Quote History Originally Posted By wjoutlaw:
They can be mounted behind the optic and they handle 5.56mm recoil just fine.
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Sometimes... Depends on the tube inside. Some tubes are simply not rated for weapon shock. Also the mount was never designed for use on weapons ( unlike the MUM series ) and you'll need to mount it securely with a non-conventional mount. You can mount via the front lens, but one normal housings the case is around 1mm ( 40 thou ) wall thickness where the lens threads meet the housing flange. Some people went to the trouble of making custom uppers to address this issue, which were pretty good.
It's not unheard of to use a PVS-14 on an AR, but often they are used with a reflex sight (eg, Eotech with NV support ) since behind a scope they lose a lot of light and you'll need extra IR illumination... People went to all kinds of trouble to make recoil mitigating mounts in the past. I haven't kept up with any of them over the years so I can't make recommendations.
Also, as was mentioned they are not boresighted, and are not designed to hold boresight if coincidentally you find one that is close... If you want to understand that, get a normal dayscope and stick on on a table looking outside at something, and align the crosshairs on something distant, maybe 100 yds away. Now, without touching it, put the pvs-14 in front of it and see if the crosshairs are still pointing to the same spot. Worse, twist the PVS-14 around a bit while maintaining the image, and see if the crosshairs move around at all.
A PVS-14 is close enough in some cases, but generally you can't expect the POI to remain the same.
Overall, generally, there are better solutions and less risk just going for a correctly designed clip-on.