🏅FR-F1 sniper to 800yds: Practical Accuracy + GIGN Loyada Hostage Rescue [feat. Forgotten Weapons]

This episode was brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For M-LOK grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com Impact. Neutralized. It seems like the bridge right here is preventing it to eject a little bit. 200. Impact. Neutralized. It's not even fair right now with this thing. 250. 300. Impact. Were those dead holds? Yep. All right, you were bias right. The impacts were both on the right half, okay? Okay, so we're starting to see the effects, yeah? Yep. Or should I say, we're starting to see the effects, oui? VD. 350. Impact. Better? That was left half. So yes, I mean you're... Where were you, bias left? Yeah. 350, right? Yep. Neutralized. That was left half again. Excellent. I aimed on the left half of it. All right. Because if it's pushing to the right and I aim on the left most edge, that gives me the most opportunity to hit the entire target. Agree. Yeah. Yes, if you're pushing left to right. Yes, agree. All right. We're on at 400. 400. Impact. Good hit. Solid center punch. Nice. Impact. That's a neutralized shot. I'm going to continue at 400 meters on the distance for the 450 yard target. Okay. Because that last one I was aiming at the lower left edge. Got it. And you're hitting, you're impacting just highest center. Yeah. So this one I'm going to keep center level. Left... Left edge. Left favor. Yes, left edge favor. And it should send it on to the target. All right. I'm on at 450. Fire when ready. Impact. That was a lower quadrant. Okay. Neutralized. Center punch. We're on at 500. I'm using 450 meters. Okay. I'll aim favor left on the edge of the plate on the left side. Okay. Impact. Nine o'clock on the plate. Okay. You might favor touch to the right from that current shot unless you feel the wind picking up. Impact. So one of the issues with the APX scopes, I'm having trouble seeing the target itself. I can see it, but it's not as easily seen. So shall we go the 650s and then continue onwards? Because the 600 is a little, it's a little black today. Yeah, it sounds good. We'll go 650. Slightly larger target, a little bit brighter. And for this one, I'm going to use a 600 meter setting. Favor to the left. Let me know when you're ready, Josh. Fire when ready. Okay. Elevation's good. You're off the right edge. If you were favoring left edge, favor half target left. Okay. Will do. Ready. Fire when ready. Impact. Excellent. All right. I'm on to 700. Okay. So 700 is 660 meters or so, 660 some meters. Yeah. So 650 should be pretty close. Yeah, dead hold. Favor one half target left. Okay. Fire when ready. Impact. Excellent. Next one's 800. Yes. I'll give it a little bit more of a bump to the left. I can't really tell you exactly where I'm holding because this is German T-post. It's not a Milder. Just see if you can favor three quarter target left. Excellent. Okay. Fire when ready. Unobserved. Okay. I mean, I heard an audible return. Okay. Did you hear that too? I heard it. I heard an audible return, but man, I could not see an impact. It may have been a peripheral hit on the very edge, but you definitely, you can hear it hit and you could see a little bit of movement. So afterwards, Josh was doing a little bit of post review as I lobbed two more shots or three more shots onto the target and those were a definite hit. And then I decided to aim off of my previous hold and we saw the splash on the ground, a splurt of dust. So that was definitely a miss. So I'm quite certain that shot you just saw was a hit. Anyways, there's a cool history lesson coming up on the GIGN and this rifle. Honestly, that is the coolest part of the video, in my opinion. So let's get back to it. All right. So we have reviewed the footage. Josh, care to share what happened? Well, that was definitely a first round impact, followed up by what we believe to be second and third round impacts for certainty. But that means that this rifle just cleared the course out to 800 with only a single one miss and it was purely based off of a wind call. That means it took one box of 20 rounds. I mean, that's unbelievable. We just cleared the course with a score better than the M110, which is top on the list for the GIGN. Now, to be fair and put things in perspective, if people go and watch that video and try to compare and contrast, you know, the wind that we had on that day was something like 25 miles an hour. And what are we at right now? You're holding off half a plate. You're right. You're also shooting it with a 4x optic. An ancient 4x optic, because you'll look through it in a bit. Yeah. Go ahead. Let's get your reaction looking through the scope. You were able to hit things. I would say this is worse than the current Amazon grade optics. I mean, that's what it looks like. Because it's cloudy, but it is robust. Gigantic thick stadia. Understand that it is a robust military optic. So your zoom lenses have a lot more complexity