Sniper Flash Cards Vs Mildot Master

[shaka]

reply to Akodo

#1) The Army would not release a sniper's fingerprint file to the Pakastanis, but they cannot scrub every police file in America. Anyway, Pakastan could go through Scottland Yard (they used to be an English colony), which certainly has access to American files.

Bottom line: Don't leave crap like sliderules lying around in a country that we have not declared war on.

#2) My system is self-described as being for shots out to 650 yards. Mildot Master's system is self-described as being for shots out to 2000 yards. And they are the ones I am criticizing. So, of course it is relevant to discuss the self-description of the system being criticized.

You criticized my system and failed to note my own self-description until I told you to. Get it straight who is being criticized, please.

In 2004 I wrote:

"The ballistic data used for examples in the instructions for the Mildot Master® are as follows:

yards:_____100___150___200___250___300____400____500
inches:___+2.1"__+1.8"___0.0__-3.4"__-8.7"__-25.1"__-50.7"

The first thing one notices about this chart is that they have the fine 50 yard increments on the wrong end."

Bottom line: Mildot Master has got the fine increments on the wrong end of their scale and that is stupid whatever the maximum range is given as.

You write, "serious shooters know drop is not linear and would take that fact into account."

Fine, but I'm not criticizing the shooter, serious or otherwise, I am criticizing Mildot Master, and they are the one's who screwed up their printed chart.

Again, get it straight who is being criticized, please.

Why is it the customer's responsibility to fix the printed charts that come with the product that they buy? I don't ask my customers to fix things I've screwed up - I made sure that my product worked correctly before shipping it.

#3 and #4)

In 2004 I wrote:

"BSA gets the nod! The magnification is too high and the 1/8 MOA adjustments are too fine, but these are relatively minor problems and ones that will be easy for BSA to fix in the future. (Assuming, of course, that they read this review.) The illuminated reticle is a big plus in a mil-dot scope and is a feature that can only be obtained from Leupold for ten times the price of a BSA.

"I would like to see BSA make a fixed 10X scope, but I realize that people have come to expect variable power scopes, so I would be satisfied if BSA made a 3 - 9X scope that is parallax free at 300 yards and has an illuminated mil-dot reticle and 1/4 MOA adjustments. In the meantime, the 4 - 16X BSA with the illuminated mil-dot reticle is the best scope on the market."

At that time, the only mil-dot scopes under $1000 were the BSA and Leupold's VX-II Tactical and their Vari-X III Tactical. I stand by my assessment that in 2004, in spite of its too-high magnification, the BSA was the best of the lot.

As I clearly stated, the magnification was too high, but I felt one could tolerate this to get an illuminated reticle, which was unavailable in 2004 from anyone else except Leupold's $1800 Mark IV, which was outside my price range - ten times BSA's $180 price tag.

As I point out in my 2008 update, there are more scopes available now and one can get an illuminated mil-dot scope with nine or ten power, as I have always recommended.

 

[akodo]

well I disagree, and I don't see any reconcilliation in sight. Good day sir, welcome to my ignore list.

 

[CDignition]

the Us Army Snipers have recorded certified hits at 1450 Yards with a 308. Im pretty sure all US military sniper teams will not benefit or want to use a sniper flash card system. Ill point this page out to the boyz over on SnipersHide and see how they react. it should be fairly entertaining.

 

[jerkface11]

jerkface11 writes:
This is the 21st century. There are currently a couple of rifle scopes with BUILT IN laser rangefinders.

I reply:
Yes, it is the 21st century and helicopters and tanks have FLIR that can see a laser range-finder.



Yeah I can't count the times I've had tanks and helicopters hunting me. Oh and what exactly is a civilian sniper?

 

[shaka]

Reply to CDignition

CDignition writes:

"the Us Army Snipers have recorded certified hits at 1450 Yards with a 308. Im pretty sure all US military sniper teams will not benefit or want to use a sniper flash card system."

I reply:

My system is intended for designated marksmen in an urban environment. I write on my homepage, "a sniper or designated marksman can get a bullet on his or her target in five seconds without a spotter or any ancillary devices."

Clearly, I am not talking about 1450-yard shots. I called it "Sniper Flash Cards" because the word "sniper" gets a hundred times more Google hits than "designated marksman." But, in communication with military men, I am always quick to point out that it is for designated marksmen, not snipers.

You are making the same mistake that MW was, whom I reply to in my FAQs:

MW writes:

"The bullet weight, BC, sectional density and MV all play a key role in determining the trajectory. Your cards over-simplify the matter. They also do not take under account parallax adjustment which will spoil the mil reading and point of aim, they do not take under account the mirage, light conditions which can create a wash out, and it does not take under account other environmental conditions such as conflicting winds due to terrain."

I reply:

"MW forgot to mention humidity and the rotation of the Earth – and what about sunspots?

"He is over-thinking the problem. We're not trying to put a man on the moon here. We're just trying to whack someone a quarter of a mile away. I clearly state on my homepage:

"'While no help with Hathcockian cross-valley shots, the Aguilar System is ideally suited to fast-paced urban combat within 600m.'

