Bonjour mes amis
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at a fairly modern French precision rifle.
This is a PGM Ultima Ratio, and this is a rifle
that was initially developed for RAID.
That is a French police intervention group.
It is not associated with the
they have the GIGN of course as their intervention group.
This is a separate police organisation, and it was formed in 1985.
RAID by the way stands for
so searching, assisting, intervening and dissuading.
Presumably dissuading with maximum prejudice.
Now when these guys started this was a pretty small unit,
think of them as sort of an equivalent of a hostage rescue team.
They are the elite, the snipers, who are called in as a means of last resort
for a terrorist intervention, or
any sort of serious high-end crime where the local police aren't going to cut it.
So when they were first formed in 1985 they were using Steyr SSG-69 rifles
with Kahles ... ZF 84 scopes, that was really kind of the gold standard at the time.
But they didn't really like it, the problem that they had was one of first-round cold-bore accuracy.
And they found that their first shot could be off
by as much as a couple of inches at 100 metres, and they really didn't like that.
... Being a precision sniper police team,
they needed the first shot to be the only shot that they needed.
So they experimented with the French army's FR-F2
and they found kind of the same issues with those, they didn't like them.
The problem was they didn't have a whole lot of other options,
because for whatever reason, nobody else had any significant problem with either of those two rifles.
So in 1989 they go ahead and just put out a request, an RFP, a tender, for a new precision rifle.
And they get six entries from a variety of companies around France and Europe.
... Well, after a little bit of testing, the two that ended up being the finalists
were Accuracy International and a dude from Savoy named Gilles Payen, p-a-y-e-n, Payen.
Now the initial requirements for this rifle are a little bit different than a lot of similar sort of guns.
... There was no weight restriction on it at all.
The only length restriction was that it had to fit in the trunks
of the Renault cars that RAID was using at the time.
It had to have exceptional accuracy, they needed 1.5 centimetres at 100 metres.
That's approximately 0.6 MOA.
No calibre specified, but it's kind of obvious that .308 was going to be the calibre that they would use.
Now a lot of ... of their ideas about rifles I think came from the fact
that early on RAID was training at a shooting range that hosted a bunch of benchrest shooters.
And so they kind of adopted some of the perspectives and the ideas of the benchrest guys
that they were around, who were of course magnificent shots with really, really accurate rifles.
So in fact during this testing, most of the testing was done
from a seated benchrest position and not prone.
And what RAID had determined was a lot of times they can't go prone,
they're urban, often police sniping.
So they may be in an apartment shooting off of a kitchen table across the street, or down the street.
... It's not always going to be prone, so they did most of their testing seated.
Which we are not going to replicate today.
Now like I said, there was no weight restriction on the rifle.
They didn't really care about how well it endured the elements.
It didn't have to be marine rated, they are not going to be taking these things out on naval missions.
They didn't care about dropping [by parachute] with them.
Basically they kind of wanted a police benchrest gun.
So like I said, the final two rifles were Accuracy International
and this Savoie Savoy guy named Gilles Payen.
Who was a competitive shooter himself, and he'd built this chassis rifle.
Alright, now we can actually do some shooting here.
And I do want to point out that today's video is sponsored by Creedmoor Sports,
They are a fantastic company with all of the accessories and kit
that you need for long-range shooting competition,
and we have one of their shooting mats out here to use today.
This is just their basic roll-out mat which should work just fine I would expect.
Now, my PGM Ultima Ratio here is in 6.5 Creedmoor,
but it is the exact same barrel profile as the original RAID intervention profile.
So let's give it a whirl, and see how she shoots.
We've got a Texas Star out there and we've got a mini-Mozambique.
So if I hit the head on that Mozambique it'll fall down, and if I hit the centre plate, it'll reset the head.
And I'm just going to go straight for the head target out there.
There you go, first round accuracy.
Boom! Reset the head target.
That is if anything, boringly accurate.
But I'll tell you what this pad is kind of thin, we got a lot of rocks out here.
I think this Creedmoor pad was made for grass.
Did we bring out like a better padded one? Yeah, let's grab that one.
Alright, this should be a bit more comfortable, the Quad Fold.
Yeah, that's got some nice padding in it. Alright.
So one of the interesting things about the trials for this rifle
were that there was no weight restriction,
and initially RAID was concerned
about having a rifle with immaculate first-round cold-bore accuracy.
But of course when they are doing trials they're doing a lot of shooting,
relatively heavy round counts, continuous shooting.
And one of the things they noticed with the Accuracy International rifles
is they would start to get a little bit of heat mirage.
The Accuracy International has frankly a much more practically lightweight barrel
compared to this monstrous finned barrel.
