Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today, courtesy of PGM Precision USA,
we have an opportunity to take a look at a Hecate II.
This is a .50 calibre precision sniper rifle
that is issued and used by the French military, as well as a variety
of other military and security organisations around the world.
It has been in use for actually 25 years now, which makes it
really quite a long lived and well proven system.
And it's gone through a number of updates over that time period.
But let's start at the beginning. This is manufactured by a company called PGM Précision.
And those initials stand for the names of the three guys who started the company.
The first of them being Gilles Payen ... (I'm not going to get the pronunciation quite right),
he was actually the designer, and in 1991 on his own he developed ... basically a chassis based precision rifle.
The concept is similar to what AI, Accuracy International, was doing that wound up becoming the British L96A1 sniper rifle.
Well, he developed a rifle, called it the Ultima Ratio, ... actually that's got some interesting connotations to it.
That is a call back to King Louis' cannons, which he had cast with the inscription "Ultima Ratio Regum",
on them, which translates from Latin into "The Ultimate Argument of Kings". On giant cannons, you get the implication there.
Well, Payen named his rifle the same thing as a reference to that.
And this was a 7.62 NATO calibre precision rifle that was made for, or purchased by, RAID
which is ... basically the elite French police unit.
And they thought it was pretty cool. The French military thought it was pretty cool too, but they wanted something bigger.
And in fact they were in the process of starting to look for a .50 calibre sniper rifle.
Now there's I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the role of .50 BMG, or 12.7x99mm,
in a military application. This is of course primarily a heavy machine gun cartridge,
used in primarily the Browning M2, which has been around for 100 years now.
Now, there are also individual rifles that use the cartridge, probably the best known of them is the Barrett.
Well, in US military service the Barrett is really not used as a precision rifle,
in fact its primary use is for EOD, where it's actually used because the bullet is big enough to set off
caches of things like mortar shells, mines, grenades, explosive ordnance that needs to be gotten rid of.
That's what the US military primarily uses it for, and the Barrett is not really a precision level rifle
in the way that something like the Hecate is.
Anyway, the French military was looking for a true .50 calibre sniper precision rifle.
And Payen saw the opportunity to scale up his Ultima Ratio rifle to .50 BMG. And that's ultimately really what we have here.
Now he didn't have the resources to do it himself, and so he formed PGM Précision with two partners,
Alain Gonnet and François Morier, hence P, G and M, PGM Précision.
And they are in the south-east of France, not that far from Grenoble,
where they are a small-volume, high-quality firearms manufacturer today.
So, the first version of this rifle was the Hécate. I should also touch on the pronunciation,
Hecate is a Greek goddess of warfare, death, throwing javelins at very long range with good accuracy,
hence the use of her name for this rifle.
In Greek it's Hekátē, is the pronunciation, in French they stick an accent on the first e, so its probably Hécate.
I've just taken to calling it the Hecate in good ol' Merrican, and so I'm going to stick with that for the time being.
Anyway, moving back to this guy.
This was initially presented to the French military and tested in Sarajevo in 1994 during the Bosnian Civil War.
the Yugoslavian break up.
The ... French Army tested it out, came back with a number of recommendations for some changes,
and then had a formal trial in 1995 for a .50 calibre sniper rifle.
And PGM entered the revised version, which was now called the Hecate II.
And won the trial, went into production, and it has been used by the French military ever since.
Now, there have been a number of updates and improvements to the gun over time,
although not really to the fundamental chassis of the gun.
So let's take a closer look, and I'll walk you through how this thing works and the various features of it.
Alright, let's start at the back and work our way through some of the various features.
We have here a nice thick, soft rubber recoil pad. We have a little swivelling slot for a sling there.
We have actually a rear monopod leg that can come down at a 45 degree angle,
or extend all the way down. And as you unscrew this it will lengthen or shorten.
So you can set the rifle up on three separate legs and get a very nice stable position with it for shooting.
We also have an adjustable cheek rest, so if I just unscrew this,
I can raise the cheek rest to whatever position I prefer, and then tighten it down.
Now for transport the whole buttstock actually comes off the rifle with a similar nice big chunky thumb screw.
So if I unscrew that, I can then just pull this off.
It has a pretty simple socket on there.
Then I can take the bolt out. You actually have to have the buttstock off to remove the bolt
because it is very, very long.
So pull this back, there is a bolt release on the opposite side.
That allows me to remove that.
We have a nice big handy knob on there, it is a three lug rotating bolt with a plunger ejector.
This is pretty simple technology, but very stoutly built.
We have our striker at the back there.
OK, moving forward a little bit, we have a detachable box magazine.
It's just a simple mag release back there.
And we've got this guy, that'll hold 7 rounds of .50 BMG.
Putting the bolt back in for a moment, we have a safety right here.
You can visually see that the striker is being held back right now, so the gun is cocked and ready to fire.
And so long as the safety is in the rearward position it will not, the trigger is disconnected.
When I push that forward, then the gun is hot and can fire.
And it has an exceptionally crisp and light trigger pull, it's a fantastic trigger.
We have the manufacturer's markings here on the side, Hecate II.
12.7x99 is the metric designation for .50 BMG. Made by PGM Précision in France.
And on the other side we have their logo and the rifle's serial number and a proof mark in front of the logo.
The carry handle is a standard non-removable, non-optional feature on this rifle because
it weighs in at right about 16 kilos, or about 35 pounds. This is a substantially heavy rifle.
And so the carry handle is a very nice handy thing. It's offset to the left side
of the action so it'll clear the scope, you don't have to worry about that.
