#PGMPrcision

Welcome to our Photo Of The Day! Each day, we feature a stunning photograph that captures the beauty and diversity of our world. For the features image, we made sure to choose the suppressed version of this PGM Précision rifle.

Photo Of The Day and we’re looking into the cleanest shooting range I have ever seen, don’t you agree? The “model” is the PGM Mini Hécate II, in PGM’s new shooting tunnel. The original design was for the 338 Lapua Magnum caliber, but it is now also available in calibers like 300 PRC, 300 Norma Magnum, 375 SwissP and similar to suit everyone’s needs.

Photo Of The Day and we go to France, PGM Précision, and the suppressed barrel of their Ultima Ratio sniper rifle in action! This rifle is available in many different calibers, but what you see here is the subsonic version in .308 Win, and the integral suppressor with a 41 cm barrel length. What is unique is that we get to see (above) how the suppressors are working, with the expanding gas leaving the suppressed barrel.

Thirty-one years after the creation of the Ultima Ratio, the first rifle of the brand, the French company PGM Precision reinvents and upgrades their classical sniper rifle. The rifle is intended for both operational and sporting shooters. Initially designed for French police snipers, the Ultima Ratio is a high-precision rifle capable of handling targets up to 1000 meters. The rifle was designed for .308 Winchester, but it’s now available in a long list of calibers like 6.5 Creedmoor, 6XC and .260 Rem.

POTD, short for Photo Of The Day, is TFB’s recurring articles where we go to great lengths trying to find the best pictures and stories out there. Today we’re pretty sure you’re going to learn something you had no idea about. The French Army uses a rifle called the FR-12.7 (12.7mm calibre bolt-action rifle). It is made by PGM Précision, and you may know it better under the name PGM Hécate II. We all know that the .50 BMG round is pretty violent and not the most fun thing to shoot for a long day. PGM has now made a rimfire version in .22LR to provide training for future snipers.

The French Army has been on a shopping spree including firearms from Glock, Heckler & Koch and FN Herstal. For their Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle, the choice landed on the FN SCAR-H PR and included 2,600 rifles equipped with high-end rifle scopes from Schmidt & Bender with clip-on night sights. If you want to learn more about the riflescope check out our review: The 1-8×24 PM II ShortDot Dual CC – from Schmidt & Bender, partly made on a very similar setup that the French Army is going to use.

Photo Of The Day – Established in 2014 this is TFB’s way to show various photographs on a daily basis. As a bonus you get a short story and hopefully, you’ll learn something new. Today we visit New Caledonia. The machine-translated caption from  RIMaP-NC Plum reads: 

A new dimension for the Hécate II Sniper Rifle – this is our topic for today’s Photo Of The Day, but there’s room for other sniper rifles as well.

The French company PGM Precision in the French Alps was created back in 1993. In 1995 they won the tender for the .50 BMG / 12.7 mm caliber Hecate II rifles for the French army, which has been used by all infantry regiments and the French Special Forces. Since then they have created rifles like the Mini Hecate I and II,  PGM338 and the LUDIS for sports shooters.

The French Army has selected the SCAR-H PR as their new Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle.

JDI Firearms/SAN Imports have become the US importers of PGM Precision’s line of precision and sniper rifles. PGM Precision are one of France’s last major manufacturers of sniper rifles, producing the Hécate series used by the French military.

Today’s Photo Of The Day shows a variety of interesting and (relatively) rare firearms.

It is generally accepted that the first serious attempts at using the .50BMG (or 12.7x99mm, if you’re into metrics) round for long-range sniping dates to the Vietnam War era, first using actual, scope-fitted Browning M2HB machine guns, and at a later stage some improvised bolt-action guns in that chambering. The whole thing would eventually lead to the U.S.-made Barrett family of guns that emerged in the early 1980s with the M82 “Light Fifty”, which would later become the M82A1 used by the American military in the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations as the SASR – Special Applications Scoped Rifle for anti-materiel and ordnance disposal use. Since then, those heavyweight guns have proliferated worldwide in different calibers, configurations, origins, manufacturers, and, of course in use by varied operators. At the same time, the term HTI – Hard Target Interdiction has become generally accepted to describe the primary duties of such weapons, much more politically correct than simply blasting an enemy head from very far away.