Longest shot record. Ultra-long sniper shots. Rifle from the garage

Hit a target from a distance of 3.5 kilometers with direct fire - difficult task for almost anyone military equipment. When it comes to civilian weapons, it is completely unattainable. More precisely, it was unattainable until this moment. The Texas guys from the Hill Country Rifle company, which produces and refines rifles, did the hitherto impossible - they hit the target from a distance of 3,475 meters (3,800 yards).

Thefirearmblog reports that the previous unofficial record was 3,550 yards (3,246 meters). The author of the new achievement is Jim Spinella, who shot from a modified Long Range Extreme 375 Cheytac rifle ($6995 for the base model) and used CHEYTAC .375/350 GR cartridges.

It took the sniper 19 rounds to zero. After making all the adjustments, the hit accuracy was 90% on a 36-inch target (91.5 cm). The shooting took place far from “greenhouse conditions” - during the record-setting period, the wind was blowing at a speed of 4 m/s with gusts of up to 7.5 m/s.

To understand the severity of the moment, here are a few facts:

• at the peak of the parabola the bullet was 100 meters above the aiming point;
• from the moment of the shot to the hit, the bullet flew for more than 8.5 seconds;
• Due to air vibrations, the target is almost invisible at such a distance even through an optical sight.

The guys are not going to stop there, planning to reach the 4,000-yard mark (about 3,658 meters) this fall. Until now, the achievements of snipers in accurate shooting range had not been officially recorded, but Spinella and his comrades decided that it was time to put an end to this.

In combat conditions, the farthest confirmed sniper shot was made from a distance of 2475 meters. In November 2009, Cpl. british army Craig Harrison participated in the joint forces operation in Afghanistan. During the battle in the Musa Qala area, using the L115A3 Long Range Rifle rifle, from a distance of 2475 meters, he managed to destroy two Taliban machine gunners with two shots, and with the third, disable the machine gun itself. In an interview with the BBC, Harrison said that it took him 9 sighting shots to then successively “place” three bullets exactly on targets.

Corporal Craig Harrison - author of the "combat" range record sniper shooting

Harrison also mentioned that on that day in the Musa Qala area weather were ideal for long-distance shooting: clear visibility and complete calm. The bullets fired by Harrison from sniper rifle L115A3 Long Range Rifle reached its target after approximately 6 seconds of flight.

It is noteworthy that the rifle and cartridge type used by Jim Spinella are legal on the civilian market and are available for purchase as hunting weapons in many countries of the world. Thus, anyone can purchase a rifle if they have a purchase permit rifled weapons and the required amount of money.

This story began almost three years ago, when a Russian shooter and manufacturer of high-precision long-range rifles Vlad Lobaev saw on YouTube video, where cheerful old men from Texas hit a target with a rifle at a distance of 3600 yards (3292 m). Vlad decided to take on the challenge and compete with the Americans. Fortunately, he had his own weapons factory, Lobaev Arms, at hand.

Alexander Grek

The Americans fired from a custom-made ultra-long-range rifle of rare caliber .375 CheyTac. By that time, Lobaev’s company was already mass-producing the ultra-long-range rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight” in an even rarer and more powerful .408 CheyTac caliber, which allows sniper shooting at distances of over 2 km. For the record, they took a special custom “Twilight” with a titanium chassis and firing pin, with a barrel length of 720 mm and a weight of more than 9 kg. In April 2015, on a field in Kaluga region(there are simply no multi-kilometer shooting ranges in Russia) from this rifle, Lobaev’s team, after sighting shots, hit the target at a distance of 3400 m. The video with the record was posted on YouTube. The Americans reacted calmly: they say, okay, let's continue the duel in absentia.

Record rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight”

Subsonic

Not only the Americans reacted: a French sniper from the Foreign Legion, after long training, hit a target at a distance of 3600 m, but, apart from an article in a small specialized magazine, there is no information about this record, no one posted videos. The Americans also crossed the mark, first 3600 and then 4000 yards (3657 m). Lobaev’s company studied this video almost under a microscope: some parameters of the shot did not match, the flight time did not match up with the initial speed and angle of inclination of the bar. Nothing has changed in ballistics, but several hundred meters have been added. This does not happen, but since the competition was originally conceived as a competition of gentlemen, the Lobaevites decided to continue to shoot fairly with the Americans. And win by knockout - hit from four kilometers away.

