Allen Engineering AEM5 MK12 Suppressor Test & Review - GWOT Legend 🇺🇸

Welcome back everybody. As you probably guessed by the thumbnail as well as the title of the video, this is what we are going over today. We're going over this silencer right here. This particular one is made by Allen Engineering and it is the AEM-5. A lot of you guys will recognize it as a silencer from the Mark 12 series of rifles that has been fielded by the United States military, both initially special operations forces and then into conventional forces both in the Marine Corps as well as the Army and then here and there in the Air Force and Navy as well. But in my opinion, it is the most battle-tested silencer the United States military has ever adopted. I honestly don't even think that's debatable. And the thing that's crazy about it is the development story, which we could do a whole video on that if we wanted to. It's one of those crazy stories that kind of the guy who designed it probably shouldn't have, but he was able to bring his unique setup skills. He's an electrical engineer, also knew a lot about photography, was able to use those two things to create the baffle stack that is inside of this particular silencer, which is unique, patented, and is still one of the best performing, sound-wise anyway, silencers on the market, period. A very revolutionary piece of technology in 1993. And like I said, it's still one of the quietest on the market, which we will show you guys here in just a second, because I spent a whole bunch of money on a mil-spec decibel meter. So we're going to head out to the range and actually test it to see if the decibel reduction claims that they do make, and they did make rather for the SOCOM contract, are actually true. But before we do that, I do want to thank the sponsor of today's video, and that is the folks at the Sonoran Desert Institute. So if you guys aren't familiar with them, they're an online educational school. They offer degrees in a wide number of things, gunsmithing, as well as drone technology, a lot of emerging technologies, and they also have courses on suppressors and silencers. So if you guys are interested in becoming a gunsmith, getting into the gun industry in any number of different fields, definitely check out sdi.edu. For those of you who are veterans out there, yes, they do take the GI Bill, and definitely check them out. They've been a sponsor of the channel here for a while, and I have a ton of viewers that have actually gone through their courses, and honestly, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, which is why I feel very comfortable recommending them. Now with that said, let's head out to the range, set this thing up, and test the actual decibel reduction of that, and then come back, go over the details of the silencer, the mounting system, and those sorts of things. We've got the Centurion Mark 12 mounted up here, 1.6 meters off the ground. The actual meter itself is the one meter to the left. We have some Remington .223 in there, and we'll see what we get. All right, now we'll throw the can on and see how she does. Everything's the same, just with the Well, I haven't done the math yet, but that's pretty impressive. You guys saw the real world testing in terms of sound reduction. Now, of course, there's a lot of different things that go into the meter results, humidity, temperature, elevation, etc. So, if you guys see results online that are a few dB off, just know that's probably why. It's just the environmental factors. Now, we were testing it out, again, on this Centurion rifle here, which is their Mark 12 series. Centurion makes a fantastic Mark 12. There will be a review of this rifle coming. It's not out yet, but we've also used this suppressor on my BCM Mark 12 clone. It's not just Mark 12s that these can be used on. If I was making this video 5 or 10 years ago, I probably would say that. I would say it was just the Mark 12s and Mark 12 clones. However, right now, there's actually a lot of different rifle manufacturers that are making compatible systems with this design, very likely due to what you guys just saw. It is one of the quietest silencers on the market, period. The reason for that is a couple of things. Number one, the baffle stack. The way it's actually oriented is one of the most efficient. Again, even today in 2023, which is just crazy to me, designs out there on the market. Additionally, despite its size being relatively long, it doesn't add a ton of length to the end of your gun simply because of the attachment system. We're not going to do the actual attachment here on YouTube because I don't think they actually allow it still. I know it's a gray area as of when I make this video, but basically, you need to have this collar here. It's called the Ops Ink Collar. Now, why am I calling it the Allen Engineering versus the Ops Ink Suppressor? Well, that's a good question. Let me just get sidetracked here and go down that rabbit hole. Ops Ink, they were really interested predominantly in selling this to the military, not so much the civilians. Eventually, according to the ATF anyway, due to poor record keeping with their FFL and SOT, their FFL and SOT were both revoked. Basically, folks at Allen Engineering who partnered with them for the development of the silencer were able to keep their FFL and SOT. Now, they are the current manufacturers of this system. There's a lot of companies right now that make this collar as well as compatible breaks. Basically, when you actually attach it, the threading that goes on is actually on the outside of this break here. A lot of rifles will come with a thread protector on there because it is relatively fine threading on there, but this break here is acting as a sacrificial baffle when the rifle is being fired. That's why you'll see a lot of carbon. I cleaned it up before this video, but that's why you see a lot of it caked on there. That acts as your sacrificial first baffle in there, which makes the silencer very, very long lasting. To date, I don't know of any reports of any military-issued silencers that have had to be thrown out or discarded for not working anymore due to baffle erosion or anything like that. One of the reasons for sure is this sacrificial break. It does a very, very good job at keeping the pressure inside the silencer down in that initial area where the actual pressure is going out into the can. Of course, additionally, you have that volume that comes back here over the barrel, so it doesn't add as much as you would think looking at the actual size of the silencer. Of course, the end of our barrel is right here at the end of those threads, so while it actually looks like that when it's mounted on the