Frequently Asked Questions
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Do I tack the cards to the wall and look at them through my rifle scope? How far back do I stand? |
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No. You hold the cards in your hand and look at them through a transparent plastic card with a mil-dot reticule printed on it. After measuring an object (like a car or door) of known height, you say how much holdover and windage you would give a target at that location. Then you turn the card over in your hand to see if your answer matches what is printed on the back. It is just like the animation on the home page.
This is the same way that people learn vocabulary when studying a foreign language. Since speed is important, you should shuffle the cards and then time yourself on a stopwatch to see if you can go through the entire pack at an average pace of five seconds per card.
The cards are labeled "marksman," "sharpshooter," "expert" or "master." I recommend that you omit the expert- and master-level cards from the pack until you have gotten the hang of the Aguilar System for Medium-Range Sniping. Then add the expert-level cards to your pack. Do not add the master-level cards unless you actually are a master shot, as determined by the military or the NRA. There is no point memorizing holdover and windage for targets that you do not have the skill to hit. |
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You say that the Aguilar system works for any "non-magnum bolt-action deer rifle larger than .22 caliber." That description includes a lot of different rifles. Don't they all have unique ballistics? Which one do you recommend?
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Yes, the Aguilar system works for every rifle in that category though, for small-caliber rifles like the .243 Win. or the 25-06 Rem., one must pick the heaviest available bullet. The following chart is from Federal’s free downloadable ballistics software:
The .270 Win. and the .280 Rem. shoot flatter than the deer rifles listed above. My system will work for expedient shooting but, for more accuracy, rather than holding over on the mil-dots, you should dial in three MOA for each milliradian of holdover that my system calls for. |
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| Q: |
What if I handload ammunition and do not know my downrange ballistics? How can I tell if the Aguilar System will work for me?
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For my system's advice on windage to work, you must choose a heavy bullet with a high ballistic coefficient. Do not use lightweight varmint bullets. Use the heaviest bullet that can be chambered smoothly with the bolt. If you have to insert the cartridge with your fingers, it is not going to work in combat.
Carefully zero your rifle for 300 yards. Set your elevation dial to read "zero" and then re-zero your rifle for 600 yards. If your elevation dial now reads between nine and ten MOA, the Aguilar System will work for you. Don't forget to dial it back to the 300-yard zero.
If your 600-yard adjustment is less than nine MOA, my system will still work for expedient shooting. But, for more accuracy, rather than holding over on the mil-dots, you should dial in three MOA for each milliradian of holdover that my system calls for.
If your 600-yard adjustment is a lot less than nine MOA, then you are either loading dangerously hot ammunition or your rifle is just too powerful to be consided a "deer rifle." |
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| Q: |
I own a sniper rifle and use 173- or 175-grain BTHP bullets, which have a higher ballistic coefficient than the hunting bullets that the Aguilar System is calibrated for. Does the Aguilar System work for me?
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In factory loads, it drops more than the 150-grain hunting bullet shown in the chart above. My system will work for expedient shooting but, for more accuracy, rather than holding over on the mil-dots, you should dial in four MOA for each milliradian of holdover that my system calls for.
If you handload, it is possible to safely fire the 175-grain BTHP faster than the factory loads. Carefully increase the powder charge until the difference between your 300- and 600-yard zero is ten MOA. |
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| Q: |
I own a rifle with a long barrel, which gives it a higher muzzle velocity even when using factory ammo. Does the Aguilar System work for me?
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I chronographed 175-grain Federal Match ammunition fired through a 34” barrel and it was 2700 f.p.s., a hundred f.p.s. faster than it is through a 24” barrel. I dial in 6.5 MOA when using this rifle in 500 yard matches. Holding on the second mil-dot as the Aguilar System advises would be 6.88 MOA. A difference of two inches at 500 yards is negligible. |
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| Q: |
I own a varmint rifle, which shoots flatter than a deer rifle but is more affected by the wind. Also, I cannot practice holding over on a mil-dot as I would in combat because the dot completely covers the gopher. Does the Aguilar System work for me?
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Varmint shooters sometimes use their rifles during deer season and the ammunition manufactures accomodate them by offering heavier, less-fragile bullets in their caliber. If such ammunition is available for your rifle, you can use the Aguilar System without modification. Such bullets are fairly blunt but, starting out at higher muzzle velocities, they will have dropped about as much as more typical bullets at the 500- or 600-yard line.
If you insist on going to war with a dedicated varmint rifle like the 220 Swift or 22-250 Remington, dial in three MOA elevation for each mil-dot of holdover recommended by the Aguilar System. A milliradian is 3.44 MOA so, by rounding down, you take into account the flatter trajectory of your rifle and you can hold on the crosshairs as you have become used to doing. You will have to use your own knowledge of wind drift, however, as a 52-grain bullet just doesn’t buck the wind the way a 168-grain bullet does. |
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| Q: |
I own a magnum rifle. Will the Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping work for me?
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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 458 Winchester 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. All the examples use the Nosler AccuBond bullet – obviously, one cannot use the Bear Claw or similar dangerous-game bullets for sniping. For all of these rifles except the .338 Win. Mag., my system will work for expedient shooting but, for more accuracy, rather than holding over on the mil-dots, you should dial in three MOA for each milliradian of holdover that my system calls for.
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| Q: |
Professional snipers and well-heeled civilians have a laser range-finder and a Leupold Mark IV scope with yardage, not MOA, printed on the elevation dial. Doesn’t that make the mil-dot reticule obsolete?
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Without the laser range-finder, the Mark IV scope is useless because it requires measuring the target, putting the rifle down, turning on your flashlight to use your Mildot Master and then picking up the rifle again to try to find the target. An Aguilar System shooter could have gotten that shot off in five seconds without ever having to put his rifle down.
Laser range-finders have become de rigueur among professional snipers, but that is only because Iraqi tanks were all destroyed in the first few days of both Gulf Wars. I remind them that Saddam Hussein was a military moron. There is no evidence that the Chinese or the Iranians are led by idiots, however, and U.S. snipers must assume that, in the event of war with either country, there will be FLIR-equipped enemy tanks on the battlefield throughout at least the first half of the war. (Hezbollah fought the Israelis for a month and never lost the ability to launch anti-tank missiles in the dark.) If a sniper turns on his laser range-finder in the presense of such weapons, he isn’t going to get to see the second half of the war. |
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| Q: |
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?
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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 reticules 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. If he is sighting the rifles in at a 300-meter range, he should have them hit six centimeters below the point of aim.
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. |
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| Q: |
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.
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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 reticule 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." |
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| Q: |
Some guy on the Daily Paul forum is bad-mouthing you. He calls himself "MW" and claims to be a sniper instructor with 24 years of experience. What's your take on this?
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If MW is a sniper instructor, then I’m an astronaut.
- "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.
- "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.
- "[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!
- "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.
- Inside 200 yards you are vulnerable to machineguns 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.
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! |
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| Q: |
Is there a single guiding principle to armed conflict? What one aspect of combat is essential to victory and, if control of it is lost, ensures defeat in spite of all other advantages?
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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 H&K MP5 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 machineguns 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 machineguns 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. |
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At several forums, discussants have cited the Wikipedia article on the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, stating that it has a 1000-meter effective range and claiming that this is a rebuttal to your hugging tactic. How do you respond?
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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.” |
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