In the early 1990s, Knight’s Armament was approached by an unnamed agency looking for a very specialized weapon. It needed to be a repeating firearm that left no brass behind while being effectively silent and capable of shooting a 1.5″ group at 100 yards. To meet these requirements, Knight’s chose to begin with a .44 Magnum Ruger Redhawk revolver. They added a stock, suppressor, and scope mounts easily, but to be functionally silent they had to seal the cylinder gap of the system. This was done by making a unique new cartridge with the bullet held in a sabot. Upon firing the sabot move forward a tiny fraction of an inch and a rubber o-ring on the front of the sabot sealed it against the back of the cylinder. After the bullet left the bore, the firing pressure abated and the sabot retained enough clearance for the cylinder to revolve. After extensive work, they were able to manufacture this ammunition well enough to meet the accuracy requirements.
In total, about 100 of these revolving rifles were made, for two different clients. One batch used .30-caliber bullets and the other used a 7mm bore. The project was called “r-squared” at Knight’s; a shortening of Revolving Rifle.
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