The Military Leupold

We've been working with the government, with the military for decades, even way back before we started building rifle scopes. Back in the old days, you'd see, you know, your county sheriffs or your local SWAT teams, most of them were running some form of VX3 with our target adjustments or something like that. So even before we were really dedicated, people were running our stuff in that Going back to the early 80s, mid-80s, was about the first time that we actively engaged with a actual program to build a sniper scope, and that was for the U.S. Army M24 system. We made it official in 1988 was when the M24 launched. So loophole tactical scopes have been in the system throughout the world since that time. So when I was on active duty, we used a lot of the loophole products, especially the 3.5-10 LRTs in the Mark IV series on our M110s, and we use those, you know, quite a bit over all my deployments through Iraq and Afghanistan. I think in a military setting, what really sets loopholes apart is the fact that they're made right here. We're able to really keep our hands on every facet of the manufacturing process. We're able to build in all of our own quality. We're not outsourcing any of that to anywhere else. We're not relying on someone else to really defend our warfighters. We're taking that on ourselves, and we're really pushing to make sure that we're providing the best product that we can. The big kind of breakthrough in the company happened in the 1940s when my great-grandfather Marcus Leupold, who was Frederick Leupold's son, he was hunting in eastern Oregon, and he took a shot at a buck, and the scope had fogged up. He missed the shot. He was incredibly frustrated, and he said, hell, I could build a better scope than this. And that was the aha moment, the light bulb that went off that said, hey, I can improve a rifle scope and make it waterproof and fog-proof so you don't have the issues that he had happen in the field to him. And that's really where the genesis of the Leupold scope came in the late 1940s, and through the 1950s and 60s, as the scopes were growing, just improvements were made, and we got to a point where we had a relationship with the U.S. government, able to sell some of our scopes. Back then, they were fixed 10 powers or fixed 8 powers and getting into the market there on the military side. I started off as an officer. I was explosive ordnance disposal, 787EOD out of Fort Lewis, Washington. We used a system called M107, which is pretty cool. It's based off a Barrett M82 rifle, and it has a Leupold Mark IV scope on it. So I can tell you all about it. It's part number 54560. It was a Mark IV LRT 4.5x14x50. It's got M1 adjustments, which is MOA adjustments, and a mil reticle in the second focal point, so it's a mil dot. We used that frequently, mainly for training. We had it with us on deployment for something called SMUD operations. It always held up against a .50 cal rifle. Obviously, that's kind of a larger caliber and a larger system to be putting it on, but my entire time of using this optic, I never had one single failure for multiple shoots that we did. So internally here, we have our own engineering groups. We have a model shop. We have the capability to essentially go from a napkin drawing or an idea to a 3D printed part or optical system, include lenses, and build up, even on a 3D printed level, some kind of a test optic to see how the prescription will work. From there, we can actually take and make it out of metal, as you would see on a fully production ready rifle scope, all in-house in this building in a matter of a few days. And what that really allows us to do is take and explore ideas that may not immediately look like a home run, or you don't know, you're not guaranteed that this is going to work. It allows us to not take the safe road, if you will, and really push the limits and go try things. A lot of people don't know that we invented the tactical scope. It didn't really exist before the mid-80s, right? In previous military applications, they would just use hunting scopes, right? You look at the old M40 scope, the Redfield. It was just a three to nine by 40 with a duplex, because that's what you would put on your hunting scope back then. So the Army came to us in the mid-80s, and they said, hey, we want to design a purpose-built scope for sniper applications that needs to withstand all the rigors of a deployment, right? We called it a jump-proof scope. Basically, they said they want to throw it out of an airplane to be able to survive. So our engineers took that, went back, designed a scope from the ground up that was incredibly durable. We came out with a fixed 10-power and a fixed 16-power, and those were called the Ultrascopes. That is the predecessor to the Mark IV, and it proved extremely successful in the Army testing. They adopted it, and then the Mark IV program came on board after that. So we really were the first scope company to build a purpose-built optic for the military, and that know-how