Ultra-long-range shooting for shooters is considered to be shooting at a distance where at the end of the trajectory the bullet travels at deep subsonic levels, because with supersonic everything is clear - there ballistics are considered easy, simple mathematical methods. But subsonic ballistics is considered more difficult, and what’s most unpleasant is that in this mode some physical processes, which make it difficult to shoot at ultra-long distances. Firstly, a re-stabilization effect occurs. Linear speed slows down per 1000 m, say, three times - from 900 m/s to 300 m/s. And the bullet rotation speed is only 5-10%. At subsonic speeds the speed is even lower, but the rotation speed is still the same. This leads to the fact that all the design and manufacturing defects of the bullet begin to come out, which greatly affects the dispersion. In addition, at low speeds, errors in assessing wind and weather conditions become noticeable. The second factor is turbulence in the bottom part at deep subsonic levels. At speeds slightly less than 300 m/s this is not critical, but at ranges of more than 2 km it greatly affects accuracy. There is only one way to combat these phenomena - to develop a bullet design with a different bottom design.

Classic problems for shooting at ultra-long distances, they require an increase in bullet mass and more advanced aerodynamics. Lobaev set his first record with a standard D27 bullet, an analogue of the Lost River, widely known in the West. These are elongated, solidly turned bullets for long-range shooting, also called Ultra VLD. They were no longer suitable for new records. If you follow the path of increasing the mass of the bullet, you will need to change the entire cartridge - either increase the chamber or use a new progressively burning powder, or even switch to a different caliber. Another caliber (Browning .50 or domestic 12.7 x 108 mm) is a transition to another class and a completely different weapon with all the ensuing consequences: other barrels, bolts, receivers, dimensions, weight and a significant increase in recoil, at which there is no talk of enjoying shooting at all.

Lobaev decided not to retreat from old cartridge case and caliber .408 CheyTac, do not change either the dimensions or weight of the weapon. He was able to develop a heavier 30 gram D30 bullet while staying within the standard cartridge. This was also done because the cartridge is quite accessible and anyone can try to repeat the achievement. The design of the bullet was also modified: it began to resemble a long elongated spindle with two pointed ends, which made it possible to achieve an almost ideal ballistic coefficient of one. This required a change in the rifle's design, with a faster rifling pitch to stabilize the longer, heavier bullet. If the classic rifling pitch in the 408 caliber is thirteen, then Lobaev decided to use ten on the record-breaking rifle. Despite the fact that the initial speed of the new bullet was lower (875 m/s for the D30 versus 935 m/s for the D27), it had a flatter trajectory at 2 km.

Lateral support

One of the main problems with record shooting is that you can't keep raising the scope bar indefinitely. When shooting at such distances, the rifle has large elevation angles, as when shooting overhead, almost like a howitzer. At the top point of the trajectory, the bullet travels at an altitude of several hundred meters. No scopes allow such adjustments for aiming, so for record shooting they use special rails for the scope. However, you cannot endlessly raise the bar: the muzzle device begins to block the aiming line. This is exactly what confused Lobaev in the last American record: the angle of inclination of the bar did not correspond to the correction required for such a distance. Lobaev spotted a solution to this problem at the artillery, where the sight had long been moved to the left of the barrel. The solution is simple, but no one in the world has used it before Lobaev. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sight on Lobaev’s record-breaking rifles runs to the left of the barrel. Which turned out to be more convenient for shooting: you don’t need to throw your head back and you can take the optimal position.

Lobaev's know-how is the side mount of the sight for ultra long range shooting. A year ago it was forbidden to even photograph it. This system can also be used by troops: when shooting at long distances, it helps to get by with available Russian sights.

On the second try

They were going to break the record last summer in the fields near Krasnodar. For this purpose, a giant target measuring 10 x 10 m was made in order to at least take aim. No one knew how a bullet behaved at such distances, and there were no exact mathematical models. It was only clear that the bullets would enter the ground in the target area almost vertically, so the target was positioned at a large angle. Another difficulty was that the soil was wet during the shooting, so it was necessary to hit the target exactly: traces of hitting the ground at such low speeds and almost vertical angles are not visible. Unfortunately for the entire team, the record failed the first time: they failed to hit even such a large target. While they were preparing for the next round, the Americans posted a video on the Internet with a 4 km record. It became clear that we needed to shoot even further.

