The shooter was 4.4 miles away, a distance so great, the Earth’s rotation came into play.
It was a new world record for a rifle shot, set by the Jackson-based Nomad Rifleman team led by Schott Austin and Shepard Humphries. The shot was made with a custom-built rifle chambered for the .416 Barrett cartridge.
The .416 Barrett cartridge is made by “necking down” a .50 Browning Machine Gun (BMG) round to accommodate the roughly .40-caliber bullet. It’s a relatively short, stout bullet that proved ideal for its purpose, Humphries said.
“Traditionally in extreme long-range shooting, we wanted long, skinny bullets,” he said. “However, we discovered that as a bullet crosses over into subsonic velocity, it flies better if it’s shorter and fatter.”
The .416 Barret bullets were leaving the rifle’s muzzle at a velocity of roughly 3,300 feet per second, Humphries said. They dropped into subsonic velocity at about 1,100 feet per second and were traveling at a downward angle and about 600 feet per second as they reached the target zone.
I read this story the other day. Pretty amazing shot, though its practicality for us as riflemen is limited. I still consider it an accomplished feat.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is some kind of skill, that team must have one hell of a mathematician on it's team too. I can't even imagine how much the practice and lab work was involved in this. What was the old record?
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the Blue Flame and Spirit of America days. We have the tech, let's try to pull it off.
ReplyDeleteA century ago battleships routinely shot 15-20 miles from a moving, rolling platform fully expecting to hit a moving target.
416 Barret is a big FU to California. Owtlaw my .50 rifles,I'll make a new caliber ...
ReplyDeletemeh,,,
ReplyDeleteThe longest kill shot was by a Canadian soldier in Iraq; 2.2 miles.
ReplyDeleteNope. 24 miles. See below.
DeleteOk math whizs, if the earth covers 28 km a min at the equator how far did the earth rotate in 28 secs in Wyo?
ReplyDeleteAcquiring a firing solution means solving for the target's position and velocity, a 6 degree-of-freedom problem.
DeleteNice, but it still can't defeat Ray Ban Joe's F-15s
ReplyDeleteIt's not nearly as impressive when you learn it took them 69 shots to hit the target.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/new-world-record-longest-rifle-shot/
4.4 miles is nothing. My team and I once put a round thru a window 24 miles away. With 1 shot.....Impossible, you say? It is definitely not impossible - we shot a M982 round out of a M777A1 with a 4H charge...
ReplyDelete....the M982 round was a 95 lb GPS guided round shot out of a 155 mm howitzer (M777A1) from COP Andar, Afghanistan (2010). 3rd Battalion / 321st Field Artillery Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division....3/321 is now HIMARS with 18th Fires Brigade / 18th Airborne Corps. :-(
That must have been an Increment Ia-2 Extended-range round with resistance to GPS jamming.
DeleteThat looks like a might big "target". An impressive bit of shooting, even if it took almost 70 attempts to succeed. But it's not exactly as if hitting something at that distance will be a useful skill. Anything as big as the target is likely to be armored.
ReplyDeleteThe target is the orange spray paint on the white steel. The huge white piece of steel is just so you can find the orange dot 4.4 mi. away. All over the Internet people are crapping on these guys because thier target is so "huge". These people are idiots. It's a 4 in. dot 4.4 miles away. You would need very powerful optics to even see the target.
ReplyDeleteDang! I just rang the target at 1070 yards with a 30-06, and was feeling pretty good. This is crazy! I was in WY, BTW.
ReplyDelete