Your scope must have a mil-dot reticule and 0.25 MOA adjustments that can be turned with your fingers. 0.125 MOA adjustments will also work but are not recommended. 0.1 milliradian adjustments will NOT work because my system has you memorize windage information in minutes of angle.

The following features are recommended but are not essential: 1" tube, 40mm objective, fixed 10X, a sunshade and an illuminated reticule.

30mm tubes give one more adjustment, but that is only needed for very long shots and Aguilar System shooters are not firing that far. A 50mm objective is clearer but it causes the scope to sit too high on the rifle for comfortable prone shooting. Variable power scopes are bigger and heavier and can cause misses if one forgets to dial them up to their highest power before using the mil-dots for range estimation. Adjustable objectives elliminate parallax, but this is only a problem at short ranges, particularly for .22RF silhouette competition, and is unneeded by snipers. A 40mm sunshade elliminates the possibility of the enemy seeing the sun reflecting off your scope, but any sunshade is a big improvement over having no sunshade at all.

See my Review of Tactical Scopes under $400 Review of Tactical Scopes under $400

When I started this business ten years ago, all American and Japanese scopes were mil/MOA; only expensive German scopes were mil/mil and almost nobody outside the German military used them. But now every major manufacturer is offering this choice, so it is worthwhile revisiting my decision to design my flash cards around mil/MOA scopes. Note that my Android app works with both types of scopes.

The advantage of mil/mil scopes is that, when making long shots that are beyond the adjustment range of a 1” tube, one can hold on a dot and then dial in the rest. For instance, suppose one is required to make a 7.3 milliradian elevation adjustment off a 300-meter zero and one knows that there is just not that much adjustment in a 1” tube. So one holds on the fourth mil-dot and dials in 3.3 mils.

The obvious reply is: If it is your business to make such long shots – and who actually is in this business? – then why do you own a scope with a 1” tube? The reality is that the 7.62 NATO is certainly not capable of firing past 600 meters, and the tiny minority who has purchased a .300 Win. Mag. or a .338 Lapua should have had enough money left over to buy a scope with a 30 mm tube. The scope I recommend actually is 30 mm, though this is not why I recommend it.

For us mere mortals who must content ourselves with shots within 600 meters, expedient shots are taken by holding on a dot and precise shots are taken by dialing in the entire elevation adjustment and then holding on the crosshairs. I compete in 500-yard tactical matches with a .30-06 and have tried it both ways: leaving the scope dialed in for its standard 300-yard zero and holding on the second mil-dot, or dialing in for 500 yards and holding on the crosshairs. The latter technique works a lot better – as evidenced by my scores – because the dot obscures the target.

Thus, for precision shooting using scopes with 30 mm tubes, it does not matter whether they are mil/MOA or mil/mil because the sniper is reading a number off his Android and, as long as he is not confused about units, either unit will work. But, for expedient shooting, 76” is the magic number for snipers in Eastern Europe. There are a lot of Russian military vehicles that are this tall, which I have pictures of on my instruction page, not to mention the ubiquitous lightboxes that dot the streets of Kyiv. In the West, the glass part of the glass-and-aluminum door found on every storefront is 76” high.All commercial steel doors everywhere are 80” high and you can just subtract a ¼ mil from their measure and then use the chart for 76” targets.

Conveniently, there is a very easy mnemonic for memorizing the holdover and windage for ranging off a 76” target: The windage in MOA for a 10 mph wind is two more than the holdover in mils. This assumes a 300-yard zero for any non-magnum rifle except the 7.62 NATO, which gets a 300-meter zero. If you just learn to identify a 0, 5, 10 or 15 mph crosswind and then memorize the following chart, you are set for almost all of urban combat:

In the graph of a lot of different rifles, it is clear that the .308 Winchester has the worst ballistics of any high-power rifle. And the entry in that chart is for the .308 with 150-grain bullets, which are flatter shooting than the 168- or 175-grain bullets commonly used by snipers.

But this is easy to correct for: Just sight your .308 sniper rifle with 168- or 175-grain bullets at 300 meters instead of 300 yards. If you are American or English and only have access to a 300-yard range, then add 0.75 MOA to your elevation dial after sighting in at 300 yards and before zeroing the dial. Adding 0.75 MOA at 300 yards is the same thing as sighting in at 300 meters (328 yards).

