Well, I need to chime in on this one.
A little about the 5R rifles from remington, this comes from my law enforcement contact at remington.
When remington builds the M24's, they have a certain specification that the barrels MUST meet in order for them to be put on an M24. If these barrels do not meet these specifications, they are put in the "Reject" pile. This does not mean they are bad barrels, just that they did not meet the measured specifications (kind of like the douglas air gauged vs. douglas premium). So, after a while, remington had a decent number of barrels in the reject pile, so they decided to make some money off of them and mount them and sell them commercially as "mil-spec" rifles. Now, the first time they did this was about 3 years ago, and it was a "limited run" . It sounds like they do this when they get enough barrels to warrent it, and they must have just ran another batch.
I mean nothing bad when I say this, and I hope those that have a 5R rifle don't hate me for saying it, but the 5R mil-spec rifles are generally no better then a standard 700P. Now, like all mass manufactured rifles, there are good ones, and bad ones. It sounds like this particular rifle may just now start to be coming around, and with the work that has been done to it, it sounds like it should be. There is nothing wrong with the 5R rifles, but if you are shopping, and on a budget, you will not be getting a "better" shooting rifle for the extra money spent on a 5R rifle over a 700P.
Also, just a FYI, between the 5R, 700P and 700 LTR, remington consistently sees the best accuracy with the short barreled LTR. I found that interesting... but not totally surprising, as Tac-Ops says they get the best accuracy with 18-20" barrels on their rifles....
MEL