Essay on British army new sniper rifle ....

[gunner]

Yes, Australian Army has the Blaser Tactical II. I like it for the accuracy the weight and the straight pull handle, and for the reason that i have a Tactical I in use.

Regards

Gunner

[Peter Laidler]

The Australian Army Infantrymen here say that they use a variation of the AI rifle........

Comments from any of the wild antipodeans out there

[trooper554877]

The Australian Army Infantrymen here say that they use a variation of the AI rifle........

Comments from any of the wild antipodeans out there

Yeah called the Sr98 also in silenced version.
I think when they deploy on ops they can get hold of the SR25 in theatre. At least that was what happened in Iraq.
commandos and the SAS are most definately using the blaser.
Battalions still use the Sr98
What was your point?
Ask em about the AW50!
Cheers
NED

[Bindi2]

The aussie Army along with the brits have gone to the 338 because the AW 50 is too f....g heavy to carry long distances on a patrol or stalk. The aussies have gone to a Blazer 3 in 338 Lapua mag because it can be easily somewhat resently be carried for a long distance on foot if required. It also gives them that 1000+ yardage reach out and touch someone kinda feeling. In all the sniper training i came across they where never trained to rattle of 50 rds in a firefight. Thats the number 2's job with the M4 or SR25 or whatever the fella desires. the SR25 is the 7.62 choice at the moment with the SR98 as well.

So to say that we grab grandads boyes out of the armoury is purely whimsical thinking and not a understanding of what a sniper is trained to do.
Cheers
NED

You should try a Boyes or a Boyes with a .50 cal BMG barrel

[trooper554877]

You should try a Boyes or a Boyes with a .50 cal BMG barrel

In the words of our once famous pollie

please explain?

Hot up your way

Cheers
NED

[Ngib]

Sorry for the late reply’s its Christmas etc, the reason I posted the essay is because there has been a call from a lot of military guys for an automatic rifle. What is keeping the bolt action alive is myth. Although I am retired I still like to tinker with rifles and I intend to put together an article for one of the regiment magazines followed by a report.
During the years I did serve, I discovered whatever skill or piece of equipment the military uses, the civilian or veteran hobbyist will know more about it than the military. This includes radios, vehicles, pistols, rifles, parachutes, diving equipment etc. Whatever you can name any military device or skill that has progressed to the sports world will undergo a development process much more in depth than the military can offer yet this knowledge base is ignored.
I found this out the first time when I was serving and entered a competition at Bisley Camp in Surrey which was then the home of the target rifle.
I thought I was going to collect the prize until I met the civilian shooters, you can say the bubble was burst.
However I did get talking to an old guy at Fulton’s who looked at the 303 I was using and gave me a few tips on how it could be improved and how to find faults. He explained what I should be shooting. About six month later in the late sixties I purchased a P14 and Fulton’s turned into a shooting machine by fitting a Schultz and Larson barrel with a McMillan stock. When the L42 made the scene some of us where used for the trails and we tried a variety of P14 with a Schultz and Larson barrels or Mauser’s with Kongsberg target rifle barrels and last the L42, as usual the worst came out as the best.
When we moved to the Accuracy international years later there was a number of problems with the design and the weapon fired by closing the bolt on a live round if the bullet was slammed in. In the interim we used some BSA target rifles these were Mauser actions fitted with a heavy barrel. They were the similar to what we did tests on about 15 years previously and just as good as the AI rifle. The last rifle we tested was the Barrette .50. It was accepted as a short range heavy penetration weapon for taking out targets behind cover or in buildings. Its battlefield role was for taking on soft skinned vehicles. It was never a sniper rifle?
By this time we had hand held range finder that made range guesswork a thing of the past.
However this is the crunch whenever a range practice took place which was a couple of times a week, the first shoot was called the cold shot. Rifles where taken out of the box and a command shoot took on falling plates size 12X12. Each guy would have a plate and one round; he would set his sights for range and wind. Everybody would be in the prone position and on command a single volley would be fired. On different days the range would change. At 200mtr it was expected to get 100% hits, over five hundred it was about 50x 50. After that it was luck. (under 200mt the rifles used was the 22-250 Tikka-Finlander.)
During this time we had a visit to the Germans who were using H&K sniper rifles and they where also testing the Walther.
By far the Walther was the best weapon I have ever fired.
If you look to the battlefield when people are caught in the open by a sniper they are slow to react. If you had five bad guys standing in a group at around 300 the Walther could have hit three or four, whereas the bolt action one. However whatever rifle the crunch is range and elevation if you get it wrong you don’t have time to follow the splash with a bolt action.
If you guys don't mind I have a few questions I would like to ask in the next post. In the meantime I need to study what has been sent in. Many thanks for your help.

[gunner]

Ngib,

We will answer your questions with the knowledge that we have and there are some really good guys here !

Regards

Gunner

[villiers]

Now ... that´s got the discussion going!

[jmoore]

Well, I think I've mananged to embarrass myself a bit! Ngib, your second post should have been your first!

As far as recent feedback goes from the folk who've been to Afganistan, the few fellows that I talked to at Ft. Benning felt that their semi-auto (pre or XM110's from Knight's) were very good (but not great) out to 600m and for night work, otherwise they much preferred their bolt rifles (some in rather non-standard calibers at the time) for work out to 1200m. Of course this was just before Iraq, so its been a while. The M110 has been refined a "bit" since then, unfortunately my contacts have mostly moved on so no inside news lately.

[Mk VII]

The soldier's job is being deskilled by substituting gadgets and button-pushing for training and knowledge (we here see this as a very American failing), in which it is following much of commercial practice. As far as the British scene goes, the absence of a substantial sporting firearms industry, for a variety of historical reasons, plus the departure of manufacturing for the Far East plus the departure of civilian marksmanship from military requirements ("and a good thing, too", many gunowners here would say) mean that even if the military user was technically qualified to specify his own requirements (and increasingly he isn't) the Home capacity to supply it no longer exists - if it ever did.