Sniper's skills keep buddies alive

USA TODAY ^ | 12/26/03 | Matthew Cox

[Rebelbase]

"" 7.62x51mm vs. 7.62x39mm. Skill and finesse vs. hate and bumbling..."

I have a 7.62 x 39mm and I don't hate anyone!

[timydnuc]

You bet it works!

My combat zero is 11 up, 5 left (I'm a pretty "flat" shooter). I used an M14 both in training and in the first months of Nam. I hit what I aimed at and had all the fire power, on "rock & roll" you could want. The weapon's range was legendary and accurate.

Years later, on a varment hunt in south Texas a friend of mine had aquired a suplus M14. He gave it to me to test fire. I asked him if he knew his "zero". He said no, he had sighted it in and left it there. We counted the clicks as we brought it back to the 0/0 position on the rear sight (as it turned out his "zero" was 10 up and 3 left). I re-zeroed the weapon for me and commenced to shoot the lights out of the target at varing ranges. My buds were very impressed, they asked me how I could remember that zero after all these years. I told them that when your life depends on a number, you never forget that number. The other amazing thing about this is that 14 worked just as good as my 14 did in the Nam. They were, and still are, one of the best weapons ever produced. You can take an AK47 and stick it up your ass, I'll take a 14, with unlimited rounds, and conquer the world. That's a fact!

[tortoise]

I asked him if he knew his "zero". He said no, he had sighted it in and left it there.

I must do something different than everyone else, because I always shoot a machine zero on any rifle I pick up (assuming the rifle has a machine zero). This has its advantages; I can pick up anyone else's rifle and figure out what they have their sights set to, or compensate easily if they know their setting.

[KneelBeforeZod]

Ain't no room for Peter Pan on this hunt

[RusIvan]

You can take an AK47 and stick it up your ass, I'll take a 14, with unlimited rounds, and conquer the world. That's a fact!==

AK-47 for different purpose. DRagunov vs m-14 will be equal fight.

[freepatriot32]

On Dec. 20, he killed one sniper with a single shot from a .50-caliber XM-107 rifle

with the new legislation in new jersey outlawing 50 caliber and up for us peons as destructive devices how many snipers do you think wil lcome out of new jersey in the coming generations plus theres some dips**t in congress tryingto outlaw the new 50 caliber hand gun becasue everyone on earthe with buy oneto do drive buys with politicians make me wantto puke on a daily basis preferably on them but ithink i would get charged with a hate crime ;-)

[Imal]

No other accurizing on the M-14? Wow.

As for the M-21 system, I am not showing my age. I am young, YOUNG I tells ya! Just a little behind the times is all...

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

The M-14 was a fine weapon in it's time. However since then, technology and development has made vast improvments.

A fixed bolt action like the M-40A1, (Rem 700 BDL built to Match specs.) will always out perform a semi-automatic/automatic any day.

Even newer, finer developments of the fixed bolt design, have pushed the Sniper art form to much higher levels.

The 14 had it's place and has a loyal following, but I personaly, prefer being able to stick a round through a keyhole at 1,000 meters; Something a 14 couldn't even dream of doing.

[Criminal Number 18F]

I am old enough to have handled, but not shot the M21 (sniping was a teammate's job, not mine). It was already a bit long in the tooth and we were looking for something else -- this was in 1981. The answer was the M24 which was developed by SF during the eighties.

The M21 required unusual special handling. You could destroy its accuracy just by cleaning it like a regular M14.

There is an M25 which is a slightly modded M14. Not sure about the mods. It isn't widespread.

The only one of them that has sub-MOA accuracy is the M24.

The M107 is not super accurate. It is, however, powerful. I think an M2HB is probably more accurate, if scoped and firing off the T&E.

I keep seeing stuff in magazines that supposedly is in use by SF in the field... heh. There are some highly imaginative writers out there. For instance we did have one HK PSG per Group in the 1980s... it was in the foreign weapons arms room, so that weapons men could get proficient with it. Likewise FPKs and SVDs (which turbo-stink and just stink, respectively).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

HOW MANY OF OUR SOLDIERS WOULD WE HAVE LOST

Unfortunately, with the single noteworthy exception of the cleaning of the 507th Maint's clock, most of the guys we've lost couldn't have been saved by better rifle skills. MOST of our KIAs are coming from improvised explosive devices (Vietnam jargon was 'command detonated mines').

It doesn't matter how expert you are with your weapon, if somebody lights off 1000 lb. of HE next to your head, you're trading it for a harp.

Of course... if your point is, the Army should train all its soldiers to shoot better, I agree, and so does Pete Schoomaker (the Chief of Staff of the Army). Now, we'll see how this shakes out in the long term, because every shooting war we make these every-man-a-rifleman (even if he's a girl) noises, and after every shooting war the rear area folks go back to getting forty rounds a year to qualify plus nine to zero... most years. Can Rummy and Schoo light enough of a fire under the bean counters that a pilot light stays burning? Well, we know they're gonna try.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[CyberAnt]

Actually .. I believe you've made a mountain out of a mole hill. If you go back and read the relating posts I was commenting about .. you would have discovered that I was making my statement based on a comment from someone else. If you don't know how to trace back my conversation, FReepmail me and I'll explain.

