Been doing some looking online and it seems like a lot of people are very against using a pvs14 as a ar15 clip on. Claiming the recoil will damage it or ruin it. I find that hard to believe considering how low recoil most ar15s are. Anyone have experience with this?

They can be mounted behind the optic and they handle 5.56mm recoil just fine.

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.

this is "technically" true in the sense that it wont break the tube, power supply, or housing.

but weapon mounting a 14 introduces the chances of developing a recoil related blem in the tube, google it if you want to see what that looks like. Typically it wouldnt be very large but if you have a clean tube I wouldnt risk it.


with the advent of all the NVG height optics mounts these days weapon mounting a 14 is like taking 3-4 steps backwards in time especially if a 14 is your only NVD

True it is technically able to handle the recoil of the 5.56mm. As others have said if you have a clean tube it's not worth the risk.

You really should have a dedicated clip-on or scope. I have a PVS-30 and a PVS-17b. I'm a practical person and have used a PVS-14 mounted behind a scope with no ill effects.

If a PVS-14 is all you can afford then it's up to you if it's worth the risk. If that's the case, I'd recommend a good robust LAM and practice with that while wearing the the PVS-14 behind your non-dominant eye.

Thanks for the input team. I definitely wont mount it in on a rifle after reading. Lots of knowledge here.

It's worth looking into a good quality clip-on if you want to go the weapon mounted route. There are a couple of good ones in the EE right now, no affiliation.

Get yourself a good Dbal-D2 or similar LAM. Practice practice practice.

Yeah I have 5 FP lasers. Peq's and 1 dbal a2. I travel and compete. Just never got into the clip on game. That's next. Thanks for the help