Monday, April 9, 2012

Rapid Reticle

Via Borepatch

The primary feature of this optic is the reticle. It was developed with the idea in mind that the average skull we might want to shoot at is approximately a 9” target (not counting turban, qaraqul or pakol). Likewise the shoulder width is going to be approximately 18”. They used this as a foundation to develop the “integrated head and shoulders ranging system”(Rapid Reticle).

PFI was contracted by the Army’s REF (Rapid Equipping Force) to build an optic for the M14 that would allow rapid engagement of multiple targets at various distance. The RR-900 is the result. It is not a traditional sniper scope though it can be used as one.

“This isn’t built for ‘precision sniping’, so to speak,” Richard Nguyen of PFI told me. He made a few minutes to talk to me while waiting for a flight home to CA from Atlanta after spending some time at Ft. Benning. “This wasn’t built to punch the center out of a dime at a thousand yards, though it could do so in the right hands. This was made specifically for the kind of fight Squad Designated Marksmen are in right now in Afghanistan.”

The optic is also built to be very intuitive so there’s a very short learning curve. A Sergeant Major at Ft. Benning two desk clerks just in from BMT, shooters who had never shot past the 300, and in approximately 15 minutes had them engaging targets out to 800m. Admittedly, that’s not on a two-way range in bad conditions, but think about what they could have done if they’d been given two or three days to learn how to exploit the optic to its fullest advantage, to compensate for wind and environmental conditions.

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