For the past year, Lobaev and his team have been conjuring their magic on the rifle and new bullets, practically not giving out information about the project, fearing to jinx the world record, constantly approaching the cherished milestone, first taking 4170 m, then 4200. And in October of this year they succeeded in the incredible: famous shooter and promoter Andrei Ryabinsky hit a target measuring 1 x 1 m from a distance of 4210 m. For such a shot, it was necessary to take into account a huge number of factors, including the rotation of the Earth - the bullet spent 13 seconds in the air! As the record holder himself said, it took him eight years to achieve this shot. So now the ball is on American territory. Or, more correctly, a bullet.

Only recently I told you, as well as another interesting thing about them.

This story began almost three years ago, when Russian shooter and manufacturer of high-precision long-range rifles Vlad Lobaev saw a video on YouTube where cheerful old men from Texas hit a target with a rifle at a distance of 3,600 yards (3,292 m). Vlad decided to take on the challenge and compete with the Americans. Fortunately, he had his own weapons factory, Lobaev Arms, at hand.

The Americans fired from a custom-made ultra-long-range rifle of rare caliber .375 CheyTac. By that time, Lobaev’s company was already mass-producing the ultra-long-range rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight” in an even rarer and more powerful .408 CheyTac caliber, which allows sniper shooting at distances of over 2 km. For the record, they took a special custom “Twilight” with a titanium chassis and firing pin, with a barrel length of 720 mm and a weight of more than 9 kg.

In April 2015, on a field in the Kaluga region (there are simply no multi-kilometer shooting ranges in Russia), with this rifle, Lobaev’s team, after sighting shots, hit a target at a distance of 3400 m. The video with the record was posted on YouTube. The Americans reacted calmly: they say, okay, let's continue the duel in absentia.

Record rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight”

Subsonic

Not only the Americans reacted: a French sniper from the Foreign Legion, after long training, hit a target at a distance of 3600 m, but, apart from an article in a small specialized magazine, there is no information about this record, no one posted videos. The Americans also crossed the mark, first 3600 and then 4000 yards (3657 m).

Lobaev’s company studied this video almost under a microscope: some parameters of the shot did not match, the flight time did not match up with the initial speed and angle of inclination of the bar.

Nothing has changed in ballistics, but several hundred meters have been added. This does not happen, but since the competition was originally conceived as a competition of gentlemen, the Lobaevites decided to continue to shoot fairly with the Americans. And win by knockout - hit from four kilometers away.

Ultra-long-range shooting for shooters is considered to be shooting at a distance where at the end of the trajectory the bullet travels at deep subsonic levels, because with supersonic everything is clear - there ballistics are calculated easily, using simple mathematical methods. But subsonic ballistics is considered more difficult, and what is most unpleasant is that in this mode some physical processes occur that make it difficult to shoot at ultra-long distances.

Firstly, a re-stabilization effect occurs. The linear speed slows down per 1000 m, say, three times - from 900 m/s to 300 m/s. And the bullet rotation speed is only 5-10%. At subsonic speeds the speed is even lower, but the rotation speed is still the same. This leads to the fact that all the design and manufacturing defects of the bullet begin to come out, which greatly affects the dispersion. In addition, at low speeds, errors in assessing wind and weather conditions become noticeable.

The second factor is turbulence in the bottom part at deep subsonic levels. At speeds slightly less than 300 m/s this is not critical, but at ranges of more than 2 km it greatly affects accuracy. There is only one way to combat these phenomena - to develop a bullet design with a different bottom design.

If you follow the path of increasing bullet mass, you will need to change the entire cartridge, or increase the chamber, or use a new progressively burning powder, or even switch to a different caliber. Another caliber (Browning.50 or domestic 12.7×108 mm) is a transition to another class and a completely different weapon with all the ensuing consequences: other barrels, bolts, receivers, dimensions, weight and a significant increase in recoil, at which There is no longer any question of pleasure from shooting.

Lobaev decided not to deviate from the old cartridge case and caliber .408 CheyTac, not to change either the dimensions or weight of the weapon. He was able to develop a heavier 30 gram D30 bullet while staying within the standard cartridge.