"Like his previous attempt to obfuscate by pretending that an AR-15 is a sniper rifle, he is now obfuscating by pretending that urban snipers spend all their time lining up 1000-yard shots. No they don't. While such shooting is great for impressing one's buddies, it is not what wins wars.

"An infatuation with making long shots is the surest route to getting killed in urban combat. MW’s desire to impress his buddies will lead him to make tactical blunders like climbing up on the roof of a building or engaging mounted troops by firing down a long straight street. In the former case, he will get trapped up there and, in the latter case, they will rush him. MW thought that his buddies would be impressed with a 1000-yard shot? How impressed are they now that his head is on a stake in the enemy's camp? And his $2500 tactical rifle with its $1800 Mark IV scope is now in the hands of an enemy sniper who knows how to use it – use it for killing, not for grandstanding.

"In my Outline of Sniper Tactics, I write:

E) Hug. Move alongside a column of troops 300 to 500 yards from them.

__1) Inside 200 yards you are vulnerable to machineguns and RPGs.

__2) Outside 600 yards you are vulnerable to artillery and air strikes.

__3) Stay in the safety zone; fire when there is an obstacle to shoot over.

"There is absolutely no reason to engage the enemy from farther away than 600 yards and you will do just fine staying within 500 yards. If you are farther away than that, not only is it hard to hit your shots, but you are in grave danger of getting shelled.

"Inside 600 yards there is no need to spend half an hour "doping" a shot. Estimate the wind to the nearest five mph (2.5 mph for experts), hold over on the nearest mil-dot (half mil-dot for experts), and fire the damned shot!"

 

[shaka]

Reply to CDignition

CDignition writes:

"Ill point this page out to the boyz over on SnipersHide and see how they react. it should be fairly entertaining."

I quote from my FAQs:

Question:

"I read in Snipershide's website that you said the Leupold Mark IV is 'useless' and recommend those el cheapo BSA scopes instead. Is that true? Incidentally, I don't think they meant the term 'Ass Hat' in a complimentary way."

Answer:

"Criticizing their beloved Mark IV is not the way to endear oneself to the guys at Sniper’s Hide. However, I never said the Mark IV was useless. I said a $180 BSA with an illuminated mil-dot reticle is better than a non-illuminated $450 Leupold VX-II 'tactical' scope and I stand by that assessment. The $1800 Mark IV is better than both, as is to be expected from optics costing ten times as much. But my typical customer, leading his peasant army in that impoverished third-world country, cannot afford the Mark IV.

"A $520 off-the-shelf deer rifle with a $180 BSA is effective out to about 650 yards. A $2500 "tactical" rifle with an $1800 Mark IV is effective out to about 1000 yards, but only if the sniper is accompanied by a spotter equipped with a $1000 spotting scope and a $300 laser rangefinder.

"Suppose a third-world 'strongman' gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to invade his neighbor. Both countries have a $560,000 budget for equipping their snipers. Emulating the rich Americans, the strongman fields 100 two-man sniper teams, each capable of occasionally making a 1000-yard shot. Knowing that they need elevated positions to even be able to see 1000 yards away and that they do not have the support of the people and cannot hide in private homes anyway, they must take only static positions on the rooftops of tall buildings.

"The defender fields 800 snipers (actually, designated marksmen) capable of quickly and accurately engaging targets from 200 to 650 yards away before jumping on their motorcycles and moving to a new location. Since they have the support of the people, they can hide their bikes inside people’s houses, fire their rifles out the windows when a target presents itself and then scram. (The motorcycles are privately owned, so their cost is not included in the $560,000 budget.)

"You tell me: In fast-paced urban combat, which side is going to win? The 800 highly mobile defenders using the system I advocate? Or the 100 stationary attackers using the system Sniper’s Hide advocates? I think the answer is obvious. 'Quantity,' as Stalin said, 'has a quality of its own.'"

 

[shaka]

Reply to jerkface11

jerkface11 writes:

"Yeah I can't count the times I've had tanks and helicopters hunting me. Oh and what exactly is a civilian sniper?"

I quote from my FAQs:

Question:

"I lead a peasant army in an impoverished third-world country. I cannot afford laser rangefinders or even new rifles. (I buy mismatched secondhand deer rifles at American gun shows.) My troops cannot speak English or evaluate even simple mathematical formulas. None of them know how long a yard is. For that matter, most of them are a bit hazy on how long a meter is. Can the Aguilar System help me train them?"

Answer:

"Absolutely! The Aguilar System works for any non-magnum deer rifle, so it is not necessary to have matched rifles. BSA scopes with mil-dot reticles are inexpensive and can be purchased on the internet. All Western scopes have dials calibrated in fractions of minutes of angle. If you use Eastern scopes with dials calibrated in tenths of a mill, my system will work for holdover but not windage.

"No familiarity with yards or meters is required, as the snipers will directly convert the apparent size of an object (in mills) into holdover (in mills) without ever learning the distance to the target, in any measuring system. The officer who zeroes the rifles must be able to measure 300 yards, however, though pacing off 324 strides (350 strides if he’s under 1.6m tall) on level ground is close enough.

