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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:09 am 
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The Article

The Article wrote:
Super Sniper Kills Taliban 1.5 Miles Away

A British army sniper helped save his commander and set a new sharpshooting record after killing two Taliban machine gunners in Afghanistan from a mile-and-a-half away.

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Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison fired his consecutive shots from such a long distance that they took almost three seconds to reach their targets.
This was despite the 8.59mm bullets leaving the barrel of his rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.
The distance to his two targets was 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles - according to a GPS system - and about 3,000ft beyond the weapon's effective range.
The 35-year-old beat the previous sniper kill record of 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an al Qaeda gunman in March 2002.
Speaking about the incident, Cpl of Horse Harrison said: "The first round hit a machine gunner in the stomach and killed him outright. He went straight down and didn't move.
"The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead."
The serviceman then fired a third and final round to ensure the machine gun was out of action.

He said: "Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machine gun."
He killed the two insurgents as he protected his troop commander, whose vehicle became trapped in a field in Helmand Province and started coming under fire.
Cpl of Horse Harrison, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was using the British-built L115A3 Long Range Rifle, the army's most powerful sniper weapon.
It is only designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft - just less than a mile - and capable of only 'harassing fire' beyond that range.
To compensate for the spin and drift of the bullets as they flew the length of 25 football pitches, Cpl of Horse Harrison reportedly had to aim 6ft high and 20ins to the left.
In a remarkable tour of duty, he cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull.

During the Taliban ambush, his patrol vehicle was hit 36 times. He said: "One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top.
"Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt."
He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
Cpl of Horse Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.
He said: "I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape. It hasn't affected my ability as a sniper."

That's freakin hardcore right there.

Edit: Fixed the link.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:14 am 
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Cpl of Horse. Now that's a cool title.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:17 am 
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Boom! Headshot!
MmmmmooMonster Kill

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:31 am 
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Damn, that's some serious shooting skill. Very impressive.


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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:34 am 
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He did it with a L115A3 chambered in .338 Lapua to boot.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:55 am 
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Nice looking rifle.


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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:08 am 
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I would think that at 1.5 miles away, the suppressor is largely irrelevant. Of course, its there for must closer shots, but still.


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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:27 am 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
He did it with a L115A3 chambered in .338 Lapua to boot.


Supposedly.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:30 am 
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This may be a stupid question, but why don't sniper rifles have computer-aided targeting? Flight computers on fighter jets make thousands of corrections every second to maintain aircraft stability. Why not something similar (though obviously scaled-down) for sniper setups?


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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:41 am 
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RangerDave wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but why don't sniper rifles have computer-aided targeting? Flight computers on fighter jets make thousands of corrections every second to maintain aircraft stability. Why not something similar (though obviously scaled-down) for sniper setups?


Because the tech doesn't scale down that well I would think.

Plus, now you're carrying more **** around.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:43 am 
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5x25 56 - wow thats a big scope.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:52 am 
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As my dad would say ...

"He could shoot the dingleberries off a gnat's ***."

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 12:34 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but why don't sniper rifles have computer-aided targeting? Flight computers on fighter jets make thousands of corrections every second to maintain aircraft stability. Why not something similar (though obviously scaled-down) for sniper setups?


They do, but it's more "computer-aided targeting calculations". Simply, they let you know how far off the center of the reticle you need to aim under the known conditions for the projectile to hit where you want it to; they don't do the actual aiming.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 12:46 pm 
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There is no way he had the suppressor on that gun when he made the shot.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 1:04 pm 
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Don't go getting all pissy because you're jealous.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 1:24 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but why don't sniper rifles have computer-aided targeting? Flight computers on fighter jets make thousands of corrections every second to maintain aircraft stability. Why not something similar (though obviously scaled-down) for sniper setups?


Because then their balls would not clang as loudly when they walked?

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 1:25 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but why don't sniper rifles have computer-aided targeting? Flight computers on fighter jets make thousands of corrections every second to maintain aircraft stability. Why not something similar (though obviously scaled-down) for sniper setups?


