From your original post in another thread, your "testing" involved dropping a M3 PMag, observing some visual damage and writing a post about it without even attempting to live fire the magazine in a rifle.

Not to be rude but this hardly rates as testing in any sense of the imagination.

Our magazine testing involves repeatable/documentable tests, controls, large sample size, live fire testing and qualified analysis of the results by a team of mechanical engineers. We supplement this with documented feedback fielding millions of PMags in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan of the last 8 years.

As posted before, the primary goal of the PMag is reliability under all conditions. It is our view that this reliability comes from specific geometry that is consistently maintained by high "tensile" strength material. Other magazine manufactures gain "impact" strength by making their material softer (losing tensile strength). On impact resistance the PMag M3 already exceeds the venerable USGI by several fold in all tests and is consistently more reliable, especially after the magazines have been combat deployed for a few weeks.

The primary reason we released the PMag M3 vs USGI test videos is to highlight that the most important thing a magazine needs to to is function flawlessly during firing, not to be a substitute for a hammer. Even these tests are listed as unscientific as they lack multiple samples but the results are indicative of the in house testing we do with jigs and multiple samples.

If you have not read the PMag design concepts it basically says functionally reliability under all conditions is the priority of the PMag. Even now with the introduction of M855A1 it is publicly acknowledged (by those running it) that the only magazine that can reliability run M855A1 without accelerated damage to the rifle, is the PMag M3.

We can make the material softer (lose tensile strength) and gain impact strength which is what other designs do. We choose not to because as I stated before-


This does not mean we have stopped R&D on improving impact strength while keeping a high tensile strength. Expect a steady increase in this area as polymer technology advances.

That said the current M2 and M3 magazines are several fold stronger than the previous MRev PMag (released in 2008), yet the MRev PMag managed to become the most fielded polymer magazine in US combat history and the majority of MRevs made it though multi year combat deployments in the millions without issue. Another example of this was when the UK issued the EMag (the Euro version of the MRev) as their exclusive magazine for combat operations in Afghanistan starting in 2011 and found the EMag needed to be replaced due to damage substantially less than the steel magazine it replaced.

I find it really remarkable that people are supposedly getting GEN M3 PMAGs to crack at room temperature in circumstances far less severe than the testing they survive as a matter of course in basic QC and validated by third party testing, even at -60. I also find it interesting that these reports are usually followed by some endorsement of brand X magazine, which survives rough handling, but of course, no real, statistically significant measure of actual performance as a feeding device for brand X is ever offered, because that's not something that other mags can do and look good in the comparison in any of our testing.

There are millions of PMAGs in current worldwide military service. They work pretty much flawlessly in every conceivable condition, dust, wet, hot, cold, etc, with all ammunition types, including M855A1, and they do not alter or diminish their feeding performance after rough handling like metal or softer magazines can, over thousands and thousands of rounds. You can see plenty of third party high round count stuff that's out there on the web using PMAGs, not including all of the OEM manufacturer testing and unreleased stuff, so you don't just have to take our word for it.

Yes, we vigorously defend our IP, because we've spent a lot of time, money, and energy developing the most reliable magazine for the AR/M4/M16 platforms, and that's worth something. It's not bullying the new guys. It's defending against theft.

There are choices, and we don't begrudge anyone that wants to try or use another brand. Disingenuous attempts at attacking the reputation of our products in an attempt to try to capture some market share are what brings us out to defend our products based on actual performance that anyone is welcome to try and refute. Apologies to anyone where that's not the case, and we readily admit any real limitations we have--but it's too easy to take a snide swipe at someone's reputation these days, and it's not something we can tolerate.

We've made magazines out of polysulfones, polycarbonates, nylons, and just about everything else...reinforced, unreinforced, with and without metal reinforcements, and continue to experiment as technologies improve, and we test everyone else's efforts, too. We can make magazines that will never, ever crack on a feed lip drop. It's not hard. Making magazines that pass military standards for rough handling (including feed lip drops) dust and grit, high and low temperature, loaded weapon drop, solvent resistance, etc., that drop free from all in-spec lowers, and feed 100% reliably with all ammunition types during all of this, and having the dimensional rigidity and durability to maintain that performance over time is the key, and why a PMAG is what it is.

We have said before that we don't want to get into a public pissing contest with Magpul. However, we felt this post needed responding to. Let me start by saying to everyone on this forum that we have no hard feelings towards Magpul regarding their patent suit against us. That issue has been resolved and we have moved on.

What I do take issue with is Magpul insinuating that we are somehow responsible for people posting on these forums about their Pmags cracking or breaking. We have nothing to do with these various forum members and we have nothing to hide. Don't be angry at us because consumers are starting to realize how easy it is to break a Gen M3 Pmag. In all of our destructive testing we have destroyed many mags, plenty of which have been Gen 3 Pmags. In our testing the M3 Pmag developed a crack 100% of the time when dropped fully loaded from 6ft on the feedlips on concrete. That's right, not 50%, not 75%, but 100% of the time.