to them because the extra amounts of glass. Yeah. They use better glass nowadays. But if you're looking at just an optic that has kind of like the Super Sniper that we shot, it's so cheap because there's no zoom mechanism. Yeah. And back then, if you think of that, they wanted to build a robust system with a good elevation adjustment. And that was what they were focused on. They wanted a system that the soldier could not screw up. And this is coming out, you said, in the 50s, right? In the 50s, late 50s. So not too far. So late 50s. So your 10 to 15 years post-war. Yeah. Right. And what magnification is that optic, Henry? It's a 4x APX scope that's on this. So a four power T-post style scope. German T-post. Fat T-post too. Now granted, you are able to dial it though, right? Okay. So this is the interesting thing about the FR-F1. And when Ian sent it over, initially I pulled the top cap off and like a normal regular American soldier, I did not read any of the instructions. Why would you? Right. Everything should be done to American spec. Correct. Of course. So I started playing with it, took the top cap off. And I was thinking, look at this, Josh. Wow. This thing is going to fail. The entire knob just has like these little hashes on it. Yeah. Turns out elevation is adjusted on the side turret. And I had been playing with the windage the entire time. You know, that's actually really interesting because... It actually makes sense because when you're shooting, you could see the side of the turret. Right down the side and your hand can go to make that adjustment. Because, you know, and this is something that I'm personally, just aside from 9-hole, I'm trying to study up a bit more on bolt guns and modern bolt guns and PRS, things of that nature. And one of the things that I've noticed is from a manipulation perspective, everybody manipulates everything with their right hand. So they manipulate the bolt, the trigger, and any of their adjustments in magnification, as well as elevation with their firing hand, which is very different than what I'm used to, where firing hand never leaves the grip in kind of modern carbine shooting. So when you think about the positioning of that dial, it actually makes a heck of a lot of sense for that style of you're coming from the bolt and the firing grip right up to make your adjustments. Yeah. People like to make these jokes about the French and their firearms. They like to call the French, what, cheese-eating surrender monkeys? The cowards. Yeah. Yes. I worked with the French army. I disagree with it when people say that. Yeah. I lived in France and I mean, that gave me a perspective because like in Paris, you go to Les Invalides, the military museum, you could see the amount of development into weaponry that the French have had. And they had one of the biggest colonial holdings around the world. It would be crazy to think that they did not make good firearms. Now, however, their firearms are very eccentric. We just talked about the way the dial is on the side. That makes a lot of sense because as you're shooting, you're manipulating your elevation and then you're back on the rifle. Right. You're not having to take your head up, crane your neck, move your hand to the top of the optic. Right. Yeah. If you see the bipod in this strange location, they're thinking, so if a shooter, and back then a sniper is more so a DM role, is supporting infantry movement, wouldn't you want a better traverse of your rifle? So you're giving up an element of the stability achieved by having the bipod extended to gain additional amounts of flex and traverse, as you say. Yes. And so you gain a wider field of fire when it comes to it. If you're thinking about a, let's think about the Russian doctrine where snipers are interchangeable with machine gunners. You could use snipers to pin people down much as well. You could use a machine gunner to do the same. Yeah. And you're looking at your field of fire and you're looking at better traverse. This makes sense, a lot of sense. Another interesting thing to look at this, the MAS 36 action, you see these lugs? It's a rear lug action. Right. There's a lot of people in North America, in the US to be particular, who seem to think that rear locking lugs means it's inaccurate. Yeah, well there's the age old adage, just like so many of the other things like Kalashnikovs are inaccurate. This falls into that same bucket, right? And in that lore, the most accurate action of course is the 98K because it has front locking lugs and it is a superior action. I found this to be untrue. Today being a prime example, making it all the way two shots per target to 500, one shot per target all the way with one miss. One single miss. I mean, that's not a fluke. Same thing with... With repeatable hits at 800. Yeah, and you think of it, same thing with the number four. You remember? Yeah. Rear locking lugs again. Yeah, it did phenomenally well. So I think it comes down to the machine