I was watching a cheesy 80s TV show last night, and in one scene a sniper shoots from a roof at a target inside of a building, through a window. Is that realistic? Will a bullet, even a high-velocity round, go through glass without significant deflection?
No cites here, but I can tell you that a well accepted view among hunters is that if a bullet strikes even a small obstruction (e.g. a twig) its accuracy will be compromised. The effect is (not surprisingly) thought to be greater with small bullets.
Depends upon the angle of attack. If deflection is a concern, two snipers can fire. One shoots to break the glass, the second to hit the target.
I would guess that deflection is less of an issue with .50 sniper rifles, though I’m not sure if metro police use them.
The first James Bond novel (Casino Royale) mentions this. Bond is reminscing with a member of French intelligence and mentions his first official kill; the sniping of a Japanese cipher expert and double agent in a high-rise office or apartment (I forget which). Another agent shot first, to shatter the window. Bond got the target in the mouth when he turned to gape at the broken window.
Is there a reason the sniper himself can’t fire both rounds? Just squeeze the trigger twice quickly? Does the gun heat up too much, or recoil too much, or something?
Snipers often do not use automatic or semiautomatic weapons, because the mechanism can restrict accuracy. So they would have to reload after each shot.
In real life, I believe that snipers will usually fire a first shot just to break the glass, then a follow-up shot to hit the target. If possible, the shots are fired by two different people to keep the time between the two as short as possible so the target has no time to react.
The distance that the bullet has to travel after striking the glass would also be a factor; shooting someone who has their nose pressed up against the glass is more likely to work with a single shot than, say, shooting someone who is twenty feet behind the glass.
On pages 201-202 of The Ultimate Sniper Major John Plaster addresses shooting through glass. He suggests using at least a .308 to improve penetration and shooting perpendicular to the surface of the glass. He notes that on angled shots the bullet tends to curve more sharply in the angle it was travelling, not deflect. He also suggests the possibility of using two shooters but directs that both shots should be aimed at the target and be perpendicular to the glass, if possible.
This article suggests a length of det cord around the perimeter of a window if the sniper is shooting from behind a window.
I think I would flinch.
I saw a thing on TV talking about snipers, and it also mentioned that some like the bolt-action rifles because they don’t spew spent casings everywhere. Fire a shot, open the bolt, remove the casing and put it down next to you, then pick up your spent brass and quietly slip away without leaving anything to announce where you were hiding. Also, a bit of brass flying through the air is more likely to catch the wrong bit of sunlight and signal your position to the enemy.
This isn’t the reason for the preference. There are bags to attach to the rifles over the ejection ports to catch the brass, so the above isn’t an issue. Bolt-action rifles are preferred because of improved accuracy and range. The design of automatic and semi-automatic weapons is such that some of the energy of the charge goes into cycling the action, which necessarily reduces both the range and accuracy of the shot. There are some other factors, too, but they escape me at the moment.
Snipers need extreme accuracy and it takes a while to line up for an accurate shot. Plenty of time for the target to react and get out of the way of the second.
Tom Clancy, in one of his novels has the HRT employing the double-shooter method for sniping.
Given that sniping is most often done at very long ranges (up to several thousand yards), a pretty hi-powered telescopic sight is mounted on the gun. Re-acquistion of the target after recoil thru such an optic device isn’t a quickly accomplished task. Thus, the greater rate of fire of a semi- or fully-automatic rifle is entirely superfluous. And a bolt-action/single-shot rifle is inherently less prone to mechanical failure should a second shot be needed.
I don’t think that a the first shot to break the glass could be relied on to create a big enough hole in the glass for the second shot to pass through. It might make a bullet sized hole, it could take out a small section of glass, or it could take out the entire pane. Anyway, it would be better to take the first shot to hit the target and break the glass, and have the second shooter hit the target. If you have two guns, why not put both shots on target?
There was a hostage case at a bank in Sacramento in the early 90’s. One of gunman was in the fron, with hostages lined up on the floor. He was pretty easily visble through the glass window and door. The SWAT team made a plan to have a sniper take him out, and immediately after the shot, storm in through the back.
The shot was deflected by the glass in the door. The gunman ran down the line of hostages shooting wildly into them, and ran into the back. The SWAT team came in and secured the building, but the initial missed shot caused a couple of hostages to be killed (IIRC).
My knowledge of this comes entirely from spy novels and films, so you know that it has to be 100% accurate.
In the last Timothy Dalton Bond film, License to Kill, he arranged for an explosive charge to break the window before he fired, so the glass wouldn’t be there.
In Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal, the Jackal’s previous job had been shooting the driver of Trujillo’s car through the triangular vent window, which was, unlike the other windows, of non-bulletproof glass. The car was moving and he only got the one shot, but succeeded. No wonder the OAS hired him to assassinate deGaulle.
Point of note: 600 yards/meters is about a practical maximum range for a .30 caliber rifle (7.62 NATO, .30-06, .300 Win Mag). Ranges of up to 1500 meters with the .50BMG round are plausible. Longer shots have been taken, but these are the exception rather than the rule. It’s not just the accuracy of the gun and the skill of the shooter, but the increasing significance of bullet drop and spin reduction that cause rounds beyond this range to be increasingly less accurate. “Several thousand yards” is unlikely.
Actually, the German government contracted Heckler & Koch to develop a semiautomatic sniper rifle (which ended up being sold as the PSG1) in response to the Munich Massacre and the inability of sharpshooters to engage multiple targets quickly. The Walther WA2000 and Barrett M98 are other semi-automatic sniper rifles, and semi-automatic rifles like the M21, the Draganov SVD, or the Steyr AUG HBAR T are typically selected as “designated marksman” weapons in military units. (A designated marksman is sort of a close-range sniper; think Tom Sizemore’s character in Saving Private Ryan.)
Bolt guns have been traditionally preferred by detached snipers and police marksmen because they’re lighter, less likely to foul, easier to field service, and easier to modify. But they are slower for followup, as you have to remove the trigger hand from action to actuate the bolt. Some efforts have been made to minimize this–for instance, straight draw bolts or forearm mounted “pump” style bolt actuators–but these have never caught on.
Firing through glass is always tricky; one of the reasons the FBI went to the .357 Magnum, then later the 10mm Auto is because the round could penetrate windshield glass rather than deflect off the way a .38 Spl or 9mmP often will. As someone else mentioned, the fictional Bond obtained his double-oh standing by being the second shooter, the idea being that the first shot will shatter the glass and allow time for the glass to fall out of the way, making a clear path for the second bullet. That being said, it’s not a usual situation for a sniper to fire through glass; you generally wait for the clean shot rather than attempt shooting through a barrier if at all possible. Although sniper teams are general comprised of two members, one serves as the spotter (with a large monocular scope) while the other is the shooter, and they may switch off as the shooter becomes tired. (For those who have not participated in marksmanship, although it doesn’t require great athleticism, it does demand considerable endurance and stamina.)
Most of the stuff you read about sniping in books–even the formerly well-researched Tom Clancy–are exaggerated, abridged, or just plain wrong. And you can take it as the default that anything you see on TV and the movies with regard to sniping, and more generally firearms, is utter bullshit. If you want to see a movie that is nothing but a continuous string of technical and operational inaccuracies, try Sniper with Tom Berenger and Billy Zane; or better yet, save yourself the pain and don’t.
Stranger
In his book, Carlos Hatchcock talks about how snipers time the squeeze of the trigger to their breathing and heartbeats. It takes a lot of time to set up for one shot. The delay between shots would defeat the purpose.
Just because this is the straight dope:
– From the above referenced Carlos Hathcock wiki page.
Very much an exceptional shot.