Hi
I have noticed a a lot of US military/sf/le sniper rifles (for example: M40/A1/A3/A5, M24/A2, MK13MOD1-5, Rem700 Police/LTR) have buttpads with no vertical adjustments. Who knows why ? Just old design Mcm & HS stocks trying save some weight ? Or it have another sense ? I like oldschool army/marines rifles but suprised why they have no vertical adj recoil pad before XM2010/MK13MOD6/M40A6 were produced...
Best,
It's just the era. We have learned a lot in precision shooting since those firearms were first fielded. The newest gen in that original line up is the M40A5 and Mk13 Mod5. These were all 2006 era rifles. The precision shooting renaissance occurred after this date as all the info form the GWOT started making it's way back. 6.5 Creedmoor is the standard against which all short action cartridges are judged now, but it wasn't born until 2007.
You are looking at guns that pre-date all the information we now have. 20 years in fact. The verticle buttpad being able to be adjusted wasn't known to be a benefit outside of the target shooting community in that era. You can see it on the older JAR's use by the Secret Service but the weight was considerable when added to a fibreglass stock and it was more seen in F-Class guns. For a field gun, it was seen as too much weight. You can get a lighter version but in order to get that you lose LOP adjustment, and that is more critical (IMO) than the buttpad being adjustable. The criticality of the butt-pad being adjustable wasn't a hinderance in that era of gun either.
With the newer gen gun's your talking about there, they were made with modern machining and manufacturing processes and are aluminium chassis that can easily incorporate the adjustable vertical butt pad without a drastic increase in weight. We know the benefits of the adjustability in the butt pad now as well, which became more critical as the chassis themselves started to get taller, increasing the height of the optic. You could argue that whilst there's an ergonomic and comfort element to the vertical buttpad being adjustable, it's actually become a necessity now due to the height of most modern systems. If you drop down to your comfortable prone position with an M40A5 for example, you'll find that, with a few minor tweaks to your position, you'll be comfortable. That is less the case with something like the A6 and is not the case with something like the MRAD/Mk22 which has leant very heavily into the "get low/got long" theory (I have a love hate relationship with the MRAD).
TL
R, our understanding of precision shooting has changed. You're seeing an evolution in design occur since the M24/M700P/LTR era (1988), to the A5/Mk13Mod5/7 era (2005-2016), M40A6 (2016+) to the MRAD (2020+) which has necessitated changes in design by virtue of either how the gun needs to be setup to shoot accurately, or, by virtue of a change in design philosophy and application philosophy.
