The world record was set by Russian snipers who hit a target located almost three and a half kilometers away from the firing position. The incredible result is now being called a new victory domestic weapons and are even going to apply to the Guinness Book of Records. Our field shooting masters beat the previous group record by 100 meters, and the professional sniper record by more than one thousand. On the eve of the anniversary Great Victory They decided to dedicate the achievement to everyone who fought for their Motherland. How it happened - in special report LifeNews.
The fire experiment took place on the border of the Kaluga and Tula regions near the regional center of Tarusa. It was here that sniper Vladislav Lobaev and his team decided to carry out an ambitious task - to break the world record in rifle shooting.
- This is an exclusive shooting - of a record nature. This is not group shooting - this is shooting to hit, at least one shot,” says Vladislav Lobaev, designer of sniper rifles.
By the way, Vladislav Lobaev himself is an athlete and enjoys long-range shooting. In addition, Lobaev developed the latest sniper rifle, which now bears his name. A few years ago, a man created the first private mass production company in Russia. precision weapons. After many advances in weapons development, go for new record- already in the sniper business - Vlad, one might say, was forced by the Americans.
We are talking about a video that appeared on the Internet in which four foreign cowboys of advanced age hit a target at a distance of 30 football fields - that’s about three thousand three hundred meters. Among domestic masters, the foreign experiment aroused suspicion and turned into a challenge.
Already here, in Russia, a distance of three thousand four hundred meters is a hundred more than that of the Americans. In other words, the territory for the experiment is comparable to 32 football fields according to FIFA standards. Or a little less than any runway at Domodedovo Airport. And in Moscow itself, this is almost the same distance as from Manezhnaya Square to the Belorussky Station - the entire Tverskaya Street. Find your way around rural areas The rangefinder helped. It was with his help that points for the sniper and targets were chosen in the fields.
The main condition of the experiment is the absence of obstacles at the entire distance. Only the field turned out to be like this Kaluga region. The target was set three agricultural fields from the firing position. The participants had to get here through plowed soil and mud.
The target itself measures one meter by one meter. The shield was dug right into the remains of last year's hay.
- Mission Impossible. 3400 - simply no one has done it. If this happens, it will be a world record,” says Sergei Parfenov, master of sports in bullet shooting.
In Vladislav’s hands was a complex rifle, the likes of which have no analogues in the world. The sniper created the weapon with his own hands. In total, the athlete has six different models in his weapon range. By the way, this sniper rifle is called “Twilight”. Its caliber is 408 Chey Tac, muzzle velocity is 900 meters per second, length is 1430 millimeters, barrel length is 780 millimeters, weight is more than nine and a half kilograms.
True, to achieve the record, in order to increase the range, the weapon had to be modified: the bar for the sight was increased, moved higher back trunk In addition, even the bullets had to be loaded with special ones - with a pointed tip that cuts through the air like lightning.
The first few shots were encouraging - although they didn’t hit the target, they definitely caught up with the Americans. And in order to overtake, it seems that all the conditions coincided at the shooting range - sunny weather and even the wind subsides from time to time. After some time, the bullet still pierced the target.
According to Vlad Lobaev, this result is still better than the American one and is worthy even of the Guinness Book of Records. Note that the previous record was set in Afghanistan by professional British military sniper Craig Garrison. In 2010, using an L115A3 Long Range Rifle of 8.59 mm caliber, which has a standard firing range of about 1,100 meters, he hit a target located at a distance of 2.47 kilometers.
His team now expects to enter their names there after conquering the firing line for three and a half kilometers. And on the eve of the anniversary of the Great Victory, they decided to dedicate this record to everyone who fought for their Motherland.
This story began almost three years ago, when Russian shooter and manufacturer of high-precision long-range rifles Vlad Lobaev saw a video on YouTube where cheerful old men from Texas hit a target with a rifle at a distance of 3,600 yards (3,292 m). Vlad decided to take on the challenge and compete with the Americans. Fortunately, he had his own weapons factory, Lobaev Arms, at hand.
The Americans fired from a custom-made ultra-long-range rifle of rare caliber .375 CheyTac. By that time, Lobaev’s company was already mass-producing the ultra-long-range rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight” in an even rarer and more powerful caliber .408 CheyTac, which allows sniper shooting at distances over 2 km. For the record, they took a special custom “Twilight” 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), with this rifle, Lobaev’s team, after sighting shots, hit a target at a distance of 3400 m. The video with the record was posted on YouTube. The Americans reacted calmly: they say, okay, let's continue the duel in absentia.
Record rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight”
Subsonic
Not only the Americans reacted: a French sniper from the Foreign Legion, after long training, hit a 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 posted videos. The Americans also crossed 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 flight time did not match up with the initial speed and angle of inclination of the bar. Nothing has changed in ballistics, but several hundred meters have been added. This does not happen, but since the competition was originally conceived as a competition of gentlemen, the Lobaevites decided to continue to shoot fairly with the Americans. And win by knockout - hit from four kilometers away.
Ultra-long-range shooting for shooters is considered to be shooting at a distance where at the end of the trajectory the bullet travels at deep subsonic levels, because with supersonic everything is clear - there ballistics are considered easy, simple mathematical methods. But subsonic ballistics is considered more difficult, and what’s most unpleasant is that in this mode some physical processes, which make it difficult to shoot at ultra-long distances. Firstly, a re-stabilization effect occurs. The linear speed slows down per 1000 m, say, three times - from 900 m/s to 300 m/s. And the bullet rotation speed is only 5-10%. At subsonic speeds the speed is even lower, but the rotation 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 the dispersion. In addition, at low speeds, errors in assessing wind and weather conditions become noticeable. The second factor is turbulence in the bottom part at deep subsonic levels. 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 combat these phenomena - to develop a bullet design with a different bottom design.
