The Army specifically ordered the M24 (Remington 700 variant) with a long action in anticipation of switching over from 7.62mm NATO to .300 Win Mag.
And yet they still replaced the barrel
and receiver.
What's really fun is a 300 WM with a muzzle brake. Wait until someone you intensely dislike is settled in next to you and has just touched the trigger. Then...
When I was working as a range safety officer at a gun club during public sight-in days, a guy was shooting a .300 Weatherby with a muzzle brake. He had a stack of targets on the T-shaped shooting bench just to his right, about 2 feet in back of the muzzle. Every time he fired a round, the forward edges of the targets were lifted off the table about an inch due to the backblast.
I was
very glad to be wearing both muffs and earplugs that day!
If I wanted to purchase the civie equivalent of an M24 would I have to scratch up something close to $6,700
Let's see . . . trued action bedded into a good stock, good barrel, trigger, and optics . . . given the military penchant for overpaying, I suspect you could get a
functionally equivalent rifle for less than half that. (I'm not sure what the extra 50+ lbs of accessories includes.)