.224 Valkyrie

Testing a New Varmint/Target Cartridge

John Haviland

Unless you’ve been in a coma for most of the last year, you’ve no doubt heard of Federal’s new .224 Valkyrie cartridge. Federal states the Valkyrie is based on the 6.8 SPC case necked down to .224 caliber, beats the ballistics of all other AR-15 cartridges and offers comparable performance to larger cartridges like the 6.5 Creedmoor with about half the recoil. Those are substantial claims.

At the outset, Federal offered four loads for its Valkyrie that focused on heavy, .22-caliber bullets, and stated the following velocities fired from a 24-inch barrel with a 1:7 rifling twist: Federal Premium Nosler 60-grain Ballistic Tip Varmint, 3,300 fps; Federal American Eagle 75-grain Total Metal Jacket, 3,000 fps; Federal Premium Gold Medal Sierra 90-grain MatchKing, 2,700 fps; Federal Fusion 90-grain soft point, 2,700 fps.

The popularity of a cartridge depends initially on the availability of rifles. Savage Arms, Federal’s sister company, chambers the cartridge in its MSR15 Valkyrie and Recon LRP rifles. Airborne Arms, Barrett, CMMG, CMT JP Rifles, Mossberg and LaRue Tactical are also offering ARs for the cartridge. Palmetto State Armory is making an AR upper and Masterpiece Arms a bolt-action rifle, and there are probably others.

The Valkyrie Case

Federal employees searched through Norse folklore for a name for the cartridge. According to Norse mythology, Valkyries chose who died and who lived in battle. These female figures took those who died and brought them to Valhalla, the afterlife hall of the slain. Valkyrie goes along with Beowulf, as in .50 Beowulf, and Grendel, as in 6.5 Grendel, two other cartridges chambered in AR rifles.