We have said before that we will just have to disagree on the best approach to making the best AR mag. Magpul thinks the mag needs to have the tensile strength of steel to be reliable, but that is not what we have seen in our testing. We feel that as long as the mag is rigid enough to keep its form while feeding the weapon then it will function. There is no need to argue back and forth about this, we just don't agree, no big deal.

As I said before, we will not be going back and forth with Magpul regarding this any more. But anytime they accuse us, or insinuate anything about us, we will defend our position.

We did not hum and haw at all. If you read our Magpul Foundations you will see we are firmly on the side of the individual over the collective (as is the US Constitution). Punishing individual officers for the collective actions of their states elected politicians never sat well with us. Under that rational, companies could have punished me individually while serving in the USMC (by not selling me a potentially life saving product) just because Bill Clinton was elected President -something outside of my control. The following is the statement we released on the subject for those interested. It would be interesting to see how many of those business that jumped onto that particular bandwagon would fight and move their tax money out of the state in the same way we did in Colorado.

Unfortunately actual live fire combat operations has the effect of looking for stuff that works over the lowest bid item. HK SA80A2 magazines just happened to be around at the right time when everyone had liquid funds and there were no other alternatives to the USGI in the marketplace.

My statements then follow what I said just now. -

Then-



Now -



Our view, as always,  is individual restrictions for actions outside of the individuals control is ethos of the collective mindset.

MRAPs and SAPI plates would never have been generally fielded if not for ongoing operations on a two way range.

High magazine related malfunctions in USGI magazines were very evident with just one day on a USMC KD (Known Distance) course back in the early/mid 1990s. At this time the magazine was in place with no upgrade since it was first fielded in Vietnam.

Green followers were introduced as a direct result of a catastrophic malfunction that occurred with one magazine vendor (Sanchez). Malfunctions with the USGI magazine were so commonplace that a small fix for this one minor issue had the effect of reducing the USGI magazine failures by almost half!

It was not until several years later when true anti tilt followers were introduced (First by Magpul in 2004 then by the military in 2009 with the "tan is the plan" magazines) that the USGI even came close to a malfunction level of their Euro counterparts.

Again if not for operations concerning the GWOT, the tan follower magazines would also never likely have been funded or fielded.

Sounds like what we said way back in the original Magpul Manual (1999)

I'm not even sure where to start on this response. I feel we need to give an explanation of how this patent suit all went down so everyone knows what happened, why it happened, and what the outcome really means. When we started designing our AR mag, like most new companies, we did not have a ton of resources. That said, we did the best we could trying to make sure we did not infringe on anyone's IP (intellectual property). We designed our follower to have complete no-tilt functionality with one front leg. Our back leg was simply there to act as a spring guide, nothing more. Magpul's patents claim (among other things) that the follower is comprised of 2 legs, front and back, wherein the legs limit tilt of the follower in the housing. So we thought we were ok. Turns out Magpul felt it still infringed on their IP. We became aware of the patent infringement suit on in mid October of last year. Once we found out, we sought legal help to find out if, and how we were infringing. We quickly realized that removing the back leg altogether from our follower would removed any doubt about our design infringing on their patents. As soon as this was determined, we implemented that change in production on our own. This was in mid November. We reached a settlement agreement with Magpul right around March of this year. As part of that settlement, we agreed to pay magpul royalties for every mag we sold up to the time the change was implemented.  Magpul themselves agree that with our change, our mag no longer infringes on their patents.

I want to state this again, we have no hard feelings towards Magpul for defending their IP. This issue has been resolved. Our mags do not in any way infringe on Magpul's patents so there would be no reason for us to pay royalties to them. Since our back leg was simply there to act as a spring guide, there was absolutely zero affect on the performance of our follower, which is why it was an easy decision to remove that back leg.

We respect others IP and have no desire to steal anyone's hard work. The only reason this happened in the first place was because our resources were too limited for us to get proper patent analysis (this costs 10's of thousands of dollars). We also looked around the mag world and saw some other large name companies making mags with 2 legs on their followers (HK comes to mind) so we thought we were ok. We have learned a lot from this experience and we will not make the same mistake again. That said, we made a mistake and we are man enough to admit it.

Thanks to everyone to taking the time to read this and understand what happened. We still appreciate everyone's support and we look forward to continuing to bring innovative products to market for you guys.

Thanks for the kind words. It is not doubt tough. Magpul makes a good mag. And they have dominated the market. I just want to make sure everyone knows that we are not saying that Pmags are in any way a bad mag. Even USGI mags are good reliable mags now days. We don't think everyone should go out in the yard and build a bonfire to burn their Pmags or GI mags. All we are saying is that we feel we have taken the AR mag to new heights and when the time comes that you need some more AR mags, we ask that you take a look at ours.