Quiet DoD Geissele Project Revealed – Super Precision Mount

If you follow our Instagram page, you may have seen something a little obscure in one of our photos. Many hypothesized it was a Geissele scope mount. The image below, taken by Ben Winslett at the Big 3 Media Event and shared on a private Facebook forum today, created quite a stir. We immediately reached out to our contacts at Geissele Automatics to get some background. Here's what we found out.

The Super Precision optic mount has been in production since Spring for DOD customers only. Early reports were confused, stating that it's made out of 7075 T6 aluminum and some (even us, earlier today) reported that it's made from Aluminum Alloy 2099, an advanced aluminum lithium alloy. But, according to Bill Geissele, the mounts shown are all 7075 T6, though there is, indeed, a 2099 version. More about that below.

There is a lot more going on in the mount than can be seen in a few photos, but the key points are that it's made specifically for the semi-auto platform, it will come in versions to fit specific optics and that the mount returns to zero without any voodoo or even a torque wrench.

While he wasn't ready to offer pricing, he said his company will release two versions of the mounts in spring 2016. One will be a premium version made of advanced Aluminum Alloy 2099, and the other will be an as-yet-to-be-determined aluminum alloy; our guess is either 7075 or its stronger brother, 7055.

Lithium alloy is not new, but Aluminum Alloy 2099 is, so we turned to Alcoa, the co-designer and manufacturer of the material to get more details. This is a quote from their patent research document.

“To date, most applications of aluminum-lithium alloys have been on military aircraft and space vehicles. In these applications, the weight savings and performance improvements derived from using aluminum-lithium alloys were essential to meet the operational requirements of these vehicles.  As an example, the external tank of NASA’s Space Shuttle was converted to the lower density Al-Li 2195 resulting directly to payload increases that were essential for the delivery of large components to the International Space Station.”

The only other information we could get out of Geissele was that it will be on display in the Geissele Automatics booth at SHOT Show 2016.

Photo: Top, Courtesy Geissele Automatics; above, Ben Winslett; below, Ed Tchen – Gunstruction; all photos used with permission.