One must wonder what Eugene Stoner would think if he could see today’s AR-15. The rifle has been so changed the past 60 years that, laid beside a New Millennium AR-15 like Springfield Armory’s SAINT Victor, Stoner’s original AR-15 looks akin to a Model T parked next to a new Corvette. Yet, beyond appearances, the SAINT Victor’s practical improvements places it among the best do-almost-everything rifles available today.
Scattered about the 700-year history of rifles are numerous attempts at creating a single rifle that can do all things, as well as claims that someone’s new rifle can, indeed, do it all. Similarly, most of us have conversationally asked or been asked, “If you could have only one rifle, what would it be?” To the avid rifleman and rifle hunter, such concepts are anathema, for who would want only one rifle? Even a lone “switch barrel” rifle would feel like rifle poverty to most.
That said, the candidate closest to being a single do-all rifle would perhaps be the AR-15. Upper receiver/barrel assemblies are quickly switched out to accommodate game from mice to moose, but if limited to a single cartridge, a practical all-arounder for game up to deer size and for competition out to 600 yards or so, would have to be the .223 Remington. Yet there’s no reason to limit ourselves to one cartridge.
AMBIDEXTROUS MONTE CARLO
Such adaptability and versatility has made the AR-15 America’s most popular rifle, with an estimated 20 million-plus in owners’ hands, and several upgrades and enhancements raise Springfield Armory’s newest SAINT Victor a few notches above the milieu. Most obvious on the just-released variant here is the total coverage of Coyote Brown Cerakote finish to protect the metal surfaces. Springfield Armory dropped the Magpul stock and pistol grip found on previous SAINT Victors and went instead with matching Coyote Brown furniture from B5 Systems, which feature a slightly more vertical pistol grip for more ergonomic prone shooting and a civilian version of the Special Operations SOPMOD stock.
The collapsible SOPMOD stock has five locking points that extend length of pull from 11¼ inches out to 14½ inches. It boasts two storage tubes and a butt pad with a dedicated storage cutout underneath for a B5 Systems M:4 Multitasker Tool (sold separately by B5 Systems). The M:4 Multitasker Tool is handy when a minor repair or adjustment is needed in the field, though here it required another tool, pliers, to squeeze a pair of stiff locking tabs to remove the butt pad. The soft rubber of the butt pad offers excellent, almost sticky resistance against sliding across clothing.
Accessing the storage tubes first requires removing the collapsible stock from the rifle in the usual manner of pulling fully downward on the locking lever and pulling the stock rearward off the extension tube. Rotating the locking caps allows withdrawing the storage tubes from the butt stock, and pulling off the gasketed waterproof caps reveals enough tubular storage space for several CR-123A type batteries for a rifle’s optic, a pencil-type oiler, a pull-through bore cleaner or other such accessories.
A very real enhancement provided by those storage tubes is that dimensioning the stock to accommodate them puts a wide, outward flair on the stock sides that provides a cheek rest feeling rather like a Monte Carlo or rollover on a nice bolt action rifle. And its ambidextrous, to boot.
MIDWEIGHT BARREL
Controls are improved, as well. The two-position safety selector is ambidextrous and has a shortened, 45-degree throw, compared to the 90-degree throw standard on the AR-15. The Radian Raptor-LT charging handle, too, is ambidextrous and is extended to aid positive grasping for both rapid manipulation and when a scope ocular lens hangs over the handle. A slight flare at the magazine well opening helps facilitate unimpeded magazine insertion.
Springfield Armory cut a 1:7-inch twist in the 16-inch 4530 chrome-moly barrel for shooters who like the option of heavyweight bullets. With an outside diameter measuring .700 inch, of straight taper and free floated all the way to the receiver, the barrel is neither heavy nor light, a good compromise between target and combat shooting. The barrel wears a hard, black nitride coating. The flash hider is of the prong type and carefully oriented so that muzzle flash emerges at a 45-degree angle away from both sides of the front sight and the shooter’s line of sight. If you’ve ever had to shoot in dim light, you know how important that can be.
Also wearing a tough nitride coating, the bolt carrier group (BCG) features a hard chrome firing pin. Such coatings help ensure a long operational life and can compensate somewhat for the sin of failing to lubricate the BCG properly after the last cleaning.
BETTER THAN A WEDGE
Every AR-15 competition shooter is familiar with the factory rifle’s proclivity for a few thousandths (or more) play between upper and lower receivers, and that one solution is shooter installation of a small rubber or silicone wedge in the lower receiver to contact the upper receiver’s rear takedown pin extension. Springfield Armory has gone one better with its Accu-Tite tensioning screw. This screw passes upward from the lower receiver and a cushioned tip contacts the bottom of the rear takedown pin extension to put upward pressure on the upper receiver. Properly tensioned, the two receiver halves on this SAINT Victor exhibit absolutely zero play no matter how one pulls or twists on the receiver halves. Access to adjust the screw requires removing the pistol grip; detailed video instruction is available in the Springfield Armory website’s The Armory Life section.
