I just read the IM UNSTOPABLE topic, so it reminded me of something, but Im not sure, a normal range for a sniper is 100, right?

100 yards? yes for police and swat snipers, but for military it varies greatly by the theater of operation.

yeah it does vary greatly, i think the standard sight-in for a military sniper is 600-800 yards.

we allways sight in at 100 meters but we Can engage at anywhere between 20 and 1000 meters. i would say that most shots will ring out from between 300 and 600 meters, effectively putting the target in the area of confusion.(a location where sound waves have fanned out so much that detection of the sourse is difficult)

it all varies with the ability of the shooter team and the availability of long range rifles and glass. one must also take into concideration, the lay of the land

Ok thx for the info, sorry forgot the "m".
If a sniper can fire 1000m it has to be sticked to the ground?

i dont know what you mean by "sticked" but if your asking if we use bipods, then the answere is yes. on low profile SWS's, we usually go with a folding harris. i myself prefer the 9" harris bench rest pod because i shoot from both prone and targer table.

often times though, i sniper without a bipod will use natural things around him for stability like fallen logs or mounded up dirt. i have used my jacket many times as a stable base to rest my rifle on during firing.

some of the more importiant things to remember when shooting long range are stability, and making sure that that stability does not come at the cost of something touching your barrel. never let your barrel touch anything when firing. a barrel works like a tuning fork when you fire a bullet through it. it vibrates at a certian harmonic pitch. if you touch the tines of a tuning fork while you tap it, it wont work. if you touch the barrel of a rifle when firing, it will throw off the harmonics and send the bullet off erratically. on modern sniping rifles, the forstock doesnt even touch the barrel. this keeps rounds from keyholin the papers as much.

Cool nice technical info, never though it could be complex like that, its like talking about how sound works on a guitar string.

What phrack is talking about is also called "free floating" your barrel. It is one of the easiest performed modifications you can do on many rifles. Basically it's this: remove the stock, sand out the material that surround the barrel. I stop when I can get an index card that's folded in half twice between the barrel and the stock. Some weapons don't even have a fore are or forestock.

I don't know what branch you are in phrack, however USMC snipers do not regularly carry a bipod, unless they are using the Barrett.

I suggest, Mack, a book on target shooting/sniping. Their is a difference, though each uses many of the same shooting techniques, sniping itself is a different field onto it's own. Snipers stay hidden not just by firing one shot, but also through very well thought out planning, movements, camoflauge, location, and timing. As a rule of thumb, a Marine Sniper told me, they seek out the nastiest place a person would not want to be in the area, that makes for an apparently difficult shot. Leave a week ahead of schedule and crawl to that spot at rate of a few inches per minute, when no one is looking.

I'm babbling now, but there is much more than sniping than just long range shooting.
If you don't plan on sniping but you feel you may have to engage in long range combat what you want to learn can be found in target manuals. Learn it well and learn to be stable, the movement you arm goes through because your heart beat, can throw you off a even a few inches at 1000m. Also obtaining and learning to use a quality scope with a range finding reticle and bullet drop compensation is nice, a range finding reticle is pretty much a necessity. Variable power is nice as well, but more moving parts=more chance for failure. I have 2 scopes now that are stuck because of rough handling. One is a Leupold! One is stuck on 6x, which ain't bad, the other on 12x, which really sucks.

Do you have a place you can shoot that far? Since I moved from Quantico, VA I am limited to 300m ranges, it's frustrating not being able to find a place to shoot out to 800m or so, safely.

Wow thanks for that presise info also, .

No, I dont have any place to shoot safely at all, if I want to Ill have to take a 2 or 4 hours drive. Im from Monreal, only towns around, and from what I have seen I wont be able to get 100m sight, maybe If I get on a high place. The only clean 100m+ sight I can get is on the highways heh, but learning in a town.... I dont know, I may have to ask you this question, cause some people may think its stupid to learn snipping in a town, but I wouldnt mind. But it does look kinda strange, kinda stupid. Better go hunting I guess.

Ok, I wont be talking to much, but thanks for all the info guys.

