Man Hits 6,000 Yard Target with .416 Barrett

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 4/2/2019 | J Parker

[w1n1]

Renowned long distance shooter Paul Phillips successfully made a 6,000-yard shot using a custom rifle chambered in .416 Barrett.
Paul started shooting as a young boy, with his trusty Daisy BB gun by his side. By age 13, he was hunting small game and going afield with his father. At the age of 18, Paul joined the United Sates Marine Corps as an Infantryman.
He learned the art of long range shooting as a member of 1/1 scout sniper platoon, and earned his Combat Action Ribbon with Task Force Papa Bear in 1991. After leaving the service, Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from Michigan State University, and began competitive target shooting.

Another seasoned shooter Bill Poor made big news in shooting circles when he successfully pulled off a 3-mile (5,280 yards) shot near Midland, Texas back in 2018. Well, Paul Phillips outdid him with an eye-popping 6,000-yard shot on January 20, 2019.

Phillips was shooting a custom rifle chambered in .416 Barrett firing 550-grain Cutting Edge bullets. His target was a steel plate 32″ tall and 48″ wide, 6,102 yards away.
From a 100-yard zero the shot needed 625 MOA of elevation. As you can see in the video, 10 degrees of barrel angle was necessary to hit the target at that extreme range. To give you an idea of just how far 6,000 yards is, with a muzzle velocity of 3,000 feet per second, that round took 17 seconds to reach the target! See the footage of 6000 yard shot with .416 Barrett.

[PapaBear3625]

It seems to me that if you were to computer control several barrels using GPS that you could blanket a small area at quite a distance just like artillery.

Visualize a computer-controlled .416 Barrett Gatling gun.

[central_va]

A 17 second TOF seems ridiculous. 17 seconds is 5 inch naval gun TOF.

[READINABLUESTATE]

The German 88mm. My dad hated them.

[Doogle]

"..so? I can hit the side of a barn just beyond a pesky neighbors sleeping dog"

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The projectile start slowing down from air resistance the instant it leaves the barrel. It is traveling far less than 3000 fps when it reaches the target.

[Mariner]

“with a muzzle velocity of 3,000 feet per second, that round took 17 seconds to reach the target! “

Whomever wrote that is stupid, and thinks their readers are stupid too.

[DuncanWaring]

The video at Post 3 shows the bullet getting to the target shortly after the sound of the shot being fired.

Meaning that even though the muzzle velocity was Mach 3, the average velocity for the entire flight was less than Mach 1.

[DuncanWaring]

Or the writer could be correct.

Watch the video linked at Post 3.

[Big Red Badger]

German 88,
My first thought too.

[FtrPilot]

Anyone interested in long range shooting should look at the Sniper 101 videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwG-D0HjCBQ&list=PLJUaiRIEduNXoal2_PkBZi0vDCIcEPxUn

[Magnum44]

Just guessing at numbers for a ballistics calculator, for a 6000 yd shot with a 55gr bullet, at 5000 ft elevation standard day, to get under 20 seconds of flight time, you need upwards of 3700 ft/sec muzzle velocity. Even at that you are only supersonic out to between 2300 and 2400 yards, and subsonic beyond that. The total bullet drop is over 4000 ft. The last 3000 yards the bullet is basically in freefall at only 600-800 ft/sec. Only ~460 ft.lbs. energy at impact. Not much but you’d still feel it.

It would be interesting to know what the measured muzzle velocity from this beast really is.

[Calamari]

That’s a “gimme”.

[libstripper]

That’s exactly what WW I machine gunners did. They fired their weapons at high angles, sending the bullets into the enemies’ rear areas.

[SkyDancer]

Impressive considering all the calculations involved.

[IYAS9YAS]

Whomever wrote that is stupid, and thinks their readers are stupid too.

Nope. Muzzle velocity is just that, velocity of the round as it exits the barrel being pushed by the propellant load. Once that bullet leaves the barrel, the push of the propellant is no longer a factor, and gravity and wind resistance are slowing that bullet over distance.

The previous record, a three-mile (5,280 yard) shot, from January 2018, took over 14 seconds to hit the target with a 390 grain .408 CheyTac leaving the barrel at 3,160 feet per second, so I can believe this one took 17 seconds.

https://www.wideopenspaces.com/texas-man-nails-3-mile-shot-to-set-new-distance-record/

Funny enough, while looking for that article, I found the same web-site did another article on the current 6,000 yard shot, and it also says 17 seconds.

https://www.wideopenspaces.com/this-6000-yard-shot-takes-long-range-shooting-to-a-new-level/.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Wow!

[JBW1949]

Also, the projectile did not travel in a straight line at a constant speed...

[allwrong57]

6000 yards is 18000 ft so it would have to average 1000 fps to get there in 18 seconds, right. I looked at the Barrett website and retained velocity at 2500 yards is 1050 fps. He probably is correct. Time of flight at 2500 is 4.55 seconds.

That said, any shot that takes 17 seconds to get there is meaningless, a 10mph gust of wind would blow it a couple of truck lengths away. A 6000 yard shot sounds like quite a feat, but he may have only hit one in 200 shots, which seems likely to me, especially wind, which you would have to have 15 or 20 wind meters set up between you and the target and someone monitoring and doing the math between here and there. By their website a 5mph wind will move it 117.5 inches at 2500 yards. At 1000 it’s 15 inches, now thing about 6000 yards! I’d say a 5mph wind will blow it in the neighborhood of 20-30 YARDS at 6000. That just makes it an overhyped accident when you make a hit.

[painter]

Bump

[Magnum44]

Revising numbers slightly from my previous post, which used a ballistic coefficient of .6:

Using a ballistic coefficient of .7 (really good but possible in a custom bullet), for a 6000 yd shot with a 550gr bullet, at 5000 ft elevation standard day, to get under 17 seconds of flight time, you need upwards of 3600 ft/sec muzzle velocity. Even at that you are supersonic out to between 2700 and 2800 yards, and subsonic beyond that. The total bullet drop is ~4000 ft. The last 2000 yards the bullet is basically in freefall at only 600-800 ft/sec. Only ~525 ft.lbs. energy at impact. Not much but you’d still feel it.

3600 ft/sec muzzle velocity is a little more reasonable than 4000 ft/sec. Still would be interesting to know what the measured muzzle velocity from this beast really is.