I’m going to call “bunk” as well. There is a difference between “stability” and “accuracy”. Going back to my fluid dynamics class in college, what you are describing sounds like turbulance around the bullet as gases from the muzzle meet the atmosphere. Like all turbulance, this will introduce deviation in the projectile’s trajectory. But once the bullet clears the cloud of muzzle gasses, the aerodynamic properties of the bullet take over and you would have more stable “laminar” flow around the bullet as it travels through the air. Sort of like an overpowered car fishtailing until it accelerates up to speed.
But I don’t see how the bullet will course correct back to what you were aiming at.
Well I have to think any rifle bullet is a lot cheaper than an airstrike!
Not to mention, in today’s modern highly political urban warfare environment, dropping a 500lb bomb on a target can be a bit…impractical.
The sniper (or scout sniper if you prefer) also serves as a “force multiplier”. A single sniper can pin down a much larger force with nothing but the psychological effect of knowing your head could disapear as soon as you break cover. We all saw Full Metal Jacket.
And a properly conceiled sniper doesn’t necessarily give away their position when they fire. There was an episode of Mythbusters where they were testing if someone can dodge a sniper bullet fired from several hundred yards away. What they found was that, short of using special Hollywood blanks, you can’t even see the muzzle flash at those ranges.
This is a silly argument. There are things called lakes and things called ponds. These are fundamentally different things, and I can easily say the thing in my backyard is a pond while Lake Michigan is a lake. The existence of a gray area between the two doesn’t render either definition invalid or make them fake things.
Sniper rifles are rifles that are built using certain tricks to make them more accurate. But none of these tricks are exclusive, they’re also used on other non-sniper rifles, and a sniper rifle may have anywhere from zero or more of these tricks. So, going down a list and checking off features does not a sniper rifle make.
The USMC sniper rifle in Vietnam was an off-the-shelf Remington. It’s still used today with modifications, but none of the modifications are unique to it. It has a different stock (does nothing to make it a sniper rifle), different barrel (so do many rifles at the local gun club), and different trigger (so do many rifles at the local gun club).
The best definition of sniper rifle I can think of is a rifle, usually accurized, that snipers have found useful to their job.
I hope you’ll pardon a stupid question: why would the long-range military versions be less accurate than the shorter range law enforcement version? That seems backwards. My initial thought would be because the need for an instant kill in a law enforcement situation, with hostages/emergency personnel present, is greater because of the possibility of civilians getting hurt. Is there more to it?
You got it. Military snipers are shooting at “center of mass” on a person so a shot group of several inches is acceptable. The target is bigger when shooting at vehicles or equipment.
The LE sniper may have to “thread the needle” when shooting a hostage taker. The target may be only as small as an eye peeking around a hostage or through a gap in a door that is slightly open.
In a hostage situation, there is no room for error; the sniper must his target, else an innocent person could be quickly murdered. The sniper has one shot, and failure to hit the target would have *major *ramifications.
In a military situation, if the sniper misses his target, it’s (usually) not as big of a deal. There’s always another day.
Wouldn’t it be also that law enforcement can afford to have heavier more accurate guns (bigger and longer barrels for example) since they wouldn’t be carrying them as much?
And a police sniper probably also won’t have to crawl through 20 miles of muck to get to his shooting location, or air-drop his supplies, or the like. Military equipment needs to be able to survive conditions like that, which is going to mean tradeoffs.
Heavier and longer barrels don’t always mean more accurate. Sometimes a shorter barrel is more accurate as it doesn’t vibrate as much when the gun is fired.
Well, on the one hand I have people who shoot a lot and who keep accurate records of loading data, distance, and results for every shot fired. On the other hand I have you and your college class (how many years ago?) in fluid dynamics.
Frankly, I admit it is counter-intuitive. One side of the argument, though, is presenting data. The other side is doing little more than saying “that don’t sound right!”
Yes, it does shoot farther, and has been noted, due to it high BC it tends to shoot well at those ranges. The .50 BMG bullet is still supersonic and still stable well after smaller rounds have petered out (heh heh, I said “petered”). Real world practicalities are, though, that the gun and ammo are big and heavy. Modern day soldiers, even in a first world mechanized army, are carrying a LOT of weight. Especially if the sniper is afoot, there has to be a really good reason to carry something as heavy and unwieldy as a .50 BMG rifle.
FWIW, the main reason I don’t own a .50 BMG rifle is that there is no shooting range even remotely close to my home in western Pennsylvania long enough to let me enjoy its best qualities. Thousand yard ranges aren’t common around here and most gun clubs don’t even have half that. Shooting a .50 BMG rifle at 300 yards (which is what my club has) is like buying a sports car and then tooling around the block in first gear.
It’s more than that. Even if the explanation is accurate, that turbulence from gas ejected from the barrel affects the bullet momentarily and then the bullet steadies or “goes to sleep”, any random vector added by that turbulence is going to be still be there no matter what distance the bullet flies, and the distance flown will magnify the the error. Unless, as msmith537 notes, there is so,e course correcting mechanism built into the bullet.
That’s physics, not “um…”. Your claim is extraordinary and I would like to see a cite.
Here is a page about the accuracy of rifles, describing the measurement of accuracy as the “minute of angle”. If a gun can fire consistently within a one inch circle at 100 yards, it is a one minute of angle accuracy rifle. At 200 yards, a rifle of the same accuracy will shoot consistently into a 2 inch circle, and 300 yards a three inch circle, and so on until the system breaks down to to other factors at longer distances. This is because any inaccuracy is magnified by distance, and there is no suggestion there is any way, or any rifle, that can get around this.
So, if a real sniper in a modern, well-equipped military learns he has a new assignment when he reports for duty tomorrow, what rifles will he likely have available to him?
One other point about this. Whatever evidence shooter collect about their shooting is at least as much about their own skills as it is about their guns. There could be any number of reasons why an individual shoots less accurately at short ranges than long ranges, related to their optics, or their eyesight, or whatever adjustments they might make to account for different ranges, and not at all related to the rifle or the bullet.
Did you read any of the links I have already posted in this thread? I don’t think you have. One of them is a very lengthy discussion by precision shooters on this very topic. They hash over their first-hand results at the shooting range.
One of my absolute favorite rifles in my personal collection is a Romanian PSL. As is fairly well known, despite a superficial resemblance to the Dragunov, the PSL is basically just an AKM suffering from gigantism. It isn’t accurized. It has basically nothing in the way of the bells and whistles save a primitive a 4X scope. By wank book, gamer, and fanboy standards this thing is repulsively crude, unlovely, and not at all what 1337 sniperdood would carry. Despite that, it has been found useful by snipers in several theaters of war.