Sniper Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Ultima Ratio: RAID and the Founding of PGM Precision

June 17, 2023 Ian McCollum 6

Thanks to Creedmoor Sports for sponsoring this video, and providing a couple of fine shooting mats to experiment with. Check them out for all your long range competition needs! The Ultima Ratio was the rifle […]

M1903A4: America’s WW2 Sniper Rifle

June 14, 2023 Ian McCollum 27

The United States Army entered World War Two with neither sniper rifles nor a sniper training program. As troops began to see combat, requests began to come back to the War Department that both were […]

M28/76: A Finnish Competition & Sniper Mosin

June 3, 2023 Ian McCollum 5

The Finns developed several difference scopes rifles in the 1930s, but none were made in large quantities, and they were not really much used during the Winter War or Continuation War. The first post-war consideration […]

SSG-69: Steyr’s Cold War Sniper Rifle

March 2, 2023 Ian McCollum 15

In the 1960s, Steyr Daimler Pusch developed a modern sniper rifle for the Austrian military (and also for commercial civilian sale). It was adopted as the SSG-69 (Scharfschützen-Gewehr; sharpshooter’s rifle), replacing the SSG-98k in military […]

SSG-98k: Austria Repurposes German Sniper Rifles

February 27, 2023 Ian McCollum 14

In the aftermath of World War Two, the Austrian Army was basically disarmed and disbanded. When it was allowed to reform in the 1950s, it needed new armaments, and in 1958 it adopted the SSG-98k […]

Ian Ruins the Elbonian Sniper Corps

January 14, 2023 Ian McCollum 20

Today’s Q&A is from Tim on Patreon: “The great nation of Elbonia is looking to spin up a sniper program. But they know better than to adopt ZF41 scopes. What rifles do you attempt to […]

Belgian Congo Force Publique FN49 Sniper

October 7, 2022 Ian McCollum 2

One of the rarest versions of the FN49 rifle is the Belgian Congo contract, made to equip the Force Publique there – the military force in the territory when it was a Belgian colony. A […]

Scrome J8 Commercial Production Update (For the FR-F2)

August 21, 2022 Ian McCollum 4

Scrome, the original maker of the J8 scope used by the French Army on the FR-F2 sniper rifle, is making a commercial run of J8 scopes for collectors who have the recently-released surplus FR-F2 rifles. […]

Spanish M43: The Worst Sniper Rifle Ever Made

August 3, 2022 Ian McCollum 13

The standard Spanish infantry rifle from 1943 until the adoption of the CETME was the M43, an 8mm Mauser short rifle made at the La Coruña arsenal. As is fairly common, a sniper rifle variant […]

Scrome J8: A Proper Scope for the FR-F2 Sniper

May 21, 2022 Ian McCollum 6

The French Army used a single pattern of rifle scope from 1949 all the way until 1995 – the APX L806, which was essentially a German ZF-4. It was finally replaced officially in 1995, with […]