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The 6.8 caliber has had difficulty achieving wide-spread acceptance by the 2A community in the United States. We love our 223 Remington, 300 Blackout, and 308 Winchester, shying away from anything metric not named 9mm.
The 6.8 Remington SPC and 6.8 Western are two cartridges that have not become as popular as they ought to be. Living in the sweet spot between the 308 and 223, the 7mm bullet diameter offers shooters ridiculously high ballistic coefficients, low felt recoil, and exceptional long-range shooting capabilities.
Although the 6.8 SPC and 6.8 Western occupy the same caliber slot, they have wildly different capabilities as they were designed with different purposes and applications in mind. The 6.8 SPC was designed for the AR-15 semi-automatic sporting rifle while the 6.8 Western was designed as a hunting cartridge for bolt-action rifles.
The 6.8 SPC was plagued with poor chamber design drawings that led to slightly over pressurized rounds. This caused the military to balk and the 6.8 SPC all but died on the table. Redone SPC II chambers resolved the issue but the damage was already done. In contrast, the 6.8 Western is a round that hasn't had its time in the sun yet. As a proprietary cartridge, only Browning currently makes ammo for the round and Winchester and Browning are the only manufactures that offer rifles in the cartridge.
However, the 6.8 Western has the advantage of being a short action cartridge with ballistics akin to a 7mm Rem Mag, which is impressive for a lighter short action rifle.
Only time will tell if these two cartridges will make it, but the 6.8 Western is clearly a long range cartridge while the 6.8 SPC was designed to enhance the lethality of the AR-15 platform.
Read more here: https://ammo.com/comparison/68-western-vs-68-spc