At 300 yards, you will be 0.75 MOA high, but that is only 2.4", which is not a great miss. The glass part of a glass-and-aluminum storefront door (76") that subtends five mils is 422 yards away and here you are 0.1 MOA high, which is only 0.4" off. Similarly, a garage door (84") that subtends 5.5 mils is 424 yards away and here you are dead on. These are very typical of urban combat shots where you range off of a house or business at a T-intersection two to three blocks away. So, basically, you sacrificed a couple of inches at 300 yards in exchange for being dead-on at 424 yards.

Owners of .308 sniper rifles should remember that the flash cards are intended to help one with fast shots taken in five to ten seconds of locating the target and without putting one’s rifle down or taking one’s eyes off the target. If you want more accuracy than described above, then buy my Mil-Dot One-Step.

1. "Tip: for those who might encounter this thing [an M113], or one like it, the tracks, behind the second wheel, are a vulnerability if you need to 'negotiate' with it."
   
   Obviously, if you approach an APC with a piece of plumbing pipe, the soldiers surrounding it are going to take your pipe away from you and shove it up your ass. MW is a sniper instructor with 24 years of experience? Hmm’. He sounds more like a 12-year-old boy with an extensive collection of GI Joe comic books.
   
   
2. "The adjustments for the .223 is much more than the 30-06, and if you were to use the .223 milling for it, you would fire a spoiler- a clear miss of the vital zone’ The .223 drops 48.5 inches (9.3 MOA or 2.7 mils) at [500 yards] with a 300 yard zero using basic 55gr. Spitzer from the average sporting goods store. The 30-06 drops only 34.7 inches (6.6 MOA or 1.9 mils) at that range with a 300 yard zero using 180gr. Trophy Bond."
   
   The 180-grain Trophy Bond .30-06 ammunition is premium hunting ammunition made by Federal, which cost $25 a box. MW purposefully compared this to no-name .223 ammunition"crap costing about $5 a box. I clearly state that snipers are expected to buy premium ammunition with as little wind drift as possible"if you buy crap, it’s not my fault when you miss.
   
   Federal sells premium .223 varmint ammunition which uses a full-metal-jacket bullet, similar to military ammunition. Its trajectory out to 600 yards never varies from that of their 180-grain Trophy Bonded .30-06 ammunition by more than an inch. The following chart is from Federal’s free downloadable ballistics software:
   
   
   
   
   A little 55-grain .223 bullet has over 150% as much wind drift as a big 180-grain .30-06 bullet, however, and it was because of wind drift, not holdover, that I specifically excluded .22 caliber rifles from my definition of "deer rifle." Also, with about a fifth the residual energy of the .30-06 at 600 yards, .223 bullets are not really capable of killing anybody out there. This is why I state that my system is for a "non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle larger than .22 caliber."
   
   
   
   
   Only someone purposefully trying to obfuscate would pretend that he doesn’t know the difference between an AR-15 and a non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle larger than .22 caliber. Anybody who has competed in the National Match competition (200, 300 and 600 yards) with an M1 and an AR-15 would know that both rifles use the same elevation adjustments but require significantly different wind drift adjustments. By his ignorance of this basic fact, MW makes it clear that he has no experience competing with either rifle.
   
   
3. "[Aguilar's] flashcards have HUGE ballistic flaws in them as well as subtending problems with the Mil-Dots."
   
   MW doesn't even own a set of flashcards, so how could he possibly know if there were flaws in them? He based this groundless accusation on one example, the pop quiz that I posted on the Daily Paul. Very well. Let's look at this example, using MW's own .30-06 ballistics:
   
   A M113 APC sits 533 yards away. It is 72" tall, so it measures 3.75 milliradians. MW writes, "The 30-06 drops only 34.7 inches (6.6 MOA or 1.9 mils) at [500 yards] with a 300 yard zero using 180gr. Trophy Bond, a popular hunting round found in most stores." Since 533 yards is slightly farther than 500 yards, he would need slightly more than 1.9 milliradians holdover. Like two milliradians holdover?
   
   Golly, gee whiz! That is exactly the answer that I gave to my pop quiz: I said, "hold on the second mil-dot." I can rebut Mister "24 Years of Experience’ with his own ballistics data!
   
   
4. "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."
   
   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 home page:
   
   "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:

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

1. Inside 200 yards you are vulnerable to machine guns 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!

Distance. Fight at a distance where your weapon is effective and your opponents’ are ineffective and you can prevail against overwhelming odds, shatteringly-powerful weapons and tack-driving accuracy. That is really all there is to it.

