Rifle Scopes What exactly is military grade scopes?

[mj30wilson]

I work as a machinist and make parts for the military and they have a lot of specs and hoops and paperwork to jump through to get product bought off. Military scopes get a fair share of abuse so I am wondering if their scopes are build differently than civilian scopes. For example say a Burris scope has twin springs internally or even triple springs to hold setting tighter. Glass grades etc.

 

[Mike Casselton]

@THEIS can probably best answer this question for you.
As you pointed out, specs are specs and there's not much wiggle room, if any at all.
Some items have to meet extremely stringent tolerances or worse, go through flight certification.
An example of the air/flight certification was the Purolator brand fuel cooling loop filter made for the B-1B. Back in 1987, that filter was $1608.00.
Crazy, right?
That filter had a Purolator part number on it that ended with a dash.
Purolator made another filter just like it without the suffix.
That filter was $53.00.

Was there any difference in them? According to Purolator, not at all, except for air certification and the suffix to the part number.
They even told us they would verify the performance was the same.

So, to answer your question, not always, but sometimes.

And now for a bit of humor, here's some military Beta binoculars for you.
Apparently, they're not good enough to be Alpha glass...

 

[beetroot]

It's a marketing ploy, just like saying something is made from aircraft grade aluminium.

Some folk assume because something is used by the military or has a MIL spec it must be of a higher quality, when that is not always the case.

 

[Pappakap]

Here my first though was most people would say “seeing the scope on the internet on some tier one operators rig in the sandbox makes it military grade”

 

[JMGlasgow]

Counter Sniper optics. Military overrun...

 

[Flyingbullseye]

Beat me to it Glasgow.

 

[Deleted member 10043]

If you are on the receiving end of it and is aimed and accurate than it is military grade.

 

[Steel+Killer]

All jokes aside I think NF does use some special epoxy or glue to hold the lenses in place on their military scopes that they don’t use on regular civilian models and I don’t believe they can be serviced from what I remember.

 

[jinxx4ever]

what about steiner scopes? m versus t

 

[THEIS]

Hi,

There is a big difference between military "grade" and military "specs".
"Grade" is as only valuable as the company stating it.
"Specs" are fully written out, approved and adhered to.
In general the .mil scopes are made no different than the .civ scopes.
.mil scopes may spec a variation of a reticle that is not currently available in the .civ but that variation typically finds itself into the .civ scopes eventually. But the construction, parts, components and assembly are shared across the board.

Sincerely,
Theis

 

[CSTactical]

All jokes aside I think NF does use some special epoxy or glue to hold the lenses in place on their military scopes that they don’t use on regular civilian models and I don’t believe they can be serviced from what I remember.

That's correct from what I remember and may apply to ACOG's and possibly some S&B's from what I remember, they typically are much tougher to service and have a shorter warranty.