MILLIRADIAN a.k.a. MIL


Probably you have heard about MIL Dot scopes, but you do not know how to use these little dots and what exactly are they.

After we talked about MOA, lets see what is milliradian, a.k.a. MIL and what is its relation to the long distance shooting.

Milliradian is 1/1000 of the radian. The radian itself is an arc of a circle with the length of its radius. The angle of one radian is approximately 57.296° so one MIL is 0.057296°. If you still remember all this from school…WELL DONE! Your teachers should be proud of you, but for all the others lets have a look at the chart below to visualize all we said and make it more clear.




How to use MIL - with the MIL dots you can easily measure the distance to your target, the hight or width of the target, adjust the bullet drop compensation or the windage correction. 

For shooting purposes it is important to remember that:

1 MIL @ 100m = 10 cm or 3,6” @ 100y

1 MIL @ 200m = 20 cm or 7.2” @ 100y

1 MIL @ 300m = 30 cm or 10.8” @ 100y

And so on, and so on, and so on…

Formulas for measuring the distance

height or width of target in cm / height of target in mils X 10 = range to the target in meters

height or width of target in meters / height of target in mils X 1000 = range to target in meters

height or width of target in yards / height of target in mils X 1000 = range to target in yards

height or width of target in inches / height of target in mils X 27.77 = range to target in yards

Example

target is 180 cm (or 1.8 m) tall or wide

target measures 3 mils

180/3 X 10 = 60 X 10 = 600 m or 1.8/3 X 1000 = 0.6 X 1000 = 600 m

Formulas for measuring the size of a target

range in meters X size of target in mils / 10 = size of target in cm

range in meters X size of target in mils / 1000 = size of target in meters

range in yards X size of target in mils / 1000 = size of target in yards

range in yards X size of target in mils / 27.77 = size of target in inches

Example

range is 600m

size of target is mils 3

600 X 3 / 10 = 180 cm or 600 X 3 / 1000 = 1.8 m