and heritage and expertise plays into the performance of the Mark V all these years later. So the Mark V HD is the latest in all the families of rifle scopes. So again, going back to all that knowledge that we have in-house, everything that we've learned over the years, we've been probably the biggest supplier of tactical scopes to the military and U.S. government for the last 30, 40 years. And every time we come out with something new, all the lessons that we learned with the previous projects go into the new ones. So what sets the Mark V apart from things that we did in the past is obviously, as time's gone by, the ability to hold tighter tolerances, better lens coatings have come out. So the Mark V has had the advantages of technology as far as our capability to build stuff with new processes and new materials, but generally it comes from just all the knowledge that we've gained over decades of building these things and working with the end users. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a region, you know, I'm sure you could step me on a country or two, but a region that is not running Leupold. There's a lot of Leupold in Europe, there's a lot of Leupold that we're selling to allied countries. Primarily our most popular optics that we're selling there right now are our Mark V line, we've got our Mark IV line for spotting scopes really popular, and then obviously our Delta Point Pros are incredibly popular as well. So one of those three products I'd be willing to bet you is in just about every country around the world. So this is M110 optic. So this is a Mark V HD 3.6x18x44. It has a MilGrid 4 reticle, which is actually a reticle that the army designed, and then we put in these scopes for this contract. The actual contract as a whole when it's kitted comes with our IMS mount, then we've got a laser filter, some flip-up covers, but essentially M110 program's been around for a number of years. There was an ECP, essentially an upgrade to the program where they decided, hey, you know, we need some upgraded optics now that capabilities have greatly increased, and this Mark V is the one that was chosen on, which is a fantastic optic. So this one is the Mark 22 optic. So this one sits on top of a Barrett MRAD, this is chosen for the PSR program, which is a multi-caliber sniper rifle system. So whether it be anti-personnel or anti-material or for training rounds, this optic can do all that. So again, this is the same reticle, it's that MilGrid 4 reticle as well. We've got some leveling lines on this, which is a little bit unique. So if you're in the field and you need to throw a new scope on a different mount, you can do so just by lining these up. It's going to put you pretty dang close to be able to engage a target accurately. And then another thing that I really like, I thought was pretty innovative, is they've got eye relief lines. So if, you know, if you know that based on your size and the size on the rifle that you need to put your optic at, you know, number five, you're going to know every single time that that eye relief is going to be perfect at five. You can just set it there, which is pretty cool. So this one's a little bit more comprehensive than the M110 in terms of the accessories that come with it. So it's, again, it's a jack of all trades for the tool that it's being put on, and it's a very, very cool optic. When you stop and think about the rifle, the ammo, the shooter, and the optic, that optic is the last visual control you have of where that bullet's going. So the optic is really what ties everything else together to make sure that when you pull that trigger, that bullet's going to go where you want it to go. So when we set out designing the Mark V, we actually got guys laying down behind the guns. It wasn't, it wasn't just designed as a rifle scope by itself out in space. We actually took a team of guys, we got them down behind rifles and started just watching how they move and how they adjust. So we were able to put all of that into the Mark V design to make them as ergonomic as possible, as user-friendly as possible. They give you everything you need to take advanced shots quickly without a lot of stuff that you don't need. Adoption by the military with our products has really helped the commercial products as well. So what we see is we will build the best product that we can, we'll get it out there. If it wins a military contract, it's now going to be used in some very difficult and harsh environments, and we're going to learn things from that. We look at things and say what's working the way that we thought it would, and generally we find that they perform exactly as we expected, but then we learn something new. And that new piece will go into the next design, it will trickle down into hunting products, it will trickle into other shooting products, and so it really helps us evolve. It's helping expedite the evolution process by really putting these things fully through the ringer day in, day out, and allowing us to learn from that.