Russian sniper Andrei Ryabinsky, in a team with spotters Yuri Sinichkin, Evgeny Titov and Vladimir Grebenyuk, set a world record for the range of aimed shooting from a sniper rifle. According to a blog entry by the Russian weapons company Lobaev Arms, the range of an accurate shot was 4210 meters.

For accurate shooting, the SVLK-14S "Twilight" rifle was used, specially designed for the maximum possible range of an accurate shot. According to Ryabinsky, the bullet covered a distance of 4210 meters in 13 seconds. For aimed shooting at such a distance, specialists took into account many factors, including wind, atmospheric pressure, derivation, temperature and the rotation of the Earth.

Derivation is the deflection of a spinning bullet after a shot. The deviation occurs perpendicular to the plane of the oncoming air flow. The displacement of the bullet coincides with the direction of cutting the barrel of the weapon from which it was fired. For the SVD sniper rifle, the derivation is up to 60 centimeters when firing at a target at a distance of one kilometer.

Many modern small arms scopes take derivation into account by design. In particular, PSO-1 for SVD is specially mounted so that after the shot the bullet goes a little to the left. In artillery, this phenomenon is either included in the firing tables, or is also taken into account constructively.

The SVLK-14S sniper rifle is available in three calibers: .408 Chey Tac (10.36 x 77 mm), .338 Lapua Magnum (8.6 x 70 mm) and .300 Winchester Magnum (7.62 x 67 mm). For shooting at a record distance, weapons of .408 caliber were used. Shooting was carried out at a target one meter wide and one meter high.

The length of the rifle is 1430 millimeters with a barrel length of 900 millimeters. The rifle is equipped with a longitudinally sliding bolt. The mass of SVLK-14S is 9.6 kilograms. The accuracy of firing from a rifle is 0.3 minutes of arc.

The previous world record for accurate shot range was set with the American M300 sniper rifle. It was 4157 meters. Meanwhile, in June 2017, a Canadian sniper set the record for a confirmed high-scoring accurate shot fired in combat. From a TAC-50 rifle of 12.7 mm caliber, a Canadian in Iraq killed a militant at a distance of 3540 meters.

Correction: Initially, the news claimed that the SVLK-14S sniper rifle was equipped with a five-round magazine. In fact, another rifle of this family, the SVLK-14M, is equipped with such a magazine. SVLK-14S was deliberately left single-shot by the developers to maintain maximum accuracy and range of fire. We apologize to our readers.

Vasily Sychev

Accurate shooting at ultra-long distance is like a tricky trick - in the past, such shooting was the result of the phenomenal abilities of the shooter, and more often by chance. Today it is a combination of high technologies and perfect training methods. "Lenta.ru" has compiled a rating of the most distant sniper shots of all time.

In our rating, we took only long-range shots fired by military snipers during armed conflicts. A record shot should be unique for its era and glorify the shooter. The set record must be held for a sufficiently long time, or the shot fired must break the record, unsurpassed for decades.

“From this distance, they won’t even hit an elephant.”

The names of the first shooters, who became famous for the longest shots, remained in history solely thanks to their victims - high-ranking military leaders. The first attested ultra-long shot dates back to the era of the Napoleonic Wars - the French general, Baron Auguste de Colbert, became his victim. In 1809, he was shot down by a rifleman of the 95th British Fusiliers, a certain Thomas Plunkett - he is in fifth position. It is believed that Plunket killed Colbert from an incredible 600 meters for that time. And to prove that the hit was not accidental, he also shot down the general's adjutant with another shot - however, this is more of a legend. There is no exact data on what kind of weapon the British shooter used. Some sources say that Plunkett fired the standard 1722 pattern smoothbore musket, the famous Brown Bess. But it is more likely that the long-range shot was fired from a rifled fitting, which by that time had appeared in the British army. By the way, the British snipers of the XIX century - the military, hunters, athletes - often used a rather unusual technique - they shot lying on their backs, resting the barrel on the shin of a bent leg. It is believed that it was from this position that Plunkett shot de Colbert.

