Yeah, but why would you ever get dovetail if you could go ball detent? You already plunked down that much money, might as well go all in with the flex. I'm not sure if the ball detent sits any lower when stowed, but if so, I would think it's totally worth it, given the massive bulk of the damn things to begin with.
I am curious as to what the typical specs on the tubes will be. The 1792 min FoM is in stark contrast to the 2376 minimum the rest of the newly available L-3 line-up is rocking, and I would be pretty pissed, hypothetically speaking, if my new panos had some mediocre SNRs, EBIs, and/or halo figures, though it seems like there are plenty of folks that are getting pretty sweet 20UA/M tubes in terms of specs, so maybe the typical example won't be bad. I guess the 2376 min FoM tubes are the 24UA/M specs? Maybe 26UA/M, if that's even a thing? 22UA minimum is 1920, while 18UA is 1536, IIRC.