DANIEL DEFENSE
DDM4 V11 By James Tarr
With its slim handguard profile and distinctive furniture, this is a great looking and good-shooting rifle.
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Lead Photo by Mike Anschuetz
D
aniel Defense has been making quality, dependable rifles for years, but perhaps the incident that has gotten them the most publicity in the history of the company was the NFL refusing to air their TV commercial during the 2013 Super Bowl. Nothing will garner the love and support of AR fans and politically active gun owners like getting unfairly treated by the mainstream media. Media drama aside, Daniel Defense has continued to turn out quality rifles, and one of their most recent models is the DDM4 V11. That name admittedly doesn’t flow off the tongue, and may be hard to remember, so let’s simplify it. Every rifle Daniel Defense (DD) makes (except their Mk18 series) they refer to as an M4 (hence the DDM4), and they currently make a number of different models. This is the V11 model. There are in fact a number of different versions of the V11, with the only difference being the finish. The gray
V11 finished in Tornado Cerakote looked very intriguing, but for this article I secured their basic black model. Cerakoted models cost an additional $130. The standard V11 sports a 16-inch barrel made of chrome moly vanadium steel. It is cold hammer-forged, with a 1:7 twist and a mid-length gas system. It is MP tested and phosphate coated. The barrel sports DD’s “government profile”—in fact a pseudo-M16A2 profile. The tortured process by which this barrel design came about is typical for the military, as is the less than ideal result. The 20-inch M16A2 barrel is thicker in front of the gas block than behind, and the 16inch Daniel Defense barrel replicates its dimensions, only switching from a rifle-length gas system to a mid-length. The last place you want to add extra weight on a barrel is near the muzzle, and as a result, this barrel profile will give you more muzzle whip (decreasing accuracy), espe[Cont. to page 9] cially when hot.
ON THE
COVER The Daniel Defense DDM4 V11 sports a slim fore-end that is a lot more comfortable than previous generations of quad rails, but fits plenty of accessories with the KeyMod system. Photo by Mike Anschuetz.
DANIEL DEFENSE DDM4 V11