Essay on British army new sniper rifle ....

[jmoore]

The problem of effectively engaging the enemy with a single weapon platform at distances ranging from arms length to 1200m or more is tough enough to solve. Then there's portability, concealability (don't be the important looking fellow in the patrol- whether officer, radio, or other type of force multiplier), logistics, mission type, and so on.

Right now, it seems sniping has been broken down into several sub-sets (there's probably more, but this stuff is just off the top of my head.):

1) DMR or patrol sniper- He's the fellow who RESPONDS to enemy action, generally directed against his patrol. The US weapon here is often an accurized M16 in the hands of a "moderately" trained above average shooter, rather than a specialist. The weapon and ammo are known to be reasonably effective to 600-700m max. (The M14 DMRs seem to have been problematic for logistic and "concealment" reasons.)

2) WWII or Vietnam style "Stalker/Hunter" types. Not much really going on in this format, but sniper specialists are now extremely well trained in the craft as part of their core knowledge base. Its not obsolete, just not in the forefront in the current deployments.

3) "Overwatch" or fixed emplacement sniping. Plenty of this going on. Rapid in to a locale, set up watches, observe and engage, then depart before enemy rockets or mortars are called in. More "hide and go seek" than stalking. Ranges can vary wildly, but heavy suppessing small arms fire not often needed from the sniper. Usually, he's well backed by heavies on call. Weapons vary here from 7.62mm to .338" bolt rifles as well as more recently the M110s and whatever else is being tested.

4) "Anti-Materiel" sniping- or "Oops, that armed ***** just stepped in front of the technical I was disabling with my .50" Barrett." This sort of action was most common early in the Iraq invasion. Not too sure how useful these big beasties will prove in Afganistan....

5) Special Ops- I have no idea what these folk are up to any more!

Can one weapon platform be ideal for all scenarios? Is it cost effective to train a larger percentage of the front line soldiers so that they can perform more "sniper" duties? Are the projectile throwers the limitation, or is it sighting systems, or engagement methodologies?
Too much!

[gunner]

jmoore,

well said! No in my opinion there is no chance to have only" one that fits for all".
Look at your points 1-5 and you will see why. I think that there must be more snipers per a company at they now have, but not the cheap trained ones that have only a scope on their rifles. Over here they changed now their rules to get more snipers. The selection is not so hard as it was but they give them ( and that makes sense) a "time to test" for 3 months to see how good or bad are their capabilities to do this job ( judging-, ranging-, shooting and teamwork skills). Sighting systems are a good point. It has some good solutions, but with all the electrical toys the basics get lost and as you know there will be a competition in a way " You have a good sighting system but i have a good detection system for that". I am not so sure that it is the best way to equip the scout/sniper teams with too much of this electric things, helpful but not the only solution. My opinions to your good thoughts.

Regards

Gunner

[Ngib]

I agree 100% with Jmoore’s post if you look at the specialised roles of the sniper type operator in the police a good case study is Frances GIGN. This is one of the world's best Counter-Terrorist units. In the hostage rescue mode they are one of the few who have used what is known as the open air option.
This is where you have a group of terrorists protected by a shield of hostages. The group are allowed under some pretext to move in the open i.e. from a building to a bus or to a plane. Each two snipers are allocated one terrorist and on a command a volley is fired. Hopefully all are hit. If not when the volley is fired it causes a distraction and secondary plan is with a hidden arrest group. They break from cover and move as quickly as possible into the hostage-terrorist group before the survivors can recover from the shock and arrest or shoot the terrorists.
The snipers during this time have to prepare for a second shot as you can see any semi-auto has the advantage.
In urban guerrilla warfare ranges are not in access, in Aden during the Crater incident there was a couple of 1000 yard shots but Crater was close to street fighting. As an example in one incident in Crater 22 soldier where killed by a 500 armed mob after that the town was surrounded by three sniper position, I say three because that is the number of 303 sniper rifles we had at the time.
Today in Iraq they are reliving history.
In other areas such as Ireland the reason for the shorter range use was mainly due to the snipers orders for opening fire. You had to face an inquiry after each incident and if a target was hit you would go to court. You had to state you identified the person as an armed aggressor and more so describe his action that led you to opening fire. The target had to be about to fire? Also these inquiries where the real thing.
In the major towns in Northern Ireland during the 70’s the Panopticon prison concept was used. This entailed using overt observation posts on the top of high rise buildings. Normally there were four sandbagged positions known a Sanger’s on top of the high rise with only one manned. This allowed observer’s to watch some the streets without the population being able to tell what Sanger was manned and what streets watched.
The snipers operated in covert position covering what was know as the rat runs, these were route that could not be observed from the towers.
More so in a city like Belfast IRA actions could be predicted. The City was covered by the IRA’s Belfast brigade basically a number of gangs.
The intelligence system was good and the sniper was the armed point of this system. It was predicted where the weapon was stashed and depending on the patrols the position the shooter would fire from. Covert sniper observation posts infiltrated and manned positions behind the terrorist firing points. This was the start of what is now known as surgical operations. A lot of the times the sniper position was inside the no go areas.
In 1972 it was a pretty horrendous place with over 700 IRA shooting with 200 army or police killed. Each one was represented by a dot on a map. After a while the dots mounted and the patrol reports painted the picture of where the shooter fired from and how he got to the fire position. Before the operation the sniper knew everything that can be known about a character including his possible route to the shooting position, and who his watchers where.
The IRA used to operate with a shooter and a couple of unarmed watchers and backup men. If the shooter was hit they rescued the weapon and got it back to the hide. Hence a lot of stories in the news mentioned “an unarmed man was shot in whatever area of Belfast”.
In a number of incidents the sniper only had a small hole to fire through and he need a fast follow up hence an auto.
Although Aden saw the rebirth of the army sniper it was Northern Ireland that brought it fully back into the military system.