But this monstrous finned barrel simply didn't have heat issues because of its weight.
And the RAID guys didn't really care about the weight, they didn't have to carry the rifles anywhere.
... All they did is maybe carry them up some stairs to their shooting position and plunk it down.
So actually, again from kind of a benchrest perspective here, the heavy gun worked pretty well.
Now on top of that, it's a French police agency,
and they've got two options: a French rifle made by local boy done good, or a British rifle.
I think you can probably guess which one they were going to choose, they went with the French rifle.
Now to be fair, one of the elements of this was they had much easier communication with Payen
than they did with Accuracy International, there was no language barrier.
Payen ... was an entrepreneur, he was a shooter himself.
He was eager and responsive to make tweaks and changes
and adjustments to the rifle, apparently more so than AI was.
Put all these things together and the Ultima Ratio is the rifle that they chose to go with.
Alright, you know what Jordan, this pad's more comfortable, but it kind of sticks out.
Did they send us like a camo one? Do we have a camo one we can go with?
- Ah, I'll have to check. - Alright, let's get on that.
Ah yeah, that's going to fit the camo a whole lot better.
Ah, that is the Custom cordura shooting mat from Creedmoor Sports.
A little more durable and your choice of cool colours front and back.
Alright, now one of the other fun things about the Ultima Ratio is of course the name.
Ultima ratio
And until close to the end of RAID's trials this rifle didn't have a name.
It was just the Payen rifle against the Accuracy.
And they realised like they kind of actually need a name for it,
and so apparently some of the RAID guys and Payen headed off to a local bar
after one day of trials and started brainstorming ideas.
And someone came up with Ultima Ratio.
Now this is a phrase that King Louis actually had cast into his cannons,
and you can still see this on display at the Paris Army Museum.
His said
Which is a really fairly bellicose kind of statement of,
"You do what I say or I've got a giant cannon and you don't."
And they decided that would be a pretty cool name to put on the intervention rifle.
Now perhaps predictably, and definitely somewhat humorously,
they actually got some pushback from this from the bureaucracy, there were some people
who thought that maybe this was a little bit more aggressive than they were going for.
You're not really supposed to be eager at the chance to go shoot a bunch of people.
And so they did a little bit of back-pedalling and explaining,
and ... the idea here is that this is the final resort,
the last possible option when all other options have been exhausted.
At any rate, they ended up with a pretty cool name on the rifle,
and that's where Ultima Ratio comes from.
And now I'm out of ammunition.
And you know what? I like the camo, but like most of me is off of this mat.
Is there something we can do about that do you think?
Alright, this is a lot better, here we go.
The Custom Deluxe long-range shooting mat.
We got a flap out front to prevent dust from being kicked up.
We've got a couple of side flaps, pockets, can hammer those down.
Which I don't need to because it's not windy. Nice extra tail there.
This will actually keep me completely off the ground.
So, there we go.
Now in 1990 the Ultima Ratio is formally adopted by RAID as their new precision rifle.
And now Gilles Payen has to actually come up with making some.
This is a story kind of similar to Accuracy International's,
except instead of three guys in a shed, this is one guy in the basement of a Savoy chalet.
And so he starts getting some calls from people like the Ministry of Armaments
asking what his production capacity is and he kind of goes,
"Well,
And so he partners up (I wrote the names down, here we go)
he partners up with a pair of brothers named Roland and Alain Gonnet,
and a Swiss firearms manufacturer named François Morier.
"M" for Morier, Gonnet "G", that is PGM.
And they set up production down in the south-east of France, close to Italy.
And they're still there today. They supplied the 20 rifles within about a year to RAID as ... requested.
And then introduced the Ultima Ratio at the MILIPOL
police, security, military exposition in 1991, and it kind of took off from there.
So the company is still around today, this is one of their fairly recent
production Ultima Ratios although it is not the most recent version.
... They didn't send this by the way, this is my own
that I bought because I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.
And I bought this right before they came out with their most recent upgrade,
but it is still a fantastic shooting rifle.
And I have one last cool target out here and that is a Texas Star at 100 yards.
So I'm going to see if I can knock those plates off once they start moving, see how it does.
Well, even with an ejection fubar, that was not very difficult at all.
I like this thing. Of course I'm totally prejudiced,
and you guys all know that, because it's a French precision rifle. But.
A big thanks to Creedmoor Sports for sponsoring the video,
their high-end Custom mat here is pretty sweet.
So check them out if you're looking for a shooting mat, or any other kind of equipment
and supplies for long-range shooting or just plinking.
And thanks to PGM for letting me buy one of these things.
It's kind of painfully expensive but it's pretty darn cool.
Thanks for watching.