You mean like a tank has? Well that's because a sniper rifle weighs about 15 pounds in the case of this weapon, or about 31 pounds for a monster like the .50 caliber Barrett M82, while a tank weighs 60-70 tons and a jet fighter weighs, say, 13-21 tons at takeoff in the case of a relatively small one like the F-16. They can easily accomadate the weight of a computer, and have a big engine to run generators to power them.

You could have a calculator-like device to help you compute windage and all that, but an actual targeting computer would require all the accoutrements a tank has - after all this kill was made at tank combat ranges.

You'd need gadgets to determine wind direction, velocity, temperature, humidity, etc., not to mentin the most important element of all: range. That would require a laser rangefinder with sufficient power. All this gadgetry is going to take batteries, which add weight to the soldier on top of the weight of the equipment itself, and if it's all integral to the weapon it has the added drawback of making an already fairly cumbersome weapon even more so.

It's much easier, cheaper, more reliable, and easier on the soldier to let him rely on experience and training that use gadgetry. Remember, this sniper shot was made under what the shooter describes as essentially perfect conditions. To make this gadget cost-effectivel, it would need to provide some significant advantage over the ability of the shooter; for example the ability to make the same shot in a thunderstorm. That would require a lot of senor systems to provide the necessary input for the computer to work, and would hence create weight and power requirements.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 2:00 pm 
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Current sniper teams are sent out with ballistic computers, meteorological sensors, and laser range finders, but you're right in that they're still trained to make the calculations and take the shot without the gizmos and doohickeys.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 5:05 pm 
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The calculations are what one's spotter is for.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 5:07 pm 
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Vindicarre wrote:
Current sniper teams are sent out with ballistic computers, meteorological sensors, and laser range finders, but you're right in that they're still trained to make the calculations and take the shot without the gizmos and doohickeys.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 5:16 pm 
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Vindicarre wrote:
Current sniper teams are sent out with ballistic computers, meteorological sensors, and laser range finders, but you're right in that they're still trained to make the calculations and take the shot without the gizmos and doohickeys.


Yes, you can do that sort of thing with a bunch of individual little gadgets. RD was asking about integrating them all into the rifle which would be a lot more complex; making it compute some sort of "put a red dot where the bullet is going to land" firing solution. That's like a smartgun from Shadowrun or something and doesn't exist yet.. unless you're using something like this:

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as a sniper rifle.. which is effective, but both heavy and expensive.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 5:32 pm 
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I didn't take it as him asking about it being integrated into the rifle, but then I forget how much of a differential there is in people's basic knowledge of firearms.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 6:21 pm 
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Might not be so bad on that rifle. One could embed the circut board and wiring into the polymer as its construted, The batter could be between bipod and magazine a small flip down overview for the scope.

How you would enter in the info though is up in the air.

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 6:34 pm 
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ahhh.. men in uniform...

please ignore me and continue with your military weaponthingymibob discussion ...

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PostPosted: Tue May 04, 2010 8:38 pm 
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Elmarnieh wrote:
Might not be so bad on that rifle. One could embed the circut board and wiring into the polymer as its construted, The batter could be between bipod and magazine a small flip down overview for the scope.

How you would enter in the info though is up in the air.


You could do it one of two ways:

1) You could have it continuously compute where it thinks the bullet will land and display it as a red dot in the scope or on a screen or whatever. The biggest problem with this method is that the rifle is not auto-stabilized, and the rangefinder is slaved to the position of the barrel. In a tank, the laser is placed on the target, and the computer then lays the gun tube, which won't be exactly parallel to the laser beam. However, with the two always stuck to each other you may end up with problems where when the laser is on the target, the barrel is off it. Then, when you move the generated targeting "dot" onto the target, the laser is off it, thereby moving the dot... and so forth. There are probably ways to make it work but how much would it cost and what would be the net gain?

2) You could simply integrate a laser rangefinder into the rifle and a ballistic computer and have the soldiers manually enter the data and still do the aiming manually. This sort of make one wonder why we're **** around with it at all, when it works just fine with them not attached to the rifle.

In either case, though, you're talking about adding weight and mass to the rifle, and possible complicating maintenance. The polymer-embedding thing is a perfect example; either you need a way to remove the circuit board if it goes bad or you have to have to discard that entire section of the rifle. The bottom line is, would any of this gain enough performance to justify the expense of developing it?

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