[Ngib]

I'm no expert but it looks good to me.
Maybe the only addition to add into the 'mix' is in 1000 yds + ranges not only has the target time to move fractionally but the coriolis effect and 'spin drift' comes into play.

[
Coriolis Effect :
The formula is:

Fc = -2mω X Vr

Fc = Coriolis force
m = bullet's mass
ω = Eart's angular velocity (of spin)
X = vectorial product
Vr = bullet's velocity

The Coriolis Effect (CE) will typically move a 1000yd shot around .5 moa (Minute of angle) (depends on the distance from the equator). The coriolis effect actually affects all bullets, but is ignored at closer ranges. In the Northern Hemisphere, the effect moves bullets to the right and in the Southern Hemisphere, it moves them to the left. The amount of movement is related to the time of flight, amount of drop and the distance from the equator (further=more). Newton and his cronies were trying to put their finger on this effect hundreds of years ago and actually got pretty close to figuring it out. Newton supposed that anything falling toward the ground, actually should spiral toward the center of the earth (this is actually what the coriolis effect is!). Unfortunately, they couldn't measure it back then.

Another effect that impacts bullet flight is called Spin Drift (SD). SD will move a bullet to the right for barrels with right hand twist rifling and will move it left for barrels with left hand twist rifling (right hand twist is by far the most common). The amount that SD impacts a bullet is related to the amount of drop and the rate of spin (higher spin rates are used on heavier/long range bullets to keep them stable). A typical SD will be .2moa at 1000yds. SD is actually a torque that acts perpendicular to gravity (check out the 'right hand rule' in physics).

SD and CE add together for right hand twist barrels in the northern hemisphere (or left/southern). Their total affect is usually less than 1moa at 1000yds (10.4").

Not a lot over 1000yds but 10" takes you outside the kill zone.

This is fantastic where can I research this further???? Also is this common knowledge with long range shooter.

[jmoore]

Mann's book is ancient but excellent. "The Bullet's Flight from Powder to Target" I think is the title- its at home, and I'm not. Also, the current Sierra rifle reloading manual has some good data. "Spin drift" or precession are rather larger factors than the dreaded "Coriolis Effect" iff'n I remembers right.

Then there's barometric pressure changes, temp, humidity, barrel dimensional changes due to whatever, ballistic uniformity, harmonics, bullet stability... Its a wonder anything gets hit at all, after all the math!

[Peter Laidler]

Has anyone else ever heard of the phrase '......mission creep'

[Badger]

Has anyone else ever heard of the phrase '......mission creep'

Regards,
Doug

[hockeybuff]

Yes, Peter you are right. We're arguing that very point in a way!

Ngib: That same Sierra reloading book that I used for the wind tables has all that stuff in it as well. (And yes, the LR shooters I shoot around know about that effect as well.)
Another thing though, How current is the tactic you describe being used by the GIGN? If your target audience is police-related, I would check that. That seems very dated to me unless tactics in Europe are radically different than here in the US. That just simply is not the way we would handle that situation. Likewise here in the police field there is no move towards semi-autos, the "bolts" remain the standard. And no offense but we use ours alot more than the Police in Europe. But the Police requirements are entirely different than the Military.

So just as you can argue points for a semi-auto rifle in some sort of DMR setting for the military (which they are doing), you also need to acknowledge the usefulness of something like the 338 at extended ranges. IE. Afghanistan. That's why I think heading in the direction of a DMR within a squad and having trained snipers (with the specialized weapons/ammo) as another asset are the way to go.

BTW --to get this thread back to a Lee Enfield topic, over on AR15.com a fellow posted a picture of the L129A1 rifle. Supposedly the new British DMR and I don't think it's a Lee Enfield........

[hockeybuff]

The problem is the whole of the USA -UK -Aussie-Kiwi armies are nostalgic.

Even the Mexicans use a full auto German H&K PSG1A1.

This isn't just being nostalgic. It's picking the best rifle for job that one would expect the operator to need to perform. I would back up what Peter is saying by the snipers are trained to use to their advantage the rifles they have (ie. using a 338/50 cal out to a mile etc) but they are part of a system. And that system has DMR's, mortars, aircraft and a team mate. Keeping that straight avoids the mission creep Peter and others mentioned.

Again the police are entirely different.

As are the Mexicans....... If it is in fact "full auto" then the answer there is self evident........

[jmoore]

Here's questions more (sort of) on topic to this forum:

How many different precision weapons (and calibers) are the British Armed Forces fielding, and what feedback is known from the "horse's mouth"? According to the article posted by Badger in the M16 forum ("Biting the Bullet", I think), a staple long range reponse to enemy small arms fire has been the Javelin missle, much to the consternation of the beancounters.