Long-range sniper question (where to aim?)

Factual Questions
1

After taking into account things like drop of the bullet during flight, wind, slope of ground, etc., does a sniper adjust his sights to compensate for them (thereby keeping the target in the centre of his scope’s field), or does he simply aim away from the target having estimated the effect of drop, etc.

For example, if he estimates a six-inch drop, and three-inch left to right wind drift, does he aim six inches above and three inches to the left of the target? Or, perhaps, he can adjust his sight to compensate for these factors so the target remains in the centre of the scope?

2

If sniping is (as I suspect) related to long-range target shooting, the answer is the latter - adjust the sight so the target is in its center. (This presumes you have good estimates of the distance to the target, the wind, and some other things such as air density.)

I seem to recall that for a 1000-yard match, the mid-range height of a typical bullet (30-caliber) is something like 35’; holding that far off the target would be tough. The telescopic sights sit on the rifle at a very noticeable angle.

3

For most hunting and many types of target shooting however, the shooter moves the sites off center of the target to compensate for wind and trajectory. Most common scopes do not allow that type of adjustment on the fly. I am not familiar with cutting edge sniper scopes but many older ones required the shooter to aim off center as well.

4

I should qualify that last statement. Even though many scopes require you to aim off of the center of the main crosshairs, they may have additional bars on the cross-hairs that mark the trajectory at different distances. Some also have additional bars on the horizonal crosshairs as well.

Here is a good explanation of how they work.

5

First, a professional sniper would have his gun sighted to a “cold barrel shot”, because chances are he won’t have more than one opportunity. The first shot will be different (especially as distance from target increases) than a shot after you’ve heated the barrel up.

Mind you I’m not a sniper, but have hunted white-tails at pretty good range. My father was a tackdriver in his spare time. All of the scopes on the hunting rifles here at the house are adjustable for drop and windage with a simple “click” of the wheels.

My educated guess would be that a sniper wouldn’t work alone, either. He’d be set up with a second sniper, a spotter, who would be on the glasses and/or laser range finder. Accurate distance to target should give you accurate bullet drop compensation (there are charts for this) and windspeed would allow for windage adjustments. The crosshairs would be aimed at the point of desired impact. After a certain amount of time had passed, the spotter would probably become the man on the gun, and the first sniper would take over the glasses.

I HAVE had the opportunity to shoot a local guy’s sniper rifle, a custom bolt-action .243 with Harris bipod. I’d never thought about it, but he says all snipers he knew and trained with carried bolt-action because it is dependable and doesn’t canibalize any gasses for recycle/extraction. Thus, the missile travels further. Interesting stuff.

6

*farther

7

I used to have this old Sierra SWAT game (back when they thought FMV was a good idea), and there was a segment where you had to earn your sniper qualification at the range. An easy way to get through it was to shoot one shot at the target, line up your scope with the bullet hole, and then your future shots would be perfectly accurate. So if a video game has any modicum of accuracy, the rifles that police officers use have sights that adjust.

8

This would require a way of holding the gun on target while you adjust the sights.

9

Link that might be of interest

Sniper Rifles of the World

10

A *professional * sniper? :eek: :eek:
Bet that would look great on a resume.

11

I had a friend who claimed he had been one in the army. :rolleyes: Yes, there are ones, but his story just reeked.

12

Being a Sniper in the Army simply means you’ve completed sniper school. It’s not what the average civilian would think of when they hear the term sniper. It doesn’t actually mean they’ve done anything sniper related outside of that school. It’s like someone claiming they are Airborne or a Paratrooper. IMO, if you’re not in an Airborne unit and receiving jump pay, you’re not Airborne. And if you’re not in a combat arms MOS and in an Airborne unit, then you’re not a Paratrooper.

A person can complete Airborne school, and never jump again. 10-15 years later, a person would tend to forget details and not know much about military static line jumps. So his story would “just reek”. Similarly, a person could complete sniper school, and never fire a sniper rifle again!! Basically what I am saying is two things.

  1. A “sniper” isn’t necessarily what you think it is. It’s a skill identifier. It’s not necessarily an MOS (military job).
  2. A person can complete sniper school and easily forget most of the finer details about the course. He wouldn’t necessarily be an “expert” on anything sniper related, and may not have any experience on the matter outside of sniper school. … hell, I’ve known qualified EOD people unable to answer a simple question like how many volts sets off a blasting cap.

Anyway, back to the OP:

To answer the question, the Crosshairs will be placed at the desired place of impact. Contrary to what I’ve heard elsewhere, MILDOTs are for [del]determining[/del] estimating range, and NOT for adjusting to it!!
BlackTyner’s answer is correct, and I’ll add a little more detail since it’s very seldom I can provide information on anything!!