You'll never have the carry handle sitting in front of the scope because it's offset to the side.
Here is your other sling attachment point.
Now what Payen did was really design a brand new rifle as a precision military rifle with the Ultima Ratio,
scaled up then to this, the Hecate.
And the way he did this was basically a chassis system, where
instead of a traditional type of hunting rifle where you have a stock with an action and a barrel bedded into it,
instead we have a completely free floating barrel, and we have a single aluminium chassis here
that is attached to the receiver, that then holds the barrel.
The scope rail is attached to the chassis. The bipod is attached to the chassis.
Again this is similar to what the British adopted with the L96 from Accuracy International,
in that it is a rifle that is very easy to maintain in the field, very easy to repair should anything get damaged.
It doesn't require a gunsmith for almost any of the operations, outside of perhaps
tuning the trigger, or if you have to like replace the bolt and re-headspace the gun.
If any of these components get damaged, you can just swap out a new component without having to fit anything.
Which was a substantial departure from the traditional sort of sniper rifles that came before this.
Now as originally adopted by the French, and by the way they originally adopted it as the FR-12.7,
Fusil à Répétition, or repeating rifle, 12.7,
as it was originally adopted it didn't have these side rails. In fact it didn't even have the Picatinny rail on top,
instead it had a proprietary scope attachment rail.
However, in the late 1990s PGM went ahead and replaced their proprietary rail with a Picatinny rail.
They would continue to do some modifications to the gun.
The original adopted guns had wooden furniture on the back, a wooden pistol grip and a wooden buttstock assembly.
And that was replaced with a more modular polymer unit in the early 2000s.
They have also since extended the length of this rail so that you can, for example, attach
a proper major telescope like this and then also have space for a night vision scope in front of it.
Also these side rails for things like laser indicators, that sort of stuff. Additional accessories that you might want.
The muzzle brake here is something that PGM takes very seriously,
they credit this with giving the rifle something like a 50% recoil reduction.
Which I suppose we'll find out.
... Note that it's held on by a set of three hex-head socket screws.
And the reason here is that you can remove the muzzle brake and replace it with a suppressor
that PGM makes specifically for this rifle.
It's huge, it's like an 8 pound suppressor, it's 18 inches long, and it makes the rifle
incredibly long and bulky, but it's also a suppressor which has some very practical uses.
So as a result they want the muzzle brake to be easily removable, hence the screws.
While we are looking at the barrel, I think it's also worth pointing out that the barrels for these rifles are
manufactured by FN, in fact these come straight off the same production line as FN's Browning machine guns.
And so these barrels are Stellite lined, which is a treatment designed to give longevity
to a .50 cal machine gun barrel which is expected to have, you know, it's going to be firing in full-auto,
and it's going to go through a lot of ammo and get very hot.
What PGM has found is that that lining treatment gives the barrels exceptional longevity,
in the designated marksman or the sniper role.
Because they are not firing at the same sort of rate of fire as a machine gun.
The DGA, the Direction Générale de l'Armement, like the Army ordnance organisation for the French military,
did a test on these rifles and found that after 12,000 rounds through one of these barrels
there was no appreciable loss in accuracy, which is really a pretty phenomenal finding.
Of course the French military really appreciates that, because it means the rifles can be out in the field
for a very long time and get substantial use, without having to have the barrels replaced.
We're getting through most of the features here, but I do want to point out from the bottom
the bipod is assembled up into this chassis and you can see the screws here that attach the scope mounting
and all of the various other elements of this gun together.
But the ... bipod here, you can extend the legs by pulling back and rotating,
and then you can see we have a fair amount of flex to the bipod, it can rotate as well.
And when these legs are folded back, they fold back along either side of the magazine.
So the magazine is a simple nose in, rock back style.
(... in there). That snaps in place, and then
I can fold the bipod
alongside it.
According to PGM, the effective range of the Hecate II is 1,800 metres, which is quite remarkably long range.
They were initially ... issued by the French Army with a 10x power J10 SCROME optic.
The new issued use, the extension of their use out to 2030, has replaced that with a 5-25x power scope,
I believe a Steiner, I believe it's the model that we have on this particular example.
I saw one report, although I can't find any data to confirm it, that when the US military was testing this rifle,
before the US decided that it was only looking for a semi-auto,
apparently the US military was getting sub-minute of angle groups as far as 1,700 metres
with the PGM, and really good ammunition.
... I haven't been able to confirm that, that is a fantastic level of accuracy and really speaks to the quality
of the rifles. Which would explain why they have been in service so long,
and continue to be purchased by a lot of different military organisations.
Fairly recently, the French military decided to extend its use of the Hecate II out out at least 2030.
So they now have the modernised versions, they have things like the polymer furniture on it,
they have the extended full length Picatinny rails, the side rails for extra devices like lasers.
And they continue to deploy these all over the place, and the French military does,
it may surprise some people, does a lot of deployment in relatively small scale conflicts.
So they are active in many African conflicts where they have
former colonial ties to various countries and good connections there.
They are doing a lot of good work in North Africa and the Middle East using, among other things, the Hecate II.
So, we are going to go ahead and take this behemoth out to the range, because I am really curious to try it out.
They claim a substantial recoil reduction from that muzzle brake.
I've shot some .50s, I've shot some 20mm anti-tank rifles, I've shot some big stuff and I am really curious how this compares.
So, I'd like to give a big thanks to PGM Precision USA for loaning me their one demo example of the Hecate II
to do some video on.That's very kind and generous of them.
Hopefully you guys appreciate that access, and hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching. Stick around tomorrow for my time out on the range with this guy.
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