This was also done because the cartridge is quite accessible and anyone can try to repeat the achievement. The design of the bullet was also modified: it began to resemble a long elongated spindle with two pointed ends, which made it possible to achieve an almost ideal ballistic coefficient of one. This required a change in the rifle's design, with a faster rifling pitch to stabilize the longer, heavier bullet.

If the classic rifling pitch in the 408 caliber is thirteen, then Lobaev decided to use ten on the record-breaking rifle. Despite the fact that the initial speed of the new bullet was lower (875 m/s for the D30 versus 935 m/s for the D27), it had a flatter trajectory at 2 km.

Lateral support

One of the main problems with record shooting is that you can't keep raising the scope bar indefinitely. When shooting at such distances, the rifle has large elevation angles, as when shooting overhead, almost like a howitzer.

At the top point of the trajectory, the bullet travels at an altitude of several hundred meters. No scopes allow such adjustments for aiming, so for record shooting they use special rails for the scope. However, you cannot endlessly raise the bar: the muzzle device begins to block the aiming line.

This is exactly what confused Lobaev in the last American record: the angle of inclination of the bar did not correspond to the correction required for such a distance.

Lobaev spotted a solution to this problem at the artillery, where the sight had long been moved to the left of the barrel. The solution is simple, but no one in the world has used it before Lobaev. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sight on Lobaev’s record-breaking rifles runs to the left of the barrel. Which turned out to be more convenient for shooting: you don’t need to throw your head back and you can take the optimal position.

Lobaev's know-how is the side mount of the sight for ultra-long-range shooting. A year ago it was forbidden to even photograph it. This system can also be used by troops: when shooting at long distances, it helps to get by with available Russian sights.

On the second try

They were going to break the record last summer in the fields near Krasnodar. For this purpose, a giant target measuring 10x10 m was made in order to at least take aim. No one knew how a bullet behaved at such distances, and there were no precise mathematical models. It was only clear that the bullets would enter the ground in the target area almost vertically, so the target was positioned at a large angle.

Another difficulty was that the soil was wet during the shooting, so it was necessary to hit the target exactly: traces of hitting the ground at such low speeds and almost vertical angles are not visible.

Unfortunately for the entire team, the record failed the first time: they failed to hit even such a large target. While they were preparing for the next round, the Americans posted a video on the Internet with a 4 km record. It became clear that we needed to shoot even further.

For the past year, Lobaev and his team have been conjuring their magic on the rifle and new bullets, practically not giving out information about the project, fearing to jinx the world record, constantly approaching the coveted milestone, first taking 4170 m, then 4200.

The new record for sniper shooting range belongs to the team of Vladislav Lobaev, a Russian weapons manufacturer whose high-precision sniper rifles have been adopted by the FSB and FSO of Russia.

The record was set on September 28, 2017 at the training ground in Tula region in Russia. Effective shot fired Andrey Ryabinsky from a distance of 4,170 meters on a target measuring 1x2 meters, from a rifle SVLK-14S "Dusk" cartridge caliber .408 Cheytac.

To set a new long-distance shooting record, Lobaev Arms specialists modified the rifle and modified the cartridge. This made it possible to accelerate a bullet weighing 30 grams to initial speed at 1000 m/s.

As Vladislav Lobaev himself reported, 4170 meters is slightly more than the recent record of colleagues from North America— they recorded a shot at 4,157 meters. However, this is not the limit. In the coming days, Russian gunsmiths plan to install new record- at 4,200 meters!

Lobaev's team except production precision weapons has already distinguished itself with previously record shooting - they set it in April 2015. After this event, debate flared up on the Internet about whether live shooting at such distances makes sense. Some particularly knowledgeable “experts” claimed that the bullet supposedly loses all destructive power and falls on the head like “pigeon droppings.” Let's leave these statements on their conscience and on the conscience of the developers computer games, where “experts” draw their knowledge, and in order to find the truth, let’s turn to reality.

In June of this year, in the Iraqi city of Mosul, Canadian sniper from the unit special purpose Joint Task Force 2, accurate shot killed one of the ISIS militants ( terrorist organization, banned in Russia, CIS countries and Europe), attacking Iraqi army soldiers. The most remarkable thing about this story is that the shot was fired from a distance of just over 2 miles, namely - 3,540 meters!