"Each card ranks the difficulty of its shot as marksman-, sharpshooter-, expert- or master-level. These are American (specifically, NRA) terms which mean, basically, easy, medium, hard and masterful. You must also translate 'holdover,' 'windage,' 'mills,' and 'M.O.A.' There is additional material on topics like shooting at moving targets, but its translation is not necessary to use the cards."

 

[shaka]

Magnum Rifles

I have received several questions from people with magnum rifles. My instructions say that my system is for "a non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle larger then .22 caliber." In the FAQs I previously said, rather vaguely, that one could find ammunition for magnum rifles that have the same trajectory and windage requirements as deer rifles but hit a bit harder.

I have updated this question with more exact info and charts:

Question: I own a magnum rifle. Will the Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping work for me?

Answer: Yes, but only if you choose your ammunition carefully. I had to say “non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle” in the instructions because the word “magnum” includes everything from the 7mm Remington Magnum, which is only slightly more powerful than a typical deer rifle, to the 416 Remington Magnum, which is used on cape buffalo. The following charts (from Federal’s free downloadable ballistics software) compare some popular magnum rifles to the 270 Winchester, a typical deer rifle. All the examples use the Nosler AccuBond bullet – obviously, one cannot use the Bear Claw or similar dangerous-game bullets for sniping. The 338 Winchester Magnum drops a bit more than a deer rifle and all the magnum rifles have slightly less wind drift, but the difference would not be noticable to anybody but a master-level shooter.

The charts do not reproduce on this forum, but I have extensive charts now on my instruction page, which make the ballistics much clearer than just talking about trajectory and windage.

 

[Owen]

Question:

"I lead a peasant army in an impoverished third-world country. I cannot afford laser rangefinders or even new rifles. (I buy mismatched secondhand deer rifles at American gun shows.) My troops cannot speak English or evaluate even simple mathematical formulas. None of them know how long a yard is. For that matter, most of them are a bit hazy on how long a meter is. Can the Aguilar System help me train them?"

BWAHAHA.

ANSWER You are actually quite SOL as the United States will be prosecuting your agents for violating ITAR.

 

[beatcop]

" The Army would not release a sniper's fingerprint file to the Pakastanis, but they cannot scrub every police file in America. Anyway, Pakastan could go through Scottland Yard (they used to be an English colony), which certainly has access to American files."

Give me a break. Someone is talking out of their third point of contact here. AFIS is queried by PD's with appropriate logins and identifiers. Local PD's aren't in the business of doing automated fingerprint matches for foreign governments. At best, they generate a UAR print card manually or digitally, and transmit it to the FBI for confirmation of the person's identity. The FBI can control the record, if they wanted it a secret, it would be!

 

[HeavenlySword]

It doesn't matter. The sniper flash card system & its tactics are the best for fast paced urban combat.

Civilian sniper? AKA Patriot defending their nation in time of dire need

 

[akodo]

Shaka Writes

I had to say “non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle” in the instructions because the word “magnum” includes everything from the 7mm Remington Magnum, which is only slightly more powerful than a typical deer rifle, to the 416 Remington Magnum, which is used on cape buffalo. The following charts (from Federal’s free downloadable ballistics software) compare some popular magnum rifles to the 270 Winchester, a typical deer rifle.

wait, so the 416 remington magnum is out, but the 416 Rigby is in, because it is a non-magnum?

Wouldn't it be both more truthful and more clear to say "This system is designed to work best with rifles firing at 2700-3000 fps. Something significantly slower or faster than this, be it a 30-30 deer rifle or a 300 winchster magnum deer rifle, will not work.

All the examples use the Nosler AccuBond bullet – obviously, one cannot use the Bear Claw or similar dangerous-game bullets for sniping.

Why can't you use dangerous game bullets for sniping? Seems to me someone living in grizzly country with a 338 Winmag loading 225gr Trophy Bonded Bear Claw as his hunting rifle of choice is going to be able to deliver some serious hurting on a target, bear or "russian invader". After all, he has an identical trajectory with that gun as he would with a 30-06 using 180gr bullets.

 

[ron123456]

The Snipercards are meant to train one man sniper operators for medium range urban combat.
Nearly all the comments on here attacking the system are trying to apply it to other situations.

To all of you who advocate the use of laser range finder....thats great...but for those of us in combat they give away our position. I will almost never use a range finder in combat...because THE ENEMY WILL F*CKING KILL ME.
The milldot master is great when you have a spotter.
BUT again, please try and understand what this sniper flash card guy us teaching....its not sniping with a spotter from a fixed hide, its hit and run urban gorilla warfare....and for that, its a pretty good system.

"I don't believe we have our army snipers killing civilians and then have our FBI run fingerprints on 'evidence' left behind."

You sure about that brother? Army CID agents do investigate these instances and they have full access to NCIC (the FBI fingerprint database).

 

[ron123456]

INTERPOL has full access to FBI NCIC database as does every single LE agency in Canada.