Posted on 10/03/2017 12:23:28 PM PDT by Mariner
Rate the difficulty of this...
With a fully automatic rifle, from a range of 500 yards and a 30 deg down angle, at night with no tracers, put over 500 rounds in a "kill box" of approximately 2 acres.
Knowing a little about ballistics, angles and ranging. And have fired a fully automatic rifle recreationally, this seems to be extraordinary shooting.
Professional grade.
But I'm not a professional auto shooter. You are.
What do you say?
Two maids were interviewed on TV and they said they cleaned and supplied his room as usual and they saw nothing out of the ordinary. They also said he was on a winning streak...
Good analysis.
Good stuff ML.
Witnesses near the stage said there were individual shots at first, they said they thought they were fire crackers- then the rapid fire began. Those witnesses said when they realized it was gunfire it seemed to be directed at the stage and they thought someone was shooting at Jason Aldean. So possibly the shooter did plan to start with shooting him, or he just thought the stage itself was a good place to start.
I looked at mapquest and it appears to be approx. 750-900 ft from the wing of the Manadaly to the center o f the concert area Given that the effective range to a target is horizontal, not the slant, he was indeed shooting into a kill zone approx. 250- 300 yards away. The slant range you determined may be pretty close- as an equation of a triangle with a heght of approx. 350’ ( 32 stories) and a base of about 900 feet would give a hypotenuse of around 1500’
Assuming he was using a 223/556 clone AR, with either 55 or 62 grain FMJ bullets, he was well within its mid range envelope.
As I have stated in other threads, this was not a random act performed on the spur, this was well planned and deliberately lethal. I doubt he was a lone wolf, unless he been planning such an act for a long while.
The only way he could have made it worse was to be only a few floors high, maybe 2 or 3, and then employ grazing fires that would assure even more casualty producing effect of ricocheting bullets rather than plunging fire that destroyed most of the misses upon impact wit the pavement....
Good analysis of the metrics, excepting the actual effective range of the scene.
Plunging frontal, oblique and flanking enfilade fire with a significant beaten zone against an area sized target of 25,000 people. That is what automatic weapons fire is made for. What limits the weapon is the lack of a quick change barrel on an AR-15 when it begins to overheat.
So, piece of cake for somebody who has never practiced it?
Yep. Had the psycho chosen one M1917 watercooled .30-06 or MG08 Maxim watercooled (or Vickers)....he would have killed thousands. Bigger bullet, cloth belts, ability to eject round with pull of handle, unlimited belts, low reload time, very VERY accurate.
Takes about 1 magazine to get all the practice you would need.
Not necessary for the target and conditions, and had he used tracers, he would have given his location away in 10 seconds rather than 10 to 72 minutes.
I think you're trying to turn this into a Kennedy style conspiracy plot involving the CIA, the Mafia, and hit men sent by Castro.
The Vegas shooting was nothing. A huge target of 22,000 people less than 400 yards away. What is it about that you can't comprehend?
Bkmk
We don’t know what his weapons experience is. He was reclusive and wealthy.
Certainly he got some range time in.
I think any kid who has played any first person shooter could pick up on the concept. (Which is kind of scary in itself, but another debate).
“this seems to be extraordinary shooting. “
Not even close to extraordinary.
Why is everyone trying to turn this into a conspiracy??
Because what matters is horizontal distance, not slant range.
A semi-truck used in Nice, France ISIS style WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH MORE DEADLY. Probably hundreds dead and 1000+ wounded.
Not a top level pro but my impressions are these. In basic I had a blast with 7.62 M240 belt fed. It was like riding a cadillac, so much the DS punched me in the shoulder to stop because we had to take turns and he did not want the GpMG to overheat. I was doing easily traverse enfillade type spraying over the targets hundreds of yards away. All you need is to see where the dirt impacts and adjust .
However the set up was particularly heavy. It is a two man weapon with one carrying the ammo and tripod and the other the amchine gun with some ammo. Tough dudes carry it all by themselves with a lighter bipod.
Its weight and with a couple sandbags bought at Cabella , it is a very stable platform and you can shoot for ever with it... well, you do need a quick change barrel after 5 min of continous shooting. After that things melt, can jam and the accuracy suffers with bullets key holing out the muzzle with lowered range but some deadly effects on unarmored personel.
With a small rifle like a non dedicated AR15, there is no way you can sustain that much longer because there is no dedicated mass of heat sink at fhe trunion/chamber/breach level. Add to that the Direct Impingement of hot gasses on the bolt, and you get runaway fire and all kinds of potential problems. Also the gas tube on the AR that runs to the bolt is very thin and would be the first thing to go.
Unless he had big Socom barrels installed, I do not know how he could shoot for so long with one or two of them without burning them. Idealy he would have use several uppers to switch around after each 200 round mag dumps.
In Afghanistan many a time troops were overrun because they had been shooting for such long time their ARs completely failed. The waiting Taleban with their robust AKs of the Bush and Mountain proven would simply outlast the Marines on sheer weapon durability. The M16 is very durable with his Hbar barrel, and so is the Socom version of the M4, but ai think the Ak would outlast them easily due to its gas management nature.
The M16 is also lighter than a General Purpose Machine gun so more difficult to control unless using special compensators, but you have to test them thoroughly or use adjustable ones, and it is tricky and takes determined training. I say it is easier to make a silencer with plastic bottle and toilet paper than getting an AR stabilized that way, but the area of fire was large and with a couple sandbags doable but not off hand.
...With M-16s and 55 grain military ammo zeroed at 25 yards, we were on at about half that distance...
Interesting.
That’s the magic number for.308.
.... Idealy he would have use several uppers to switch around after each 200 round mag dumps...
There are numerous YouTube videos of that type rifle smoking heavily, the forearm catching fire, and ammo cooking off with too much sustained auto fire. I suppose that would be the case with M16/ M4 too.
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