assembled you really don’t know the QRB Kit is part of the equation. Whether your application is a tiny packable AR pistol or a long-barreled hunting rifle that needs to be kept compact for easy portage, the QRB Kit from Cry Havoc Tactical effectively cuts your favorite black gun in half.

Even if your day job doesn’t involve flying a $165 million fighter plane, there yet remains a potential place in your gun safe for a Cry Havoc Tactical QRB Kit. The build is within the capabilities of anybody even remotely handy with tools and the final product is good enough for Uncle Sam to take to war. The QRB Kit makes your good gun even better. Building up such a rig at home is also a simply superlative way to kill a lazy Sunday afternoon.

MSRP: $400

CryHavocTac.com
Luth-AR.com

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