Marine snipers upgrade from WWII era M49 spotting scope

Defense Industry Daily reports that the Marines are getting a new spotting scope called the Scout Sniper Observation Telescopes (SSOT). The SSOT is a variant of the Horus Vision Leupold spotting scope system designed specifically for snipers.

Pr 3 Leupold
Horus Vision Leupold spotting scope

I was amazed that the M49, the standard military spotting scope, was designed during WWII!

Picture 6-23
Picture of M49 from War Department manual TM 9-1556 published in 1944.

In my personal opinion, optics are one of the two major improvements in firearm technology since WWII (the other being ammunition component improvements). While I am sure the current M49’s exceed the mil specs from the 1940s it is only 20x in power and has no reticle.

UPDATE: According to Allen, a Marine vet and analyst at The Columbia Group, The Marines will be using a standard Gen II Mil-Dot reticle, not the Horus reticle described below.

The Horus Vision Leupold, as the name suggests, is made with Leupold optics, and offers 12.7-38.1x zoom. Its main feature is the reticles. Unlike standard mil-dot these show a 2d-grid which allows for precise calculations of holdover and, in the case of a spotter for a sniper, calculating speed of moving objects.

Horus
Horus H36 reticle.

This promotion video shows how it works. The video is showing the Horus line of rifle scopes, not the spotting scope, but the idea is the same.

Defense Industry Daily has more info and details of the contact awarded to Horus.

Related Posts

Steve Feb 18th 2009 military, optics Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

4 Responses to “Marine snipers upgrade from WWII era M49 spotting scope”

  1. Sven Ortmannon 19 Feb 2009 at 1:40 am link comment

    “only 20x”

    20-30x is being considered as optimal, 20x is not bad.
    Several optical problems appear at very high magnifications.

  2. jdun1911on 19 Feb 2009 at 1:11 pm link comment

    This new spotting scope is horrible. How can spot anything when half of your view is block by the grid. Variable power scope can’t take as much abuse as their fix counterpart.

    I personally think anything above 20X is too powerful for a sniper team. High magnification limit your field of view.

  3. jdun1911on 19 Feb 2009 at 1:19 pm link comment

    Should proof read more. “How can spot …” to “How can you spot …”

  4. Danon 19 Feb 2009 at 2:48 pm link comment

    Wow, I obviously have not been paying enough attention to the optics market. That is outstanding.

Trackback URI

Leave a Comment

Comment Policy: I reserve the right to remove comments at my discretion. Think of comment threads like a dinner party at someone's house. If you make the party unpleasant for others or me, you won't be invited back. I am happy to tolerate a wide range of viewpoints, even extreme ones, but I'm not going to tolerate nastiness, rudeness, trolling, vitriol, or excessive snarkiness toward the author(s) or other commenters. You may make your case passionately, but civility is expected. Please stay on topic and respect the technical nature of this blog.
Spam Filtering: To avoid spam, comments are filtered using Akismet and then manually approved. Do not be alarmed if you comment does not appear instantly. I do not check the spam folder more than once per day.