gun, you're only adding a few inches to the length of your barrel despite getting additional volume. The way they do that is by going over the barrel. I'm going to mount this up and we'll come right back. As we just intimated on YouTube before cutting away, we do have all of this extra volume back here that goes over the barrel, sort of acting like the sleeve. It makes it not an integrally suppressed rifle, but sort of a de facto two or three inches of integrally suppressed rifle, which is definitely a cool thing. If you think about it in the early 90s, that was mind-blowing technology. This particular silencer here, and I believe all of the ones that are currently being produced, who knows, they may make a different run down the road, have this knurling on there. Going over the G-Watt years, they went back and forth on the knurling. One of the reasons for that is carbon lock. Anybody who fires a high volume of fire through suppressors knows that carbon lock is a real thing. What that means is basically back here where that break is, as well as back here on the collar and where those threads are. If you fire it enough, there's a little bit of carbon that's leaking back into the suppressor, into the mount each time. If you don't actually back it off every few hundred rounds, it will lock up on you and it's really, really difficult to get it off. Now, the best way to do it, in my opinion, is actually fire a few rounds, get it hot, then try to back it off because it is easier once you heat it up, particularly on the inside. That's one of the easiest ways to do it. However, if you need to put a wrench strap on there and wrench it off, it does help to have that knurling on there to back it off. There is that capability. Another feature that you always want to look for when talking about silencers is flash suppression. Of course, for shooting at night, you don't want to give your position away. If you look at a lot of the modern designs out there on the market, they will typically use some sort of end cap to enhance their flash suppression. The folks who designed this did so with the way they designed their baffle stack. Now, a lot of modern cans do that as well. Surefire comes to mind. Surefire's RC2 series, one of the RC2 upgrades versus the original, is they actually changed their baffle stack to be very, very similar to what the Mark 12 uses because the last few baffles in the silencer do a great job at flash suppression. Again, some of the other competitive offerings out there on the market, like if you look at what Dead Air does or Hux works, they'll add something onto the actual end cap, but another way to do it is by the baffle design. Again, modern companies are doing that just now in the last five or so years, and they did this back in the early 90s, and it's one of the best flash hiding silencers out there on the market. When you pair that with the ammunition that was designed to go with it, the flash signature was virtually zero. Excellent, excellent in that regard. The last thing to talk about, of course, is going to be weight. We'll roll on the size and weight here on this one, but keep in mind this system requires the collar as well as the brake to go with it, so you have to look at it as an all-in-one type of system. Now, designed in the early 90s by modern standards, it's on the heavier side for 5.56 silencers, but there are a ton that are currently being produced right now in modern design configurations that are much, much heavier than this and don't have anywhere near the sound suppression that this one has. Honestly, although this thing is 30 years old at this point, which is crazy to say, but it's absolutely true, it is absolutely, in my opinion, one of the best 5.56 silencers on the market. If you're not really concerned about weight and you're fine with the mounting system, which again, there's a lot of companies that are making mounting systems and barrels that are compatible with this right now, if you are fine with that and plus you want the old-school cool kind of look on there, it is definitely one to consider in my opinion. It's just a phenomenal performer. We will continue using these on the channel probably for the next few decades because I don't think they're going to be irrelevant anytime soon. So, at this point, I think we've covered all the important things about the AEM-5 suppressor with the exception of the history of it with DoD and all that stuff. If you guys want to see that video, let me know. I don't really do history too much here on the channel. I'm not forgotten weapons, but if you guys want to see that type of video, I absolutely can do it. The history on this one is one of the most interesting of any silencers ever in the history of mankind. I'll leave a link down below if you guys want to look into that. Before we close the video out, one thing I always want to point out is where you guys can see my content because on YouTube or Rumble or wherever I'm posting videos, that is sort of like the final product, but on my social media sites that you guys see here on your screen, I am posting things as we test them throughout the year. So, I've had this one in for five years. We've been posting updates for five years at least at this point. So, definitely follow me at the sites below if you guys want to see up-to-date information as these videos are being put together over the years. Also, if this thing goes on sale, anything like that, any of the ammo, any of the optics, laser designators, all of those things, if they go on sale, they will first be posted over at my social media sites. After that, they'll be sent out my daily deals email. You can sign up for that at the website here on your screen. Daily deals email contains six to eight of the best deals that we find around the internet. If it's in that email, it is the cheapest I know of anywhere on the internet on that day. So, that way it saves you guys some money obviously, but also saves you some time because I've already done the price comparisons for you. Additionally, if you guys are watching this video and you're subscribed, thank you. If you're not subscribed, definitely hit the subscribe button. If you've done that, you're still not seeing two to four videos a week here on the channel. You can sign up for my email list at the website here on your screen. It's a totally different email list. This one goes out once a month rather than daily. And basically, it just has all of my videos since the previous month's email went out. So, that way there's no big tech overlords censoring your eyes from my content. And with that, we'll close it out. Thank you all for watching. I truly appreciate it. I look forward to seeing everybody in the next video.