I have never been in battle, but in movies I have seen a sniper setting up alongside someone looking through a scope of some kind.
What does the scope do, and how does its (presumably) specially trained operator interpret the data for the sniper?
I can’t say how it works on a battlefield, but on the rifle range…
Basically, the target shooter, using iron sights, takes a few shots at the target, and the spotter can tell the shooter where the shots are landing. “Too high, a bit left, now too much to the right”. That lets the shooter makes adjustments to the sights (or technique).
The spotter. His scope is more powerful, allows him to find and range targets, judge wind, tells the sniper what adjustments to make to his scope, watches for misses and tells the shooter what corrections to make. Also provides security(he’s armed also) and backup shooting if needed.
The guy with the scope is the spotter. One of his duties is to be aware of the surroundings, since the sniper’s field of vision is severely restrained to the image in the rifle scope.
thanks. i’ve now done some homework on sniping and saw a picture of one of the scopes, which also measures temperature, humidity, and air pressure, all of which can affect the bullet in flight.
What I don’t get is why the man with the scope has to tell the sniper where his shots have landed. Is it because his field of view is so narrow that if he lets off a shot way off line of sight for some reason, he even doesn’t know where it went?
And/or, a sniper round surely doesn’t have a tracer. So how does that guy with the scope (how the hell does one refer to him?) know where the shot went? A dust plume?
Sorry, I was told already.
Well, when you shoot a rifle, generally it kicks a bit and you lose your sight picture, plus you are working the bolt for a second shot if it is a bolt action.
Spotters look for dust kicked up from the bullet, holes in walls, etc, plus you can see the vapor trail the bullet makes – it looks kind of like the trails from the matrix, so you can generally tell where the bullet went. The visibility of the trail changes according to wind, humidity, etc, so a spotter looks for all of these different things.
The spotter focuses just short of the target which lets him see the vapor trail the bullet/shock wave leaves under some atmospheric conditions. You can’t see it from the side but from directly behind the bullet. He watches for dirt splash or other markers. The sniper might not see this as the rifle could be pulled off by recoil plus his focus is on the target.
Interesting. Thank you.
I once saw a war movie (dont remember the name, though*) in which the spotter had a rangefinder in his binoculars which allowed him to tell his sniper partner that “the white car is 1000 yards away, the black one is 950 yards”. Then the sniper adjusted his sights.
Was this realistic?
*(hey, that’s a great cite, huh!!!)
Depends on what war the movie was about.
It can be done with modern electronic scopes.
Otherwise, I’d think it would take 2 scopes from different angles, with communication between them, to triangulate the distance.
I believe that in WWII submarines, they had an attachment on the periscope where they could measure the apparent length of a ship as it appeared in the periscope, look up the actual length of the ship, and then from that calculate the distance to it. But that only works where they know the actual length of the ship, like enemy warships. For others, they could recognize the class of ship and thus estimate the length of the ship, and use that to get pretty close.
You can use a parallax rangefinder, which is very low tech. Also, you can measure the height or width of a person or whatever using the mil dots in the scope, which gives you a very good estimate of range. Laser rangefinders aren’t so good, because the other team can see the laser with the proper gear.
Vapor trail? Really?
WARNING: The video is of a guy hunting rams, so if that makes you squeamish don’t watch it.
Cool, thanks!
Harumph!
hahaha
CMC fnord!
Sniper (alright, video game sniper) extraordinaire!
Is this vapor trail a demonstration of a Prandtl-Glauert singularity?From Wiki:
Since heat does not leave the affected air mass, this change of pressure [created by the bullet in this case?]–LB] is adiabatic, with an associated change of temperature. In humid air, the drop in temperature in the most rarefied portion of the shock wave (close to the aircraft) can bring the air temperature below its dew point, at which moisture condenses to form a *visible cloud *[–ital. mine] of microscopic water droplets. Since the pressure effect of the wave is reduced by its expansion (the same pressure effect is spread over a larger radius), the vapor effect also has a limited radius. Such vapor can also be seen in low pressure regions during high–g subsonic maneuvers in humid conditions.
[SIZE=2]Nice pictures and picture links at the Wiki entry.[/SIZE]
No, my post is wrong. :smack: When I saw the Ram shoot, and a photo at one of the sniping sites, that ain’t no visible cloud. It looked like a heat shimmer ruffling the already-present heat shimmer.
You gotta admit that Prandtl-Glauert singularities are neat, though. 
Question: In the pic of the F/A-18, is the vapor moving along with the plane or does it happen as a quick one time event?
the vapor is more or less stationary (since the air surrounding the plane/projectile is more or less stationary), but the disturbance (the Prandtl-Glauert singularity referred to earlier) moves along with the object, producing a fairly continuous halo of condensation that likewise appears to move with the object. See here for a sonic low-altitude pass by a Blue Angel F/A-18, demonstrating the effect.