Image: The Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum

“From this distance, they won’t even hit an elephant,” were the last words of American General John Sedgwick, a second later he fell from a sniper’s bullet. This is the American Civil War of 1861-1865. At the Battle of Spotsylvane, Sedgwick, who fought on the side of the United States, controlled artillery fire. The Confederate riflemen, seeing the enemy commander, began to hunt for him, the staff officers lay down, and invited their commander to go into cover. The positions of the opponents were separated by a distance of about one kilometer. Sedgwick, considering this distance safe, began to shame his subordinates for timidity, but did not have time to finish - a bullet from an unknown sergeant Grace hit him in the head. This is perhaps the farthest shot of the 19th century, although it cannot be said whether it was an accident or not. This is the fourth position in the ranking.

Descriptions of long-range shots - at a distance of half a kilometer - are also found in the chronicles of the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. There were many good hunters among the North American militias, and they used long-barreled large-caliber hunting rifles and fittings as weapons.

Carlos "White Feather"

The first half of the 20th century did not bring new deadly records, at least those that would become the property of history and glorify the shooter. During the First and Second World Wars, the skill of snipers was determined not by the ability to make an ultra-long shot, but by the number of enemies killed. It is known that one of the most productive snipers of all time - the Finn Simo Häyhä (he accounted for up to 705 enemy soldiers killed) - preferred to shoot from a distance of no more than 400 meters.

For new range records, a weapon was needed that significantly exceeded the characteristics of regular sniper rifles. Such a weapon was the Browning M2 machine gun of 12.7x99 mm caliber (50 BMG), developed in the early 30s of the last century. During the Korean War, American soldiers began to use it as a sniper rifle - the machine gun was equipped with an optical sight and could fire a single shot. With its help, a participant in the Vietnam War, American Sergeant Carlos Hathcock II set a distance record that lasted for 35 years. In February 1967, the American destroyed the enemy from a distance of 2286 meters - the third position. From his sniper M2, Hathcock was guaranteed to hit a growth target with single shots from a distance of 2000 yards (a little more than 1800 meters), that is, approximately twice as much as compared to the standard army "high-precision" M24 ​​in calibers 308 Win (7.62x51 millimeters) and 300 Win Mag (7.62x67 millimeters).

The Vietnamese nicknamed Hathcock "White Feather" - allegedly, despite the requirements of disguise, he always attached a feather to his hat. Some sources claim that the North Vietnamese command put a $30,000 bounty on the sniper's head. It is noteworthy that Hathcock received his highest award - the Silver Star - not for sniping, but for rescuing his comrades from a burning armored personnel carrier.

Inspired by the success of Hathcock, the US military created a special commission that studied the possibility of creating a heavy sniper rifle based on the Browning.

Rifle from the garage

The Americans did not make rifles from a machine gun. But in 1982, a former police officer Ronnie Barrett (Ronnie G. Barrett) in a garage workshop designed a sniper rifle in caliber 12.7 millimeters - later she received the designation Barrett M82. The inventor offered his development to the monsters of the arms market, such as Winchester and FN, and after the refusal of the latter, he set up his own small-scale production by registering Barrett Firearms. Barrett's first clients were hunters and civilian lovers of high-precision shooting, and at the very end of the 80s, a batch of 100 M82A1 rifles was purchased by Swedish troops, following the Swedes, the American military became interested in Barrett's rifle. Today, the word "Barrett" has actually become synonymous with a large-caliber precision rifle.

Another "high-precision" in the caliber of 12.7x99 millimeters began to be produced in the mid-80s by a small American company McMillan Bros. The rifle was called the McMillan TAC-50 - today they are used by special units of the United States and Canada.

The advantages of large-caliber high-precision weapons were fully revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, snipers of the Western coalition began to update range records almost every year. In 2002, in Afghanistan, Canadian Arron Perry from a McMillan TAC-50 rifle hit a Mujahideen from a distance of 2526 yards (a little more than 2.3 thousand meters), thereby breaking Hathcock's long-term record. In the same year, his compatriot Rob Furlong (Rob Furlong) made a productive shot at 2657 yards (slightly more than 2.4 thousand meters). These two shots are in second position.

American sniper Brian Kremer (Brian Kremer) crept close to the shooters from Canada - in March 2004 in Iraq from a Barrett M82A1 rifle, he hit a target at a distance of 2300 meters. It is believed that during his two years of service in Iraq, Kremer fired two successful shots with a range of over 2100 meters.

In first place - unsurpassed to date, the record of Briton Craig Harrison (Craig Harrison). During an operation in Afghanistan in November 2009, at a range of 2470 meters, he destroyed two Taliban machine gunners and their machine gun. According to Craig himself, before three effective shots, he had to make nine more sighting shots.