work. I don't think it comes down to whether the locking lugs are placed in the front and the rear. So the French are taking into account a lot of design elements that seem to be overlooked or I guess not really considered on the North American side. Yeah. So this particular rifle was also famously used in the 70s in one of the times that the GIGN was deployed outside of France. So Loyada was a defining mission for the GIGN. In a sense, the unit had only been around for two years. And so at this point, a lot of even military units either didn't know about them or felt that they were unproven. When Lunand Pouto, which was the commander and the founder of the GIGN, when he showed up to Somalia and stepped into the general's tent, the foreign agent general, he actually looked at him, which Lunand Pouto wore glasses, and told him that men who wear glasses deserve to be behind desks rather than behind rifles. Because they showed up in their GIGN, they showed up in civilian clothes and long hair, these military officers just didn't trust them. And they felt that they were forced to work with the GIGN. However, the GIGN in this particular mission was the linchpin in the mission's success in saving that school bus of children. So let's set the stage a little bit. Terrorists took a school bus of children, blew past a foreign legion outpost, and they were parked on the border right here, if you see on my map. So you can see the terrorists actually took the 31 school children and parked on the border of Somalia, right outside of the Somali police station. And overnight, there were reinforcements from Somali regulars and some more militants that came to face off with the French. Now, the foreign legion ended up setting up here, behind a palm grove. And the gendarmes, they were able to send in a mechanized cavalry unit that was 800 meters down the road from the bus. The GIGN operators came in and infiltrated into their shooting position that was 183 meters away from the bus. Now, the parachutists, the foreign legion soldiers, were about 100 meters behind it. The plan was for the GIGN operators to take out all the terrorists that were on the vehicle and then the legionnaire would push in and form a perimeter so they could push armored vehicles in and save the school children. A couple things went wrong. So let's look at the actual shot on the school bus and get a better understanding at what we're dealing with. School bus, full of children, 125 degree Fahrenheit. We had a shooter up here in the front, sitting on some wooden boxes, hanging out in the shade because it was very hot. Terrorists, right here in the driver's seat. And then we had head honcho in the middle. And then on the very back, on the tail end, we had another terrorist. So we're looking at four tangos, one, two, three, four. We had five GIGN operators, a total of six people because the commander was looking through binos. Two shooters were observing target number one. One shooter was observing target number two, shooter on target number three, shooter on target number four. They used a code system where if your target was up, you would count from left to right and call out Number one, ready. Number two, ready. When you see the target pop up. Number three, ready. Number four, ready. And at that point, the commander would give the initiation command, which was zero, zero. That way it wouldn't confuse with any of the numbers that they had planned. At the command zero, they would count All four of the targets would go down, which actually happened that way. However, remember, they were under the sun for 10 hours in 125 degree or 51 degree Celsius heat. Looking through these APX scopes at those targets for 10 hours. So they took the shots. Target number one got shot in the leg, but second shooter eliminated that one. Target number two, KIA. Target number three, KIA. Target number four, KIA. Excellent. At this point, we have the Legionnaires trying to push in. Two machine guns pushing down any heads that they saw, which they got into a massive firefight over this no man's land. Dismounted soldiers trying to push in at this point. Crossing 300 meters under machine gun fire is a bridge too far sometimes. So they were taking forever. No armor support during these 10 hours of observation. Armored vehicles actually overheated and were unable to drive up when they needed to. So at this point, you have your six GIGN operators just watching helplessly at your vehicle right here. All the schoolchildren are still there. You popped all four of the terrorists. Infantry can't get in. No vehicle coming. They were worried for the sake of the schoolchildren that they didn't want any of the terrorists to light them up because there were actually still terrorists outside. Turns out, unfortunately, right here behind the bushes, we had Terror No. 5 that ran on board with an STG-44 and let off a burst, unfortunately killing one young girl. And at this point, a Legionnaire came up. He