OPTIONS UP FRONT
A long Pic rail integral to the fore end matches up perfectly to the rail on the receiver top to provide 21 inches of rail and 49 Pic rail slots for any kind of optic a shooter might desire to mount. Even so, Springfield Armory includes flip-up sights, with the rear sight sporting flip-over large and small apertures. When the small aperture is up, an index mark on the edge of the large aperture aligns with index marks on the sight base to provide a visual indication of windage adjustment. Elevation adjustment is on the front sight and is accomplished with a standard AR-15 four-prong sight adjustment tool.
Seven rows of M-Lok slots surround the fore-end from roughly the 10 o’clock to two o’clock positions and total 53 in number; the 10 and two o’clock rows are appropriately positioned for offset (45 degree angle) sights. Fore end and butt stock accept QD sling swivels, with three QD cups along each side of the rifle. Have you ever forgotten the twist rate or chambering of your many AR-15s—you know, the ones where the barrel stamp is hidden by the fore end? Springfield Armory stamped the barrel of this SAINT Victor, “5.56 NATO 1:7” deliberately positioned so that it can be clearly seen through one of the M-Lok slots.
ACCURACY CHECKS
Springfield Armory ships the SAINT Victor with one 30-round polymer magazine. For accuracy testing, I employed the single shot “sled” I use in slow fire stages of High Power competition, and I spaced shots at about 45-second intervals. To eliminate shooter error as much as possible, I mounted a 36x Weaver T-36 scope and fired from a heavy rest on a concrete bench. For practical use, of course, a smaller variable scope or other optic mounted in quick-disconnect rings is more appropriate. Factory ammunition choices included standard M193 (55-grain FMJ) and M855 (62-grain FMJ) 5.56 mm NATO fodder, as well as some match-grade .223 Remington loads. Results appear in the accompanying table.
Factory .223 Remington and 5.56 mm NATO loads in Springfield Armory SAINT Victor
| Factory Load and Bullet Weight | Muzzle Velocity (f.p.s.) | 100-yard Group (inches) |
|---|---|---|
| Norma TAC-332 55-grain | 3,240 | 2.38 |
| Frontier M193 55-grain | 3,250 | 1.87 |
| Winchester M855 62-grain | 3,100 | 2.22 |
| Berger BT Target 73-grain | 2,820 | 1.84 |
| PPU Match Line HPBT 75-grain | 2,720 | 1.69 |
| Fiocchi MK HPBT 77-grain | 2,725 | 1.93 |
Notes: All loads fired from a heavy rest on a concrete shooting bench at 100 yards from a SAINT Victor with a 5.56 mm NATO chamber and 16-inch barrel (1:7-inch twist) mounted with a 36x scope. Velocities are as advertised, not chronographed. Temperature 90°F, elevation 4,770 feet, wind 0-5 m.p.h. from six o’clock.
There were no failures to feed or extract during accuracy and rapid fire checks, the latter performed with aluminum 20-round magazines. Cases ejected well clear at a 45-degree angle to the rear, landing about 10 feet back. A second advantage of a 36x scope is that its very high magnification puts an intensified focus on solidly resting the rifle and manipulating the trigger, as the slightest movement sends the reticle careening across the half-inch target at 100 yards. While the SAINT Victor’s trigger is good for a production AR-15, its bit of creep and a six-pound break could be improved upon, at least from the perspective of this competition shooter—but then, Springfield Armory does not bill the SAINT Victor as a competition rifle. Rather, it is built to safely digest both 5.56 mm NATO and .223 Remington ammunition, to operate reliably with combat precision, to offer the owner a very wide latitude of sighting choices and accessories, and to survive adverse environmental conditions so that its service life will allow the owner to hand it down to the next generation of shooters.
VARIANT VARIETY
Illustrating the mission-adaptability of Stoner’s rifle, Springfield Armory at present offers 21 different SAINT Victors, including pistol, “California compliant” and AR-10 variants chambered in .308 Winchester. One features a pinned and welded two-inch flash hider terminating a 14-inch barrel, which satisfies NFA rules as being a minimum legal length 16-inch barrel. MSRP’s run from $1,099 to $1,689.
Springfield Armory has taken an already excellent rifle and, in this latest SAINT Victor, upgraded it further with enhancements both practical and aesthetic. Part of the good fortune of being a rifleman living in a still-free country is that we can have any number of rifles specialized to specific tasks—competition, hunting small game and big game, varminting and pest control, self-defense, the pleasure of simply plinking with family and friends and the satisfaction that comes with pride in owning an exceptional firearm. No single rifle can fill all roles perfectly, but if you want a single rifle that can fill most of these roles satisfactorily, the multi-talented SAINT Victor is a candidate.