While the sniper has a long and colorful history, in recent years, thanks to advances in technology, the range and accuracy of weapons have improved, allowing more shots to be fired. Pocket computers, devices that collect information about the weather and the quality of the atmosphere, and laser rangefinders are all there to improve the accuracy of the shooter.

Curious what was the longest sniper shot ever? Most of the longest sniper shots recorded in history took place at the beginning of this century, although the fifth long shot was fired way back in the 60s!

5. Sergeant of the Artillery Regiment Carlos Hatchcock

Artillery Sergeant Carlos Hatchcock

This US Marine is still considered a legend, and rightly so. In more than forty years, only four other snipers have managed to beat his record, which was made in 1967. With a M2 0.50 caliber Browning machine gun and a telescopic sight, from a distance of 2286 meters, he shot down a Viet Cong guerrilla. His record remained unbroken until 2002. Hatchcock's shot was 2286 meters.

4. Sergeant Brian Kremer

Beretta M82A1

Kremer is fourth with a shot at 2299 meters, narrowly beating Hatchcock's record. This US soldier used an M82A1 Beretta and was a member of the 2nd Ranger Battalion in the Iraq War. He was not, however, the first to break Hatchcock's record. Kremer's shot was taken in 2004, two years after Corporal Rob Furlong and Master Corporal Aaron Perry, they broke Hatchcock's record in 2002.

3. Master Corporal Aaron Perry

TAC50

In March 2002, this Canadian soldier from 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia, Canadian Light Infantry broke the old Hatchcock record by firing a Macmillan Tac-50 from 2,309 meters during the war in Afghanistan.

2. K April Rob Furlong

Canadian Forces sniper Rob Furlong

Furlong was also a Canadian infantryman like Master Corporal Aaron Perry, and he managed to break a comrade's record in the same month during the war in Afghanistan. Perry set his record, Furlong beat him with prey at 2429 meters, a very long shot indeed, in Operation Anaconda. Furlong used the same type of weapon as Perry.

1. Copral Craig Harrison

Corpral Craig Harrison

And the winner for longest sniper shot in November 2009 was British Cavalry Corporal Craig Harrison, firing his Accuracy International L115A3 during the war in Afghanistan, his bullet flying an astounding 2,475 meters, again well ahead of the previous record holder. This was no accidental achievement. Harrison creatively modified his equipment to achieve the level of accuracy and range needed to shoot at such a huge distance. However, Harrison does say in his reports that he owes some of the credit to the good weather, which was optimal for long-range shooting.

It's still pretty amazing that Hatchcock retains fifth place in the record book after all these years. You'll notice if you check other records held by snipers, most of the top 11 took their shots during the 21st century, with only one other exception, perhaps the most convincing of the lot. Billy Dixon, a civilian buffalo hunter, posted a picture with a 0.50-0.90 caliber Sharps carbine, during the Indian Wars in June 1874, he fired at a distance of 1406 meters. Dixon - still occupies the 9th position in the ranking for the range of a sniper shot. Not bad for a guy relying on 19th century technology!

The new sniper range record belongs to the team of Vladislav Lobaev, a Russian weapons manufacturer whose precision-guided sniper rifles have been adopted by the FSB and the Russian FSO.

The record was set on September 28, 2017 at a training ground in the Tula region in Russia. Successful shot fired Andrey Ryabinsky from a distance of 4,170 meters at a target measuring 1x2 meters, from a rifle SVLK-14S "Dusk" cartridge caliber .408 Cheytac.

To set a new record for shooting at ultra-long distances, Lobaev Arms specialists modified the rifle and refined the cartridge. This made it possible to disperse a bullet weighing 30 grams to an initial speed of 1000 m / s.

As Vladislav Lobaev himself said, 4170 meters is a little more than the recent record of colleagues from North America - they recorded a shot at 4157 meters. However, this is not the limit. In the coming days, Russian gunsmiths are planning to set a new record - by 4,200 meters!

Lobaev's team, in addition to the production of high-precision weapons, has already distinguished itself by earlier record shooting - in April 2015, they installed . After this event, disputes broke out on the Internet about whether live shooting at such distances makes sense. Part of the particularly knowledgeable "experts" claimed that the bullet allegedly loses all its destructive power and falls on the head like "pigeon droppings." Let's leave these statements on their conscience and on the conscience of computer game developers, from where "experts" draw their knowledge, and in order to find the truth, let's turn to reality.

