OT: 2700-yard sniper record

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Speaking as an engineering professional, with a considerable body of knowledge that bears on this problem and a kid to put through college: Don't hold your breath, pay me by the hour, and in advance.

You're trying to achieve something like a 99% CEP on a 10cm diameter target, from about 2500 meters away. That means that you have to aim the bullet to within 4 microradians, reliably. Just making a platform that can aim a rifle, be stable to within 4 microradians is not trivial. Add to that the fact that you probably want it to work when the ground is moving, when the wind is blowing, etc., after it's been exposed to sand and sea and shock, after its been fired hundreds of times, and over a temperature range from -40C to +55C, and just this one part of your robot sniper is going to set the DOD back by about $50 to $100K per.

Then, as others have mentioned, taking windage, sun loading on the rifle, and all the other effects into account, the problem becomes sheer magic.

You'll end up with a system that will cost a good chuck of $1M _in quantity_*, will require the services of several on-site repair technicians, not to mention a cadre of personnel back at the factory, will weigh something on the order of five hundred pounds, and will _still_ need one smart marksman to make it all work.

Contrast that cost with the resources needed to put one talented rancher's son on the line with a good rifle.

There is work being done on smart munitions of a size for anti-personnel use -- this probably makes a heck of a lot more sense than trying to make an automagic gun-firing machine. Sending out 100 Predators, each with a 500 pound smart bomb, is probably cheaper than fielding one sniper-bot.

  • For _just_ a prototype I figure you'll be upwards of ten man-years of just engineering time, plus at least ten again of direct support personnel to the engineers, plus five more of management, program management, sales and other suits. And that's just on the side of the company designing the 'sniper robot'. The military would have to put at least another ten man-years into it, if not the same 25 that the company is, and that's just to get one frigging prototype -- complete with bugs severe enough to keep it out of Iraq -- on a firing range somewhere in Nevada so that a Colonel or a one-star general can say "why in hell can't we just train up a smart kid to do this?"
Reply to
Tim Wescott
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Depends on what and where I'm shooting. Out to 500 yards I can shoot offhand without a problem. If I'm shooting over that distance I'll use a good bipod and shoot prone. No problem.

Not necessarily. I have seen a LOT of heavy duty "rail" guns that were routinely doing worse than guys shooting standard rifles off a bench with nothing more than a sandbag rest.

The rail guns in this case are HIGH DOLLAR rigs weighing 30-60 pounds and basically solid blocks of steel and aluminum with a high end match barrel attached. The weight and design was such that in theory you just set the POA onto the X ring and pulled the trigger. No other human intervention involved.

Reply to
Steve W.

(snip)

The Willamette Week in Portland is also free, and has a wider variety of ads. So you get to have the puerile fun of sorting out the abbreviations (SWM, SGM, SBW, WTF?), the 'zing' from "older married couple seeks pair of college age men for weekend encounters", and the outright cynical entertainment of "MWM, 50, seeks SWF, 22-25, for discrete afternoon encounters" (and just how much is _that_ going to cost?), along with the matching "SWF, 23, seeking MWM to help me gain worldly experience and pay for college".

Some even look like serious lonely-heart (instead of other organs) ads.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

-snip-

hey, sorry to diverge off the topic (very impressive shots, there was a link to a video posted here months ago of sniper shots with a 50 cal., astonishing (and disgusting) how the body parts flew into the air like a shredded chicken.) but you guys veered off to discussing the village voice, and i just saw this (posted to another group by a friend). too funny. almost sounds like the supremes have been following this group and received coaching by some frequent posters.

(funny onion article about a supreme court ruling on obscenity.)

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Reply to
William Wixon

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So, WTF is funny about that?

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Is that robot going to be able to hump it's gear and power pack to the observation point it operates form? It isn't sentinent so it will need remote control. Maybe a laser link, radiating would be bad.

The sniper or sniper team which is two people, that alternate from being spotter and shooter if I remember right still have the edge.

When someone directing a ROV like a Predator gets a good kill on a certified bad guy, I'm sure there is some satisfaction in a job well done.

The field craft to get into position, is beyond the likely capabilites of a robot sniper not to mention we don't have robots that can walk 5 miles, climb a mountain and then set up running on batteries.

When I see the Fanuc 710i robot at work jump off the rail at the end of the day and drive home, then I'll start to think this is possible. If it joins a union, we are there. ;)

Now having a robot shoot a gun at a defined target. I'd bet on the robot today.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

That is odd. I would think a shooter that is a true expert with a hand held rifle could get a bit more accuracy out of that set up. I wonder if it is a case of those that don't have the wind and mirage reading skills gravitating to using the rail gun concept?

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

Such weapons exist now. They just aren't portable or easy to conceal.

See CIWS. The US Navy uses these as a last line of defense sort of thing.

Reply to
John R. Carroll

See if you can find film of the Navy's Close In Weapons System on line Ed. It uses a very short wavelength radar and a Laser. The air is samples for temp, humidity, wind velocity and direction. A single round is fired, the trajectory recalculated from the first approximation and then, withing a second, the gun fires a stream of DU at

6,000 rounds per minute while the system tracks the target and adjusts fire. That's how you kill an Excocet or Silkworm.

Pretty NOISY!

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Destroying a drone:

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I'm told they don't switch the Sea Whiz on, they hide and turn it loose.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

LOL Here is the original build of this system. You can see the first round miss in the High Speed camera run.

Reply to
John R. Carroll

OOPSIE

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Reply to
John R. Carroll

that don't

It's what I would do. I can hit the side of a barn with a shotgun, but it only dents the barn and risks bending the gun.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

The slogan is, "All The News That Fits, We Print."

Reply to
rangerssuck

You mean ?

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Very impressive Block 1B Video
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Now that's some serious metal work!

Reply to
cavelamb

The slogan is, "All The News That Fits, We Print."

Hey, you stole that from the Michigan State News.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

The big gun can be controlled via GPS from a AWACS or modern remote control jet engine RC airplane. Spots a target - downloads data - gun on target - boom. It allows the gun to work longer distances without optical sighting.

Mart>

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

Well to be picky,it said his comrades were under fire. I suspect he likely wasn't. Not that it makes a bit of difference. jk

Reply to
jk

All you say is true, and you've omitted some variables like mirage and coreolis. But an expert system can cope with such variables, almost by definition.

The aspect of being a sniper that would be far more difficult to synthesize is that of inserting a robot to within kill range as stealthily as a sniper-spotter team can infiltrate. Exceptional marksmanship is necessary but sometimes far from sufficient.

Reply to
Don Foreman

To put this in metalworking terms, a Starrett master precision level resolves 0.0005 in/ft. At 2706 yards out that projects to 4 inches per division on the level. So basically this sniper is holding steady within a few divisions if you were to put such a level on the barrel. Try doing that yourself in the shop. You breathe on the thing or step on the concrete slab and it moves that much.

The apparent arc of a human torso at that distance is about 1/4 the size that the most acute human eye can resolve.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

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