Consider a short, stocky man boxing with a tall, skinny man; or one with a knife against one with a club; or one with an Uzi against one with a Ruger 10-22; or a BRDM crew against a Javelin missile team. What determines the outcome in each case? Distance and nothing else.

Even when the belligerents’ weapons are comparable, maneuver accomplishes nothing but to maintain control of distance. If three muggers armed with knives form a skirmish line and you, armed with a knife also, move laterally to attack their flank, what are you doing? You are controlling distance – you close with one while keeping the other two outside of their weapons’ range until you are done cutting the first one.

A deer rifle is most effective at ranges of 300 to 500 yards. If civilians never close within the 200-yard maximum range of machine guns and RPGs or stand off farther than the 600-yard minimum range of artillery and air strikes, they can defeat even professional infantry. But lose control of distance for even an instant and defeat is imminent. This is why motorcycles are so important to civilian snipers; distances can change in a matter of seconds and only a motorcycle is fast enough to close in on or withdraw from enemy troops.

What is the single worst tactic for the civilian sniper? Engaging mounted troops from over 600 yards away by firing down the length (the long axis) of a street. The enemy has cannons that, unlike your deer rifle, really are accurate at that range. Also, they have vehicles that can quickly close in on you with machine guns and grenade launchers, which are very dangerous at close range. Thus, by attempting a shot that you will probably miss, you have given the enemy two can’t miss opportunities to kill you. Asymmetry is supposed to work the other way around.

Consider Bruce Lee, here describing “economical footwork,” which he calls the essence of Jeet Kune Do:

“The maintaining of the proper fighting distance has a decisive effect on the outcome of fighting. Constant gaining and breaking ground in the effort to obtain the distance which suits you best – to get where you are safe and he isn’t.”

Take it from Bruce. Whether you are fighting with fists and feet, assault rifles and sniper rifles or cannons and mortars, tactics can be summed up in a single sentence: Get where you are safe and he isn’t.

First, we must define maneuver warfare. Here I state that distance is the single guiding principle of armed conflict and I quote Bruce Lee:

The maintaining of the proper fighting distance has a decisive effect on the outcome of fighting. Constant gaining and breaking ground in the effort to obtain the distance which suits you best - to get where you are safe and he isn’t.”.

This can be done with comparable weapons - Lee had the same body type as those he fought - but in armed conflict it is usually disparate weapons that inspire one to maneuver. The LPO-97 is not familiar to most U.S. soldiers - I could find no English-language descriptions of the weapon - though it is as widely distributed in the Red Army as the M203 is in the U.S. Army. When confronted with an unfamiliar weapon, our single guiding principle leads us to ask, at what distance is it best employed and at what distance is it ineffective?

LPO-97 Thermobaric Grenade Launcher

The M203 is a single-shot weapon, loaded one at a time through the muzzle; the LPO-97 has a pump shotgun type of action with three rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Also, the M203 fires high explosive 40 mm grenades, while the LPO-97 fires thermobaric 43 mm grenades. If one does not fire into the wind, this allows one to use the weapon at ranges too close for high explosives and too close to have time to reload the single-shot M203.

In contrast to the LPO-97, the M203 has very tall flip-up sights calibrated in increments of 25 yards out to 400 yards. It is like a very low-power mortar that requires line of sight on the target. Because it takes almost ten seconds for the grenade to arrive on distant targets, it is possible for a soldier with an M16/M203 to fire a grenade and then get his rifle to his shoulder and be ready to fire before the grenade hits. The problem with this is that it is only one little grenade, that such a high trajectory is highly affected by the wind, and that the M16 is not effective at 400 yards, in spite of the fact that Marines qualify on a 500-yard target range.

But let us here see how the Russians use their LPO-97 at the close ranges it is designed for. When seizing the old terminal building at Donetsk Airport (DAP), the Russians used demolition charges to puncture walls and then rapidly fired four thermobaric grenades through it. This is a classic example of maneuver warfare - get where you are safe and the other fellow is not - and is a tactic unknown in Western literature on Close Quarters Battle, CQB.