One thing a sniper needs to determine is the wind velocity near the midrange. If there is a difference in ground and air temperature, he can determine wind velocity by observing that “mirage” it creates. This method takes practice and experience!! (one thing that seperates real snipers from “Sniper School Graduates”)
Once the wind velocity is determined it is converted to Minutes of Angle, and the windage is adjusted. When wind direction and velocity (in mph) are determined, they are converted with the following formula:
Range (in hundreds of meters) X Wind Speed (in mph) and divided by a Constant. The constant is a number that depends on the range of the target. It is a whole number and usually between 10 and 15.

So if a target was 800 meters away, and the wind is blowing at 10mph, the formula is:
(7x10)/13= approx 5.5 Minutes of Angle. This is for a full-value wind. This would be divided by whatever the value of the wind is, based on it’s direction. If you have a half-value wind, you would divide that 5.5 in half.

You also asked about temperature?
Temperature affects a shit load of things, including the burn rate of the powder and the velocity of the round. Ammo exposed to high temperatures will have an increased burn rate, high velocity and therefore higher impact. The heat will also lower the density of the air, increasing the velocity of the round and the height of impact!
This is why a truely skilled sniper needs to have A LOT of range time and experience. He will record practically EVERY ROUND fired in his data book and make notes on all of these tiny little details, including the environment his weapon was zeroed in!! This book and his experience will tell him exactly how much to adjust his windage and elevation!!
But generally, a 20-degree increase or decrease in temperature will raise or drop the point of impact by one MOA, respectively!! This can be adjusted with simple clicks of the scope. Adjusting the scope is the easy part. Collecting all the necessary data for an extremely accurate shot, is the hard part!!!

Also, Humidity and Altitude will affect a point of impact. But even these things can be converted to MOA and adjusted accordingly. There is no need for “cutting edge rifle scopes” or any fancy technology or electronics…

13

Before my math starts confusing people… It should obviously have been (8x10)/13= approx 6 MOA. Sorry about that.

14

You might have explained to the uninitiated that a minute of angle, MOA, is 1/60 of a degree. This is often used as a measurement in shooting because it almost exactly one inch at one hundred yards, 1.047" to be precise, so it’s a very convenient round number. The adjustment clicks on scopes are typically 1/4MOA or sometimes 1/8 on high magnification target scopes. This makes it easy to translate a scope adjustment at a given range to the number of clicks on the turrets.

15

I think I can almost imagine what this means, but could you explain it (regarding this mirage method)

16

You know that wavy mirage effect that you see - usually off a street, parking lot or flat surface in the distance? You can see little “Heat Waves”? You know that thing? For our purposes here, we’ll call that a “Mirage”.
The mirage does not always look the same. If you’ve ever paid attention to them, you’ll notice that they are affected by the wind. Just like trees or smoke in the air, they moves with the wind. And the little squiggly lines are different depending on wind speed. But they are unvarying for that particular speed (if that makes sense). Basically, once you get used to the appearance of the waves at that wind speed, you can very accurately determine wind speed based on the little wavy lines in the mirage. It’s very accurate but only up to like 15mph or so. After that, the movement of the mirage is too fast to notice any little changes. Think of your ceiling fan. Once it gets to a certain speed, you can’t see individual blades anymore.

17

What Bear_Nenno said. Man, I think I have a new shooting hero.

If you don’t mind me asking, are you just a big fan of the sport/skills, or are you an actual shooter? If you are a shooter, what’s your tool, if I may ask.

Also, there is a huge difference in Russian sniping vs. American/Western Sniping. The Russian SVD is a gas operated semi-auto rifle, and they regularly equip their weapons with noise suppresors, but then they train for engaging at much closer distances than we do.

Tristan, who is still working WWI mausers on iron sights… (and taking down NRA Ram sil’s at 500, so I’m pretty happy with that)

18

Reading mirage and wind is one of the most difficult parts of benchrest shooting and I’m pretty sure even more difficult for military snipers.

When shooting .22 benchrest I would zero in still air if at all possible but the range I shot at was at the base of some small mountains so there was near constant wind. A 5mph puff of wind is enough to knock a bullet out of the 100 point circle so I would place pinwheel or streamer flags between myself and the target to guage speed and direction. Since it shifted too fast to keep up by adjust the scope turrets I would watch the flags with one eye while the other aimed through the scope and offset the crosshairs accordingly. One extra bit of complexity, at least with .22, is that the bullet doesn’t neccessarily move in the same direction the wind pushes it because of of it’s spin so I always used a cheat card that showed where wind from a certain direction would displace the bullet impact.

BlakeTyner, you mention cold zero but I haven’t seen a significant point of impact change when hot with my bolt action rifles, a Savage 10FP and Anschütz 64. Both are properly bedded and the barrels are free floated so there is no contact with the stock. Contact with the stock can certainly cause shots to string vertically as the barrel heats or pressure is appied from a sling or bipod but I don’t know of any modern tactical/target/varmint rifle that isn’t free floated these days and it’s become pretty commonplace for hunting rifles as well.

19

A couple of years ago a Canadian scored the longest sniper kill in history. As I recall, it was something like 2.6 kilometers from the target. The bullet drop was estimated to be something like 14 feet.

20

Terrific answers! I learned a lot!

Thanks to all!