The question, any of you snipped around town? If yes how much range did you get, what height? what was the situation, the territory and the people? And, did you use a silencer? This gave another though to my mind, what is the max range setting for a sniper to use a silencer?(i mean a 800 sniper cant have a silencer, or do they?) Do snipers have silencers?

Real you said you got 300m, I can't imagine 300m in town, but I also cant think that you cant get more then 400m in the woods, were do you train right now, no need to answer this question, as all the others to.

And, how do you become a sniper in the army, is not like Ill take this direction, but Im curious. No need to answer.

Ill look for what I can do, these are some things that came throught my mind, no need to answer, and thanks again all.

i never was in the military persay, though i was the armorer for the western resistance militia for 2 years. and as far as silencers go, though i have made and used a few, i would never put one on an sws. the whole point behind a high power rifle is to be able to apply fire from a position thats far enough away that sound doesnt matter.

sounds travel in different ways and different directions. muzzle blast will bounce sound off at 180' from your position but the bullet sound will make em think your 90' from where you actually are. this happens because the sound of a bullet comes off the round from just behind the leading edge of the bullet, and travels 90' to the direction that the bullet is traveling.(not that any of this information is usefull in regulat target shooting)

if your interested in silencers, i would check out george hayduke's books on workshop supressors. he's got some good designs but few that would be suitable for a high powered rifles and none of them nesessary for sniping.

sniping takes alot of practice and even more experence. i forgot what the FM #s were but try to find the army S.O. sniper field training and employment manual. i have a copy of it around here somewhere but i dont feel like looking for it. the book has a distribution restriction notice so it might be hard to find. it also says on the cover, destroy by any means that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.

these books arent to hard to find if you got someone on the inside.

good luck

If it matters, the accuracy qualification for US army snipers is to put 8/10 shots with a .308 M40A1 into a 10 inch ring at 1000 yards within 30 minutes.

The stalking qualification is as follows: there is a bunker with two sniper trainers in it. The sniper trainee starts out 800 yards from the bunker, and has 6 hours to move to 150-100 yards from the bunker. If the sniper is spotted while moving, he has failed. Once he is within range, the sniper will fire one blank. If the sniper is spotted after he takes his shot, he has failed. If he still has not been spotted, he will take another shot. If the sniper is spotted after he takes his second shot, he has failed. If he still has not been spotted, another instructor will move to the sniper's position and place his hand on the sniper's head. If the instructors still cannot see the sniper, one of the instructors will write something (a word or a number) on a index card and hold it up for a moment. The sniper's rifle is then checked for windage and elevation settings to make sure that they are correct, and his sniper log is checked to see if he read the index card correctly. The sniper must succeed this test 2/3 times to graduate. The logic behind this is that if the sniper cannot be detected by the US's best snipers, he cannot be detected by anyone.

For practice, military snipers shoot at moving targets at 500, 600, and 800 yards, and stationary targets at 1000 and 1200 yards.

I also know of a SWAT team whose snipers shoot at 1.5 inch spinners at 600 yards with their .308 Robar SR-60s to practice.

Man, I dont know what to say, I cant believe the info I got hehe, thanks everybody. Ill put this post in a text file.

thanks steelblade, i was gonna mention the weapon data cards if the conversation ever got there.

each sws (sniper weapon system) should also have a set of data cards that keep record of everything the rifle has ever done.

you have to record how many rounds have gone through that particular barrel and what kind of ammo of course but most importantly, you record performance.

you have to record things like where your cold bore, first shot landed as opposed to where you wanted it to land. you keep track of what temps. effect your rounds in what way. you have to record things like mirrage and how you compensated for it. and you do this for every round and every range.

every time you fire that weapon, you should have to write out a books worth of information.

the perpose for this is so that when your in the field and you have a stationary target at 600m, you can look in your data cards and say "ok, on the twelth of june, after almost the same amount of rounds through the barrel, at almost the same temp, with the same mirrage, and the wind going .5 nots faster but in the same direction, my cold bore first shot landed 2"down and 1"right from where i wanted it to go." it sounds like alot of figuring and it is.

i feel like im rambling so ill quit but ill leave you with this thought: a sniper's best field tool is a calculator.