This June, in the Iraqi city of Mosul, Canadian sniper from the Joint Task Force 2 special forces unit, with an accurate shot, destroyed one of the ISIS militants ( terrorist organization banned in Russia, the CIS countries and Europe) who attacked Iraqi army soldiers. The most remarkable thing about this story is that the shot was fired from a distance of just over 2 miles, namely - 3 540 meters!

Canadian sniper in Iraq
(c) dinardetectives.info

The command of the special operations forces of Canada did not disclose the name of the sniper and the circumstances of the battle, saying that the fact of the shot and the elimination of the militant was confirmed by documentary satellite footage.

It is only known that the sniper used a rifle McMillan TAC-50 with ammunition .50 BMG (12.7x99mm), the sniper position at the time of the shot was in a high-rise building, the bullet's flight time was about 10 seconds. At the same time, the shot had a strong demoralizing effect on the terrorists and actually thwarted the offensive, representatives of the Canadian military department said.

The previous record of a “combat” sniper shot was set in 2009 in Afghanistan, in the Musa-Kala region. Then Corporal Craig Harrison, a special forces sniper from the UK, shot from McMillan TAC-50 eliminated 2 Taliban machine gunners from a distance 2475 meters.

Harrison said that on the day of the record shot, the weather was almost perfect and completely calm, and visibility was excellent. It took him 9 sighting shots to accurately hit the target with 3 shots. Bullets fired by a corporal from a sniper rifle reached their targets in 6 seconds.

There is also information about the allegedly absolute record for the range of a shot from a sniper rifle - 3,850 meters, which was set last year Jim Spinell from the American company Hill Country Rifle. But this is not a “combat” shot, but in terms of high-precision shooting in “peaceful” conditions, the world record now belongs to the team of Vladislav Lobaev.

The story began a few years ago when Russian shooter and maker of high-precision long-range rifles Vlad Lobaev saw a video on YouTube of peppy old men from Texas hitting a target at 3,600 yards (3,292 m) with a rifle. Vlad decided to accept the challenge and compete with the Americans. Fortunately, he had his own weapons factory Lobaev Arms at hand.

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The Americans fired from a custom-made (custom) ultra-long-range rifle in a rare caliber .375 CheyTac. By that time, Lobaev's company had already mass-produced the SVLK-14 "Dusk" ultra-long-range rifle in an even rarer and more powerful caliber .408 CheyTac, which allows sniping at distances over 2 km. For the record, they took a special custom "Dusk" with a titanium chassis and firing pin, with a barrel length of 720 mm and a weight of more than 9 kg. In April 2015, on a field in the Kaluga region (there are simply no multi-kilometer shooting ranges in Russia), Lobaev’s team, after sighting shots, hit a target at a distance of 3400 m with this rifle. The video with the record was posted on YouTube. The Americans reacted calmly: they say, okay, let's continue the absentee duel.

Record rifle SVLK-14 "Dusk"

Subsonic

Not only the Americans reacted: the French sniper from the Foreign Legion, after long training, hit the target at a distance of 3600 m, but, apart from an article in a small specialized magazine, there is no information about this record, no one uploaded videos. The Americans also overcame the mark, first 3600, and then 4000 yards (3657 m). Lobaev's company studied this video almost under a microscope: some parameters of the shot did not match, the flying time did not match with the initial speed and angle of the bar. Nothing has changed in ballistics, but a few hundred meters have increased. This does not happen, but since the competition was originally conceived as a competition of gentlemen, the Lobayevites decided to continue to shoot with the Americans honestly. And win by knockout - hit from four kilometers.

For shooters, shooting at a distance is considered ultra-long-range shooting, where at the end of the trajectory the bullet goes at deep subsonic, because everything is clear with supersonic - there ballistics is considered easily, using simple mathematical methods. And subsonic ballistics is considered more difficult, and, most unpleasantly, in this mode, some physical processes occur that make it difficult to shoot at ultra-long distances. First, there is a restabilization effect. Linear speed slows down at 1000 m, say, three times - from 900 m/s to 300 m/s. And the rotational speed of the bullet is only 5-10%. At subsonic, the speed is even lower, but the rotational speed is still the same. This leads to the fact that all the design and manufacturing defects of the bullet begin to come out, which greatly affects dispersion. In addition, at low speeds, errors in the assessment of wind and weather conditions become noticeable. The second factor is turbulence in the bottom part at deep subsonic. At speeds slightly less than 300 m / s, this is not critical, but at ranges of more than 2 km it greatly affects accuracy. There is only one way to deal with these phenomena - to develop a design of bullets with a different bottom design.

