[Lancey Howard]

A ROYAL Marines sniper told yesterday how he felled an Iraqi gunman in a strong wind from more than half a mile..... The 7.62 calibre round from Matt’s L96 sniper rifle was aimed 56ft to the left to allow for the wind, and 35ft high to allow for the distance..... Matt said: “Sam told me I would have to fire exactly 17 metres to the left of the target for the bullet to bend in the wind and take him out.

And there are never any fluctuations in wind speed - - it always blows at exactly the same speed. Okay.

"Is this story for real?"

Good question. It really, really strains credibility.

[Windcatcher]

Sure the wind fluctuates. The questions are:

1. what is dv/dt? dt would be very small, on the order of a second or two (at most).

2. what is dv/ds (where s is the trajectory). I doubt it would be zero, but it could be small, depending on a lot of factors (mostly topography and terrain, I'd imagine).

I don't think he could unambiguously know that he would need a 17m deflection, but he might know it's 17m +/- 1m...

[KeyWest]

I am with you unless the reporter got what was happening wrong. After normal corrections for range it may have been a 17 cm, not meter, correction to the already set corrections, which seems to make more sense.

[Publius6961]

Good question. It really, really strains credibility.

Sure does.

Normal people will shake their heads and go on to the next news item.
You go right ahead and obsess on all the reasons why it can't be true.
(There sure be a lot of immature neurotic/obsessive/compulsives posting these days.)