Canadian sniper sets new record

[Skybird]

... killing an IS commander from a range of 3.5 km.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...way/418889001/

Wowh for both accomplishments.

Shot fired from elevated position, the rifle was a McMillan TAC-50, whatever that may be. (German news). The bullet should have spent 10 seconds in flight, so a little gratis luck (no wind, no target movement) is included here.

Next time use an L/55, that does not take that long to reach out that far!

[Skybird]

Further reading revealed that the old record of around 2500m also was held by a Canadian - and with the same rifle model. Wikipedia has some info for starters on it. Seems to be an impressively precise rifle with a minute of angle MOA of less than 0.5.

An MOA of 1 represents 1/60 of one degree.

Anyone in the knowledge how such a MOA compares to other rifles?

[em2nought]

This image really puts some perspective on just how amazing a shot like that really is

[Gargamel]

I think the BBC article I read stated somebody else holds (Austrian maybe?) the 2nd spot now, and the other Canadian holds the third. I was surprised at that, as I thought the Canadian was still the longest until this one.

What gets me is the ten second flight time. That's a long wait to see if you hit or not....

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

[...]What gets me is the ten second flight time. That's a long wait to see if you hit or not....

As someone said "in this time you could have sent him a message to duck"..
I just have my doubts about "insurgents" and killing from far away, like here, or with drones. If the victim really was an enemy, ok.

[Rockin Robbins]

At that distance there is a lot of randomness in the result. Sending the victim a message to duck could easily with the same shot, have meant he ducked into the oncoming bullet!

Although skill is involved, I think we can chock up the actual hit to a random number generator. Nobody could hit one of 20 such shots.

[Gargamel]

It may have been a low % shot, but the risk of return fire is nill. At least from the targets.

I keep thinking about this and it keeps getting weirder. Fred drops dead from a gunshot wound. They start looking around for who ever shot Fred. And then they hear the gunshot, if they do at all, and think it's a second shot. And more likely, the gunshot would have faded so much in that time, they would have written it off as not associated with them.

If you start think in relative distances, it gets even more weird.

This is the length of a long international runway (Side note, the wikipedia page for runways in enjoyably highly detailed.)

This is roughly the elevation change from the summit of Everest to Base Camp.

It's the length of the National Mall in DC.

It's just shorter than a lap of both Daytona and Indy speedways.

It's 1/3 of the depth of the Challenger Deep.

3 times the height of Angel Falls.

4 times the height of the Burj Khalifa.

6 times as tall as the CN tower.

(http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/Meas...00&sort=pr&p=1) Which happens to be a new bookmark of mine.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

At that distance there is a lot of randomness in the result. Sending the victim a message to duck could easily with the same shot, have meant he ducked into the oncoming bullet!

Although skill is involved, I think we can chock up the actual hit to a random number generator. Nobody could hit one of 20 such shots.

Totally agree but most importantly....one less bad boy

[Cybermat47]

I'd be interested to know what the daeshbag was doing in those 10 seconds. I guess he must've been taking cover.

[ikalugin]

1 MOA groups are about as good as you can realistically get.

So a skilled shooter with a good weapon under normal conditions can achieve them, but not (repeatably) surpass them.

Which is why stuff like exacto is being developed.

p.s. I use .300winmag for longer than average ranges but in my area you simply dont get 3.5km LOS ranges in the wilds.

[Moonlight]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

I'd be interested to know what the daeshbag was doing in those 10 seconds. I guess he must've been taking cover.

That's not a possibility, if he was moving or even standing to sit down the odds of getting a hit decrease substantially and it becomes a shot that's not worth taking.
I would expect him to have been static, ie, either stood still or sat down and either drinking from a bottle or eating a sandwich or even on a mobile phone, even sat down the odds of getting a hit are lowered even further and very few snipers would risk a shot, no sniper is going to take risks, they're either certain of the hit or they don't take it.

That's just my opinion of course which around this forum I've noticed that its not worth much.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Moonlight

That's not a possibility, if he was moving or even standing to sit down the odds of getting a hit decrease substantially and it becomes a shot that's not worth taking.
I would expect him to have been static, ie, either stood still or sat down and either drinking from a bottle or eating a sandwich or even on a mobile phone, even sat down the odds of getting a hit are lowered even further and very few snipers would risk a shot, no sniper is going to take risks, they're either certain of the hit or they don't take it.

That's just my opinion of course which around this forum I've noticed that its not worth much.

No, you're dead on here. The bullet would have arrived long before the sound would have (If it was even noticeable). The target would have had no warning at all, and would have just been standing there sipping his latte.

[Skybird]

I assume that more or less the bullet travelled near the speed of sound. 3.5 kilometers, 10 seconds flight time: average speed 350 m/sec. Speed of sound: roughly 340 m/sec. The shot sound probably arrived at the target area 0.5 seconds after the target was hit, plus minus some tenths of a second.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I assume that more or less the bullet travelled near the speed of sound. 3.5 kilometers, 10 seconds flight time: average speed 350 m/sec. Speed of sound: roughly 340 m/sec. The shot sound probably arrived at the target area 0.5 seconds after the target was hit, plus minus some tenths of a second.

The .50 BMG round is listed as traveling at 1200 m/s (EDIT: thats for the browning machine gun from WWI, the M107 Sniper rifle uses a .50 round that travels at 853 m/s), but there would be substantial losses in that velocity over the distance traveled resulting in the ten second flight time. Plus, I'm not sure if they were actually timing the shot to the tenth of a second, so I'd guess 10 seconds is just an estimate.

But regardless of the math, the bullet was supersonic initially, leading to it arriving long (relatively speaking) before the sound did.

But while the bullet travels in a "straight" (ignore ballistics) line, the sound travels in every direction. It is governed by the inverse square law. Where if you double the distance, the energy of the wave is now 1/4. Quadruple the distance, and it's 1/16 the energy. By the time it reached the target, it would have been barely noticeable. Especially in a location that distant gunshots are not uncommon, it probably wouldn't even have been noticed.

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I assume that more or less the bullet travelled near the speed of sound. 3.5 kilometers, 10 seconds flight time: average speed 350 m/sec. Speed of sound: roughly 340 m/sec. The shot sound probably arrived at the target area 0.5 seconds after the target was hit, plus minus some tenths of a second.

And ISIS aren't exactly a thinktank, so they probably thought that the sound was another shot coming at them