A little bit of history regarding Gilles PAYEN, the father of the « Ultima Ratio » in 1991
Source: Municipal Library of Lyon / P0741 FIGRPT0120 05
https://numelyo.bm-lyon.fr/
Historical:
Near Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Gilles Payen has created the new weapon that will equip the elite police officers of the Raid ensuring the security of the Olympic Games.
And soon the Gign de Lyon who have already tried it. A rifle of a precision to thrill.
"We made a gun for a good cause. This is not a gun to kill people, but to save others. Because police or military guns are not made to kill, but to save.
It's true that a machine like that in the hands of a madman can do a lot of harm," says Gilles Payen, creator of the Ultima Ratio (Ultimate Resort), a revolutionary rifle.
This craftsman who manufactures weapons in the small town of La Chambre in Savoie, near Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, was indeed selected during the call for tenders from the Ministry of the Interior, [in 1990] .
Six French, Swiss, Austrian and English gunsmiths responded at the time to replace the old Austrian rifle with which the Raid police officers are currently equipped.
A weapon that has the annoying tendency to become less accurate when it heats up or when it cools too much.
And it is therefore on the criterion of the quality of precision that the forty-two-year-old Savoyard was selected by the Ministry of the Interior.
Gilles Payen presents a six-kilo rifle with a caliber of 7.62 mm x 51 NATO, with a ballistic of six to seven hundred meters.
A manual repeating weapon mounted with a barrel, removable in seconds. equipped with a cooler, a muzzle brake to limit recoil, a scope of Germanic origin and braked feet for stability.
If the butt is made of wood, this material is not load-bearing in the rifle, which is fixed only to metal and therefore subject to no variation.
It is the first police weapon manufactured by the gunsmith, working on his own since 1977, until now for private individuals competing.
It was by practicing competitive shooting that Gilles Payen learned, from a banker converted to the police, that snipers needed a more efficient rifle.
From then on, Gilles Payen worked on designing the prototype of the Ultima Ratio.
It takes two years for the craftsman to perfect everything, while "a project like this usually ends in five years in the industry".
After the agreement of the Ministry of the Interior, he will try it with "his buddies" from the Raid and the gendarmes of the Gign de Lyon, in particular, will come to make attempts at manipulation in Chambéry, by subjecting it to the worst possible conditions.
Nothing to do, the Ultima Ratio is of a precision to make terrorists and possible hostage takers shudder.
Moreover, the guard of the presidency of the Republic seems to eye with lust on the last jewel which will equip the police officers of the Raid during the Olympic Games of February [1992].
[In November 1991], Gilles Payen will provide twenty Ultima Ratio in Paris. Eighty other rifles should be mounted in the following months.
The Ultima Ratio will then be sold by gunsmiths to the public, under legal conditions, at a price of approximately 35,000 francs.
This bothers Gilles Payen a little, who admits not "trying to sell to individuals".
The Savoyard craftsman plans to make a silent version of the Ultima Ratio, without losing precision, as well as a compact model.
But in his workshop located on the ground floor of his chalet, he is currently hiding a prototype that he has not yet baptized.
This is the Ultima Ratio twice as large. A machine weighing twelve kilos that can shoot two kilometers.
It could be used by the military in the Gulf, to remotely defuse bombs sensitive to human heat.
"Also, if the Defense budget shrinks, he may be interested in the big Ultima.
This rifle can single-handedly destroy a missile. So if we do the count, it's simple.
I believe that the Ministry will have more interest in using a weapon of thirty thousand francs and a cartridge of twenty francs than another missile of five million francs to destroy the missile", explains the mechanic reconverted in the weapons.
Caught in the heat of the action, the arms manufacturer hopes to work more and more for the French and foreign administrations at the level of the EEC.
This is why he intends to expand and create another business a few meters from his home where he will employ women "less raw than men for this work of finesse".
Source: "The choice of weapons" / Lucie Bourmaud in Lyon Figaro, October 29, 1991, p.40.
Prototype of Ultima Ratio
Gilles Payen’s workshop
