Sunday Gun Day Vol. III Ep. XXXIII - The Curious Case of the Remington 700 Etronx

There are, however, a few exceptions. There have been some companies that played around with electronic ignition, rather than an impact-fired primer. One of these companies, interestingly enough, is Big Green – Remington – who produced an electronically-fired version of their immortal Model 700 rifle, called the Etronx.

The Design

The Etronx was, by outward appearance, a standard Remington 700 bolt gun. Most of the way the gun worked was the same as any Model 700. Loading, unloading, and shooting all worked the same. It was the firing that was different; the electronic trigger ignited a special primer in the cartridge, not with a physical blow, but with a pulse of electricity.

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Remington’s owner’s manual for the Etronx described its operation:

Outwardly, the Model 700 EtronX looks and feels like a standard Model 700. In fact, the rifle shares many of the same components with the Model 700. Internally, however, the Model 700 EtronX utilizes a new, patented technology to fire electric primed Remington® EtronX ammunition. Where a standard Model 700 and other conventional firearms utilize the impact of a firing pin on a percussion primer to ignite the cartridge’s powder, the electronic ignition system of the Model 700 EtronX uses an electrical pulse to accomplish the same action with electric primed EtronX ammunition. The electronics that generate the electrical firing pulse are also used to control the operation of the firearm. The firearm’s electronics:

• Monitor the position of the safety mechanism and key switch.
• Control the firing of the firearm so that a fire pulse is generated only if certain predetermined conditions are met.
• Check for the presence of a round of ammunition in the rifle’s chamber when the firearm is in the ready-to-fire state (round present sensing).
• Self-monitor the state and condition of the electronics.
• Monitor the battery’s voltage.
• Communicate the operating condition of the firearm to the shooter through the LED (Light Emitting Diode) mounted in the top of the stock just behind the receiver tang.

That seems a lot to ask out of one rifle and a couple of batteries.

Now, about this, at the time of its introduction, I had some questions.

First, battery life. In those days, it wasn’t unusual for me to spend a week in an elk camp in a pretty wild place. How many batteries would I have to pack along to ensure I could shoot when the chance came? How would cold weather affect battery life?

Second, can I buy these primers? How do they have to be handled? Will a spark of static electricity set them off? If the answer to that is yes, will a spark set off an entire box of these things, which would make quite a bang and send little shards of metal flying around?

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I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one asking these questions. But consider this; the battery was one question, and the primer, another. But what if you could come up with something that used traditional cartridges? Well, we tried.

My Own Idea

On a related note: Some years back, I got the idea for something I never tried, which was to take a Winchester 100 semi-auto rifle and make a bullpup version. I intended to use a nice black walnut blank for the stock, with the notion of making a short, light rifle that was easy to handle and compact, for hunting in steep country or heavy woods, where the bullpup design would be easier to engage targets of opportunity with. I never built one, in part because I was concerned about how to link the trigger, which would have been forward of the box magazine, to the sear, which released the striker to fire the rifle.

One of the options I considered was not an electronically-fired rifle, which required special ammo, but instead an electronic trigger, where the trigger itself tripped a switch, which was connected by a wire through the stock to a solenoid that released the sear. A buddy of mine and I hit up a Radio Shack (yes, it was that long ago), bought some parts, took a couple of old Mauser triggers, and played around. Neither of us was satisfied with how it worked. I never built the rifle.

The Guns and Ammo

The Etronx rifle used ammunition with a special electric primer. These were available in .22-250 Remington, .220 Swift, and the .243 Remington.

The Etronx was made from 2000 to 2003. It’s unclear how many were made, but it appears the rifle didn’t blow up many skirts. These were still in the days when most shooters were pretty traditionally-minded, and I will say that, for myself, after having read a couple of magazine articles about this piece at the time, I was of the opinion that if I were facing a trophy buck, I wasn’t going to take a chance of losing it to a dead battery. A compressed spring, after all, works every time.

The whole thing just didn’t work out. And I suspect a big part of the reason was simply this: It’s best to be able to replace your ammo easily, in case your supply is lost somehow. That’s the main reason that, for decades, I’ve advised new shooters that if you’re going to buy one big-game rifle for North American hunting, buy a .30-06 or a .308, because you can get ammo in almost any Walmart, hardware store, or gun shop in the country. It’s not so easy if you’re shooting the latest Eargesplitten Loudenboomer Magnum wildcat – or a special cartridge that uses an electronic primer.

In the end, the Etronx ended up being what Remington probably hoped it wouldn’t: A curious footnote in the development of American sporting firearms.