RE: Subject
Heard on ABC news that the Navy Seals used "Gyro Stabalized" rifles to take out the pirates.
Hav> It was either the best shots on earth, or we have not heard the
Makes sense.
Anybody have any straight skinny?
Lew
Well that makes sense. I was talking with my son and pointing out that the ship was moving AND the target was moving. Reminds me of my physics class in college and working the formula to determine when to shoot the big guns on the destroyers.
You'd need gyro stabilized pirates too then?
You'd need gyro stabilized pirates too then?
======= At the end of the 80' tow rope? I think I could do that with a target pistol, sitting on a gyro stabilized gun mount. Gyro stabilized sniper rifles my shaven behind.
Not only from a pitching ship but into a pitching boat. Gyro-stabilization could help on the shooting end but wouldn't do anything to stabilize the target end. I think target acquiring, active guidance small arms ammunition is in pretty short supply. So even if we do hear the "whole story", my bet is it's still going to be an example of some damn fine shooting.
Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA
I was damned impressed when I heard the story. Being perched on a stabilized gun mount makes sense. Otherwise I chalked it up to the SEALS identifying a potential situation, i.e. a sniper shot from one boat to another, and have practiced the hell out of it. The report I thought was funny was that the sea states started getting heavy and the pirates didn't seem to be too comfortable, so the USN offered to tow them to calmer waters which they accepted. SUCKERS, thanks for making the shot a little easier.
Damn fine work by some of America's best.
SteveP.
I suspect stabalized optics, old news in Japanese cameras. Rifled bullets are gyro-stabized by definition.
nb
Richard Marcinko's first book and even his second offer some intriguing descriptions of how realistic he tried to make the training of his SEAL team and how it paid off in improved performance. However for one reason or another he was either forced to or decided to use a fictional approach to telling his story by the second book so it gets harder to tell what might have really happened from what he makes up. I for one wouldn't be surprised if the SEALS who took out these punk pirates had trained for something very much like what happened.
Think modern camera. j4
Zzzactly. At a couple thousand feet per second, a target doesn't move very far at that short a distance. Besides, guys like that shoot with their balls, no technology required. When the moment is right, with a bit of a lead, send that little nugget on its way. It gets there really quick. So you might be off by 1/4".
You guy who are wearing the tin foil hats might want to catch this week's 20/20 on ABC. They had a military sniper show just how easy that shot is for them.... ten times in a row.
Stabilized optics don't do you any good in aiming a weapon because it has to be pointed the same place that the optics are pointed. For such stablization to be useful the whole gun has to be stabilized. Stablization of the bullet does not help in aiming.
Come on, it is not an impossible shot even with a handgun, less for a sniper rifle. As a matter of fact 25 yards is not even a distance for a sniper rifle--regular scope is parallax compensated for 50 yards and beyond...
It is no big deal to put all the bullets into a quarter sized circle at 100 yards distance. That is when using a commodity rifle like e.g. widely available PSL-54C and cheap surplus ammo. I wouldn't even start about distance 4 times shorter...
Yes, there are some challenges because of relative boats movement but it is also not rocket science. Especially when those boats are tied with a rope... And absolutely no need to even think about wind at that distance. And it only takes 1/30th of a second for a bullet to travel that distance so there is no black magic of feeling where to aim if a target is moving...
With an accurized weapon and hand loads maybe, and then only with the help of a bench rest. Sub-MOA is difficult to achieve even at that short range. Your target size equates to 21 seconds of arc.
Someone said they used gyros on the rifles for stabilization.
That was a reporter who likely got something or other garbled. Or maybe it wasn't snipers at all, maybe they tagged them with a Phalanx--don't know if it can fire single rounds or not but the latest ones do have surface attack capability as well as antiair.
The Navy does have stabilized mounts for weapons down to 7.62mm or smaller but they aren't sniper rifles.
Yeah, and here's where the SEALs get really high marks. Imagine the skill necessary to attach a fair-sized gyroscope to the underside of the pirate's boad!
As for sniping, you might enjoy the following excerpt from a Lee Childs book:
--- begin quote
First thing out of the barrel of Reacher's Barrett was a blast of hot gas. The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth of a second and expanded to a super-heated bubble. That bubble of gas hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a doughnut, so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher's shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down. Meanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.
Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth of a second later, it was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, three times slower.
The bullet took five hundredths of a second to cross the [parade ground], by which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher's ears and cleared the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper jacket and it was flying straight and true, but by the time it had passed soundlessly over McGrath's head it had slowed a little. And the air was moving it. It was moving it right to left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged imperceptibly at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had covered thirteen hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the left.
And it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more gravity pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the more gravity deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful curve. A whole second after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred yards into its journey. Way past McGrath's running figure, but still over the trees, still three hundred yards short of its target. Another sixth of a second later, it was clear of the trees and alongside the office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It had pulled four feet left and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly and was twenty feet past her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound of the shot was still to come.
Reacher's bullet hit Borken in the head a full second and a third after he fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the back of his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out without really slowing much more at all, because Borken's skull and brains were nothing to a two-ounce lead projectile with a needle point and a polished metal jacket. The bullet was well over the endless forest beyond before the pressure wave built up in Borken's skull and exploded it.
Reacher was watching it through his scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second and a third is a long time to wait. He watched Borken's skull explode like it had been burst from the inside with a sledgehammer. It came apart like a diagram. Reacher saw curved shards of bone bursting outward and red mist blooming.
--- end quote
You can read one of Child's books online at leechild.com.
Then you'll go buy the rest.
And before you say "What does an ex-British lawyer know about sniping?" remember the similar question "What the f*ck does a real estate broker in Virginia know about global submarine warfare?" That question was asked by every major publisher in declining "The Hunt for Red October." Clancey's book was eventually published by the Naval Institute Press, whose last big seller was a tabulation of tide tables for Hudson Bay, 1886-87.
If you're talking about the "short range" being the 25 yards at which the pirates were shot, and the "target size" being a human head, you need to check your math -- it's 21 *minutes* of arc.
Hell, John Wayne could have done it from a rowing boat with a Remington in each hand.
Blindfold in his good eye.
While sitting on a bucking horse.
And drinking corn likker put of a big jug.
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