The classic problems for ultra-long range shooting require increased bullet mass and improved aerodynamics. Lobaev set his first record with a standard D27 bullet, an analogue of the well-known Lost River in the West. These are elongated solid-machined bullets for long-range shooting, also called Ultra VLD. They were no longer suitable for new records. If you follow the path of increasing the mass of the bullet, you will need to change the entire cartridge - either increase the chamber or use a new progressively burning gunpowder, or even switch to a different caliber. Another caliber (Browning .50 or domestic 12.7 x 108 mm) is a transition to another class and a completely different weapon with all the ensuing consequences: other barrels, bolts, receivers, dimensions, weight and a significant increase in recoil, at which the pleasure of shooting is out of the question.

Lobaev decided not to deviate from the old cartridge case and caliber .408 CheyTac, not to change either the dimensions or the mass of the weapon. He managed to develop a heavier 30-gram D30 bullet, while remaining within the standard cartridge. This was also done because the cartridge is quite affordable and anyone can try to repeat the achievement. The design of the bullet was also modified: it began to resemble a long elongated spindle with two pointed ends, which made it possible to achieve an almost ideal ballistic coefficient of one. This required a redesign of the rifle, a faster rifling pitch to stabilize the longer, heavier bullet. If the classic rifling pitch in the 408 caliber is thirteen, then Lobaev decided to use ten on the record rifle. Despite the fact that the muzzle velocity of the new bullet was lower (875 m/s for the D30 versus 935 m/s for the D27), it had a flatter trajectory at 2 km.

Lateral support

One of the main problems with record shooting is that you cannot raise the bar of the optical sight indefinitely. When firing at such distances, the rifle has large elevation angles, as when firing from a canopy, almost like a howitzer. At the top of the trajectory, the bullet travels at a height of several hundred meters. No sights allow you to make such corrections for aiming, therefore, for record shooting, special slats are used for the sight. However, you can’t endlessly raise the bar: the muzzle device begins to block the line of sight. This was precisely what confused Lobaev in the last record of the Americans: the angle of the bar did not correspond to the correction necessary for such a distance. The solution to this problem Lobaev peeped at the artillery, where the sight had long been moved to the left of the barrel. The solution is simple, but no one in the world before Lobaev used it. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sight on Lobaev's record-breaking rifles passes to the left of the barrel. What turned out to be more convenient for shooting: you don’t need to throw your head back and you can take the optimal position.

Lobaev's know-how is the side mount of the sight for ultra-long range shooting. A year ago it was forbidden even to photograph it. This system can also find application in the troops: when firing at long distances, it helps to get by with the available Russian sights.

On the second try

They were going to break the record last summer in the fields near Krasnodar. For this, a giant target measuring 10 x 10 m was made in order to at least shoot. How a bullet behaves at such distances, no one knew, and there were no exact mathematical models. It was only clear that the bullets would enter the ground in the target area almost vertically, so the target was at a high angle. The difficulty was that the soil during the shooting was wet, so it was necessary to hit the target exactly: traces of hitting the ground at such low speeds and almost vertical angles are not visible. Unfortunately for the whole team, the record failed the first time: they couldn't even hit such a big target. While preparing for the next round, the Americans posted a video with a 4 km record on the Web. It became clear that you need to shoot even further.

Throughout the past year, Lobaev and his team have been conjuring with a rifle and new bullets, giving practically no information about the project, being afraid to jinx the world record, constantly approaching the cherished milestone, first taking 4170 m, then 4200. And in October of this year they succeeded the incredible: the well-known shooter and promoter Andrey Ryabinsky hit a 1 x 1 m target from a distance of 4210 m. For such a shot, a huge number of factors had to be taken into account, including the rotation of the Earth - the bullet spent 13 seconds in the air! As the record holder himself said, he went to this shot for eight years. So now the ball is on American soil. Or, more correctly, a bullet.