Canadian sniper in Iraq
(c) dinardetectives.info

The command of Canada's special operations forces did not disclose the name of the sniper and the circumstances of the battle, saying that the fact of the shot and the elimination of the militant was confirmed by documentary satellite photography.

It is only known that the sniper used a rifle McMillan TAC-50 with ammunition .50 BMG (12.7×99 mm), the sniper position at the time of the shot was in a high-rise building, the flight time of the bullet was about 10 seconds. At the same time, the shot had a strong demoralizing effect on the terrorists and actually disrupted the offensive, representatives of the Canadian military department reported.

The previous record for a “combat” sniper shot was set in 2009 in Afghanistan, in the Musa Qala region. Then Corporal Craig Harrison, a special forces sniper from the UK, shot McMillan TAC-50 eliminated 2 Taliban machine gunners from a distance 2,475 meters.

Harrison said that on the day of the record shot, the weather was almost ideal and absolutely no wind, and visibility was excellent. It took him 9 sighting shots to then accurately hit the target with 3 shots. The bullets fired by the corporal from a sniper rifle reached their targets in 6 seconds.

There is also information about the alleged absolute record firing range from a sniper rifle - 3,850 meters, which was established last year Jim Spinell from the American company Hill Country Rifle. But this is not a “combat” shot, but in terms of high-precision shooting in “peaceful” conditions, the world record now belongs to the team of Vladislav Lobaev.

While the sniper has a long and colorful history, last years, thanks to advancements in technology, the range and accuracy of weapons have improved, allowing for more shots to be fired. Pocket computers, devices that collect information about weather and atmospheric quality, and laser rangefinders are all there to improve a shooter's accuracy.

Curious what the longest sniper shot ever was? Most of the longest sniper shots recorded in history occurred at the beginning of this century, although the fifth long shot was made back in the 60s!

5. Sergeant of the Artillery Regiment Carlos Hatchcock

Regimental Artillery Sergeant Carlos Hatchcock

This US Marine is still considered a legend, and rightly so. In more than forty years, only four other snipers have managed to beat his record, which was set in 1967. With an M2 .50 caliber Browning machine gun and a telescopic sight, he shot down a Viet Cong guerrilla from a distance of 2,286 meters. His record remained unbroken until 2002. Hatchcock's shot was 2286 meters.

4. Sergeant Brian Cramer

Beretta M82A1

Kremer takes fourth place with a shot at 2,299 meters, barely beating Hatchcock's record. This US soldier used the Beretta M82A1 and was a member of the 2nd Ranger Battalion in the Iraq War. He was not, however, the first to break Hatchcock's record. Kremer's shot was taken in 2004, two years after Corporal Rob Furlong and Master Corporal Aaron Perry broke Hatchcock's record in 2002.

3. Master Corporal Aaron Perry

TAC50

In March 2002, this Canadian soldier from the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia, Canadian Light Infantry broke Hatchcock's old record of shooting a MacMillan Tac-50 from 2,309 meters during the Afghanistan War.

2. K April Rob Furlong

Canadian Forces sniper Rob Furlong

Furlong was also a Canadian infantryman as Master Corporal Aaron Perry, and managed to break a comrade's record in the same month during the war in Afghanistan. Perry set his record, Furlong beat it with a catch at 2429 meters, a very long shot indeed, during Operation Anaconda. Furlong used the same type of weapon as Perry.

1. Copral Craig Harrison

Copral Craig Harrison

And the winner of the longest sniper shot in November 2009 was British Mounted Cavalry Corporal Craig Harrison, who fired an Accuracy International L115A3 during the Afghanistan War, his bullet traveling an astonishing distance of 2,475 meters, again significantly beating the previous record holder. This was not an accidental achievement. Harrison creatively modified his equipment to achieve the level of accuracy and range required to fire a shot at such great distances. However, Harrison does say in his reports that he owes some of the credit to good weather that was optimal for long-range shooting.

It's still quite amazing that Hatchcock retains fifth place in the record books after all these years. You'll notice if you check other sniper records, most of the top 11 took their shots during the 21st century, with only one other exception, perhaps the most compelling of the lot. Billy Dixon, a civilian buffalo hunter, posted a photo with a .50-.90 caliber Sharps carbine during the Indian Wars in June 1874, he shot at a distance of 1406 meters. Dixon still ranks 9th in the ranking in terms of sniper shot range. Not bad for a guy drawing on 19th century technology!