Our M203 does not work for this purpose because its grenades are not thermobaric and, if the wall is just gypsum board, high explosive grenades cannot be detonated on the other side while thermobaric grenades can be. If the walls are sturdy enough to protect one from M203 grenades - as they were at DAP - the single-shot M203 is too slow. In the time it takes you to operate a muzzle loader, the Russians would have stuck an LPO-97 through your hole and pumped four thermobaric grenades back at you. Anyway, American soldiers trained in CQB do not routinely carry demolition charges designed for puncturing small holes in walls. Even if they did, they have nothing except conventional grenades to push through the hole.

Military officers in the West speak highly of maneuver warfare, by which they mean FFFF, but I am unaware of any recent examples of them practicing what they preach. Mostly their patrols just blunder about until the enemy ambushes them and then they call in a Predator drone strike on the ambushers. But the Afghans possess no guns (The technical use of the term gun means a direct-fire weapon strictly larger than 12.7 mm; it amazes me how many U.S. combat veterans refer to the AK as a gun.) and their only vehicle has long ears and brays. Killing such primitive people one at a time with four-million dollar drones that each carry only two Hellfire missiles is like spending thousands of dollars on a fly-fishing trip when the grocery store actually has a whole case of frozen fish. It is sport. If we were really at war with Afghanistan, we would have just killed them all and been done with it.

Heavy machine guns and ATGWs are both direct-fire weapons that are capable of destroying small armored vehicles such as the BRDM.  Let tanks pass by; almost no weapon available to civilians can take out a T-90.  The BMP-2 or BMP-3 are iffy, depending on the caliber of machine gun or model of ATGW.

The primary role of designated marksmen is to lure vehicles into range of heavy direct-fire weapons.

The principle difference between machine guns and ATGWs is that the former works best when enfilading a column of vehicles and the latter works best when defilading them.  Thus, there are two basic ambushes with direct-fire heavy weapons. 

If you have a machine gun, have your designated marksmen pin down a patrol, aiming to wound rather than kill, where there is a bottleneck between them and the bulk of their forces.  Radioing that they are pinned down by snipers and have wounded will produce an emotional response among their comrades, who will rush through the bottleneck where they can be enfiladed.  A freeway exit ramp is ideal because it also has the advantage of a reverse slope defense, as the drivers cannot see wreckage on the ramp until they have already committed themselves to driving down it.

If you have ATGW, have a small group of designated marksmen fire on a group of enemy vehicles and then immediately flee on their motorcycles.  This will induce the vehicles to pursue the bikers, hoping to get line of sight on them so they can be killed with vehicle-mounted machine guns.  Motorcycles are much faster than armored vehicles, so the bikers must purposefully drive slow enough not to leave their pursuit behind.  As the pursuing vehicles spread out with the faster ones in the lead, the motorcycles should drive past the ATGW guys, who will all fire simultaneously on the column as it passes.

The principle thing one needs to know about ATGW is that they travel slowly towards their target.  Vehicles respond by turning their turret towards the missile and hosing down the place where it came from, as most missiles require the operator to hold his sights on the vehicle until his missile hits.  If the operator is killed by machine gun fire before his missile arrives, it will miss.  Fire-and-forget missiles are immune to this defense, but they are very expensive and it is unlikely that civilians can obtain them.  Also, just because one's missile has the capability of hitting targets from thousands of yards away, it is not necessarily a good idea to fire from that distance.  Heavy machine guns and cannons are also effective at thousands of yards and the more time the missile is in the air, the more time the vehicle gunner has to shoot at the person who launched it.  The closer you are, the better, though missiles have a minimum distance before they arm themselves, so be sure that you are at least that far away.

Mortars are indirect-fire weapons and their use is very different than the two ambushes outlined above.  Mortars are effective against enemy that are clumped together while deer rifles are effective against enemy that are spread out.  So use them simultaneously to present the enemy with a dilemma on whether to spread out or not.  Never attempt to mortar a fort.  You will be outnumbered (they have many mortars inside that fort) and theirs are vastly more accurate than yours, especially if they have radar that can see incoming mortar shells.  The primary target for mortars is the ZSU-23-4.  It is very dangerous to snipers in tall buildings, but the water jackets of its machine guns are vulnerable, so you should attempt to mortar a Shilka whenever you see one.  Machine gunning a Shilka may also damage its water jackets but, as they are both direct-fire weapons, this presents the problem that I have so often warned against, of challenging someone to a duel who has a similar but better weapon than you have.

Click here for a quiz on how to set an ambush.