[Iris7]

Notice Sargent Davis is using a zero magnification projection type sight. Faster than iron sights, maybe by a half second, which is a long time in his business. Work just a whole bunch better when the light is low, also.

He is making three hundred yard called shots with essentially a faster iron sight setup. This is about normal for a real rifleman. For Davis these are fairly easy shots. At my best I was fairly good, maybe as good as Davis on one of my lucky days. Lucky days didn't come as often as I would have liked, though!!

750 yards with a .50 is not very hard, the problem is picking your target at such long range. If you are well sighted in, that is!! Those boys sight in against brick walls etc. every few hours. This is a lot easier with a .50 than a .30 since the strikes are easy to see, comparatively. At long ranges even ammunition temperature changes get important. The usual stuff has to be closer, chamber throat, concentricity of neck, exact position of bullet, exact charge weight, consistent good bullets, etc. Davis is might be handloading his .50 ammunition, though there may be special ammunition for his application. Could be reloading .30 also, but military match ammo is good enough for his ranges. An M-14 is not very accurate anyway, maybe about 0.75" moa. Be fun to work with him, have to brush up on my shooting, though!

[Iris7]

You said, "There is a world of difference between a criminal serial killer and a professional military person doing his job to protect his country and his civilization."

Exactly. Sargent Davis is doing what he is doing to protect our families "from war's desolation".

[Iris7]

"Russian Moisin-Nagant M-91/30s"

An effective weapon.

So is an AK, within it's limits. Certainly not a rifleman's weapon, for sure! But a deadly S.O.B.

[tortoise]

A fixed bolt action like the M-40A1, (Rem 700 BDL built to Match specs.) will always out perform a semi-automatic/automatic any day.

While Rem 700 is my platform of choice for long range precision, I have to disagree with the above assertion. While true in the general sense, I have seen and shot AR15 match actions of various types that were essentially indistinguishable from a nice M700 with the same amount of money put into it. Or to put it another way, they can be so close in precision that the difference falls below the noise floor for anyone but the benchrest nazis (which have no place on a sniper mission). I've shot 1/4-MOA AR15s; when you are extracting that level of precision, the platform is entirely adequate for operational purposes and environmental factors will completely drown variations in precision from rifle to rifle.

Tangentially, I would love to get my hands on an AR10 that has been converted to 6.5mm. I hear they are all the rage on the long-range service rifle match circuits. I have boltguns in that cartridge (6.5-08 aka .260 Rem), and the cartridge is scary accurate at very long ranges. The prospect of a high-precision 1000+meter semi-auto makes me drool a bit...

[Iris7]

I respect your opinion. Mine is not dissimilar.

The '03 is a good weapon. I personally would prefer one to an M-16, especially if I had a decent pistol, by which I mean one with adequate reliability, adequate power, able to penetrate normal body armor, and accurate to about one and a half inches at fifty feet.

If I had my druthers, I would go for something about the power, cyclic rate, weight, and controllability of the old BAR. Top feed if done right. Modern cartridge. Replaceable barrels without loss of accuracy. A grenade launcher system with more range and power than the M-79, say fifty percent increase, each. More would be nice. (See how old I am?)

Most people are not riflemen nor light machine gunners, however.

As far as carbine (which the M-16 is) ammunition I think it hard to beat 30-30 performance, though maybe 7mm.

A decent grenade launcher system is necessary these days.

[tortoise]

An M-14 is not very accurate anyway, maybe about 0.75" moa.

I've never found it to be spectacularly accurate either, even in match versions. Good enough for government work, but 1.0-MOA was about as good as you could reliably expect as a practical matter in the field if everything else was kosher. Which is pretty good really, and plenty accurate for the vast majority of combat work. It wouldn't be my first choice for a sniper mission.

[Iris7]

Interesting. Thanks.

A Ross, eh? Pretty much pulled from service by 1916, as I recollect from MacBride. MacBride said they were easier to hit with than a SMLE.

[Brimack34]

I alway's wanted to do this job. I used to shot bee's and water bugs with my bebe gun. I once hit a bird thru the heart from 100 yards. Oh! but this is so much harder with a rifle.

[Iris7]

I have an old friend, with whom I used to shoot, who had made up a fifteen pound .270 with a Mauser action. He had an old 10-power steel Weaver on it. Carried that thing around in a big plywood box. Shot excruciatingly perfect handloads.

His machinery got so strange because he was an avid crow shooter. No combat experience. I saw him put five rounds at 200 yards and the entire group, not center to center but the whole group, was covered by a penny. Couldn't see even a shadow of the hole. Bench rest and sand bags, natch. He shot crows at what looked to me to be about 700 to 800 yards with that thing, not missing for five or more birds in a row, back in the days when you could legally shoot crows, of course!!

Anyway, I was amazed. I don't see much combat use for the weapon though!!

He was developing a .375 H&H long range rifle, but couldn't get bullets to suit him. If good bullets had been available, or if he had made his own, he would have had to make a barrel also if he couldn't get one made to his personal taste in rifling rate, polish, gauge, smoothness, straightness, etc., and the project was never completed. I shot one of prototypes, and thought it too powerful for human targets and too weak for even light armor!

This was long before the days when .50 rifles were more than very hard kicking toys. If we are in those days, hey! Folks would build them on Boys actions. Remember?