shot one of the Legionnaires and wounded him and used another girl as a human shield. The GIGN operators had ditched their FRF-1s at this point, pulled out their sidearms and initially had two operators run up to secure the vehicle before the infantry could get there. So you have these two guys with revolvers running across 183 meters to try to secure a vehicle with terrorists who had Sturmgewehr-44s and the entire element right here with MG-42s and a mixed weaponry. Got onto the vehicle. As this guy let off a burst and used the little girl as a human shield, a Legionnaire trained his submachine gun on him and then couldn't shoot because he was worried that he would shoot some of the children. So the GIGN operator at this point had gotten to the vehicle, had his revolver, his Manurhin MR-73, and put a shot behind the terrorist into his neck and killed him. So they were able to secure the entire vehicle. Unfortunately, there was one little girl who got killed and one little boy who died on his way being medevaced back to France. However, the entire vehicle was saved. I believe 14 Somalis were killed. All eight of the terrorists were killed. About 15 Somalis were wounded on the other side of the border. Again, this was a defining operation for the GIGN to come through at the moment that they needed them the most. Interesting thing about this was during the standoff, the snipers, the GIGN snipers had observed that on the Somali side, they actually had a white advisor with red hair. And during this entire engagement, one of them was able to sink a shot into his stomach. We still don't know where that advisor comes from, which nationality he belongs to. Anyways, back to our time in the field. I hope you enjoyed this. I enjoyed this very much. Thank you to our friend Darius and to the now Commandant Proto. He did an amazing job fielding his gendarme into accomplishing the mission. And actually, the GIGN, a lot of people probably don't know, they actually spearheaded the art of synchronized shot for elite units. And this actually turned into US doctrine. We still count left to right with the snipers if we're running synchronized shots. And he actually taught US snipers in Quantico to use this technique. And on top of that, on that matter, the GIGN, Proto himself, had spearheaded the use of fast roping for quick infiltration operations. So US doctrine was absolutely influenced by operators who ran this rifle. So anyways, back to the show. And so they were sitting there like hunters, waiting for all five targets to appear, looking through these four by ancient scopes. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so a lot of people, they think of sniper as this one lone guy going out. No, no, no. I mean, it's a very complex development of theories, systems, teamwork, and how it integrates with a larger team. So a lot of times when you look back at what they did on the design element, you can see the evidence of the theory of operations for that particular country. So Henry, I mean, obviously, that was a pretty impressive run. How do I add one of these to my gun safe? So this rifle belongs to our friend Ian from Forgotten Weapons. Hallelujah. We had, he sent it to us for field testing, but he actually had one of the former French state armours put this together for him in France. Oh. And in fact, this is serial number five of the FRF1s. So this is the fifth rifle off the line that was ever produced. That's crazy. And for the longest time, I mean, the ATF didn't allow the importation of these things. But the powers vested to Ian went and debated with the tech branch and the ATF, and in fact, was able to explain that this is a C&R rifle nowadays and got it imported. Well, well done. So how many of these are then out there? Can I go get one? There's a handful. I won't say that you can't. That's a very strong word that you can't. But no, you can't. If we do this run with one less, then that would be the top of the list. Yeah, absolute perfect score. This is a Remington 700 5R equivalent on the DMR course right now. Yeah, single miss on the entire course. Yeah. Yep. So, um, I'm blown away. Yeah, that's a good place to end it, I think. Guys, again, most of you already know Ian and follow Forgotten Weapons, but if somehow you live under a rock, you should go check out their show. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten, uh, Nine Hole Reviews. Do you enjoy arguing with other viewers on the internet on which rifle performs better on practical accuracy? Well, we have a solution for you. Go to our Patreon page and scroll down. You'll find the Practical Accuracy Scoreboard, where we have ranked and compiled all the data of all the firearms we have tested on the Practical Accuracy course. Furthermore, it's already separated into the different categories, so you can go back to your argument as quickly as possible. And whether you decide to support us via Patreon, subscription, or just a normal viewer, we thank you.