Wikipedia is just pasting in information from the manufacturer’s advertisement. In reality, 5.56 NATO ammunition has less energy at 1000 meters than a sub-sonic .22RF bullet has at the muzzle. Anyway, the chance of actually hitting anything at that range is negligible. If we are going to take Wikipedia as an authority on infantry weapons, a better quotation is this one: “A SAW is used to provide suppressive fire for an infantry squad or section.” Clearly, the idea of a M249 gunner and a sniper having a dual is absurd – that is not what the M249 is designed for – and the Russian RPK is even less accurate. Regarding the Russians’ RPG-7, the most common weapon one will encounter on a modern battlefield, Wikipedia writes, “Accurate firing is difficult at ranges over 300 meters and with the RPG-7 the phrase ‘the closer the better’ is always true.  During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the mujahedeen tended to use the weapon at ranges of less than 80 meters.” While nowhere on the battlefield is perfectly safe, one must play the odds. I insist: “Move alongside a column of troops 300 to 500 yards from them. Inside 200 yards you are vulnerable to SAWs and RPGs. Outside 600 yards you are vulnerable to artillery and air strikes. Stay in the safety zone; fire when there is an obstacle to shoot over.”

As long as the velocity is 2,400 fps or above, when the bullet strikes flesh, the spin degrades almost instantly and the bullet tries to turn 180° to go base forward, literally exploding at the cannelure due to centrifugal forces, and it typically causes a fist-sized permanent wound cavity... Once the 2,400 fps threshold is crossed the 5.56mm bullet no longer has the potential for “explosive” results and the wounds are more akin to a .22WMR. With the M16 having a full 20-inch length barrel, this threshold is crossed at about 200 meters [219 yards], give or take a few meters.

NOTE

I review a sniper school which advertises that, for only a few thousand dollars, they will teach you to fire an AR-15 at 900 yards. Such a fantastic display of marksmanship would actually require reading the wind in half mph increments and firing an AR-15 that is capable of 0.95” groups at 100 yards in still conditions. Bullshit!!!

Sniper Info forum is like the followers of a faith healer except, instead of them all claiming to have been cured of their diseases, they claim that, after playing soldier for three days in the desert, they have all suddenly started hitting man-sized targets over a half a mile away with a rifle that most people zero at 100 yards.

If you question this claim you get a barrage of insults and bold talk of 900- and even 1200-yard shots. But the one thing that absolutely nobody offers is a scorecard from a 1000-yard match that they entered with an AR-15. Ben Avery Shooting Facility is only five miles away and holds 1000-yard F-class matches every month, but they have no record of any of these guys having ever entered with an AR-15.

REFERENCES

Cutshaw, Charlie. 2009. "Desert Warfare Manstoppers." Special Weapons for Military and Police. December 2009: 52-54

Install an inexpensive scope (no tactical features) with high rings so you do not have to duck your head when standing upright. Zero your rifle at 100 yards with 40-grain FMJ bullets. The bullet rises through the line of sight at 25 yards (the right distance for shooting a deer if you know exactly where the heart is), peaks at 1.2” above the line of sight at 50 yards and then drops to 1.2” below the line of sight at 115 yards. Thus, you can ignore elevation out to 115 yards, which is the greatest distance for which the chart below provides windage information.

When walking around town, observe a sign or post ahead and ask yourself how far away it is, to the nearest ten paces. Then count your paces as you walk to it as a test of your ability to estimate ranges. If you do this every time you walk anywhere, you will quickly learn to estimate ranges just by triangulating with your eyes.

The following chart gives the number of inches to hold into a ten mph crosswind at the following distances, in paces. With practice, one can learn to read the wind in five mph increments and scale the windage information accordingly.

If you memorize this chart and practice estimating ranges and reading the wind, you can routinely shoot rabbits at twice the maximum effective range of the typical prepper who has a .22 Long Rifle loaded with supersonic ammunition and no knowledge of ballistics.

2014 Edit: Because of the shortage of .22RF ammunition, many preppers have purchased .17 HMR rifles. This cartridge is flatter shooting and less affected by wind than the .22 Magnum, but only powerful enough to reliably kill rabbits out to about 75 m. It is not necessary to estimate range to the nearest ten paces. Zero your rifle and practice at 50 m; learn to recognize 30 m and 70 m. At 50 m, a 10 mph crosswind results in 1” of deflection; at 30 m, ½” deflection; and at 70 m, 2” deflection.