Classic problems for shooting at ultra-long distances, they require an increase in bullet mass and more advanced aerodynamics. Lobaev set his first record with a standard D27 bullet, an analogue of the Lost River, widely known in the West. These are elongated, solidly turned 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 powder, 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 There is no longer any question of pleasure from shooting.
Lobaev decided not to deviate from the old cartridge case and caliber .408 CheyTac, not to change either the dimensions or weight of the weapon. He was able to develop a heavier 30 gram D30 bullet while staying within the standard cartridge. This was also done because the cartridge is quite accessible 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 change in the design of the rifle, more fast pace rifling to stabilize the longer, heavier bullet. If classic step There are thirteen rifling in the 408 caliber, but Lobaev decided to use ten on the record rifle. Despite the fact that the initial speed 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 can't keep raising the bar forever. optical sight. When shooting at such distances, the rifle has large elevation angles, as when shooting overhead, almost like a howitzer. At the top point of the trajectory, the bullet travels at an altitude of several hundred meters. No scopes allow such adjustments for aiming, so for record shooting they use special rails for the scope. However, you cannot endlessly raise the bar: the muzzle device begins to block the aiming line. This is exactly what confused Lobaev in the last American record: the angle of inclination of the bar did not correspond to the correction required for such a distance. Lobaev spotted a solution to this problem 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 has used it before Lobaev. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sight is on record rifles Lobaeva passes to the left of the trunk. Which 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 to even photograph it. This system can also be used by troops: when shooting at long distances, it helps to get by with available Russian sights.
On the second try
They were going to break the record last summer in the fields near Krasnodar. For this purpose, a giant target measuring 10 x 10 m was made in order to at least take aim. No one knew how a bullet behaved at such distances, and there were no precise mathematical models. It was only clear that the bullets would enter the ground in the target area almost vertically, so the target was positioned at a large angle. Another difficulty was that the soil was wet during the shooting, 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 entire team, the record failed the first time: they failed to hit even such a large target. While they were preparing for the next round, the Americans posted a video on the Internet with a 4 km record. It became clear that we needed to shoot even further.
For the past year, Lobaev and his team have been conjuring their magic on the rifle and new bullets, practically not giving out information about the project, fearing to jinx the world record, constantly approaching the cherished milestone, first taking 4170 m, then 4200. And in October of this year they succeeded in the incredible: famous shooter and promoter Andrei Ryabinsky hit a target measuring 1 x 1 m from a distance of 4210 m. For such a shot it was necessary to take into account great amount factors, including the rotation of the Earth, the bullet spent 13 seconds in the air! As the record holder himself said, it took him eight years to achieve this shot. So now the ball is in American territory. Or, more correctly, a bullet.
A selection of the most notable shooters, whose long-range shots made it onto the pages of history.
In seventh place - shot American participant Iraq War Petty Officer Jim Gilliland 1,367 yards (1,244 meters). Shot fired from a standard M24 rifle using standard 7.62x51mm NATO ammunition in 2005. A very good result for a general-arms rifle of not the largest caliber.
Number six is British Army Corporal Christopher Reynolds and his August 2009 accurate shot at 2,026 yards (1,844 meters). Rifle - Accuracy International L115A3. Ammo - .338 Lapua Magnum LockBase B408. The target hit is a Taliban commander nicknamed "Mullah", responsible for a number of attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan. If the sources do not lie, then the shot was so accurate that the “Mulla” fell directly into the hands of the militant following him, and if the bullet had had enough penetrating power, Reynolds would have chalked up two heads at once.
Number five - Sergeant Carlos Hascock, shot at 2,500 yards (2,275 meters). The date is February 1967, during the Vietnam conflict. The historic shot that made the sergeant a hero of his time was not made from a sniper rifle, but from an M2 Browning machine gun. Ammo - .50 BMG. Hascock is still a legend today American army- he ranks fourth on the list of snipers who hit maximum amount goals. At one time, the Vietnamese placed a bounty of 30,000 US dollars on his head; they gave Hascock the nickname “white feather” for his habit of wearing a feather in his hat, violating the generally accepted rules of sniper camouflage. However, this was not the only thing he was noted for - Hascock's second tour of duty in Vietnam ended early in September 1969, when the armored personnel carrier in which he was traveling was hit by a mine. Despite his own severe burns (more than 40% of his body), Hascock pulled seven of his comrades out of the burning armored personnel carrier.
Fourth place - American Sergeant Brian Kremer and his shot at 2515 yards (2288.6 meters) in March 2004. Weapon - Barrett M82A1. Cartridges - Raufoss NM140 MP. During his two years in Iraq, Kremer fired two successful shots with a range of more than 2,350 yards, which confirms high level skill of the sergeant.
Third place went to Canadian, Corporal Arron Perry. Shot range - 2526 yards (2298.6 meters) in March 2002. Weapon - McMillan Tac-50. Ammo: Hornady A-MAX .50 (.50 BMG).
Second place - a shot at 2657 yards (2417.8 meters) also goes to a Canadian: Corporal Rob Furlong, who broke Arron's record, with exactly the same rifle and ammunition.
In first place is the unsurpassed (so far) record of the Briton Craig Harrison. During the Afghan conflict in November 2009, he hit his best double shot at 2,707 yards (2,475 meters). The defeat of the target was documented - two Taliban machine gunners were killed in succession. This record makes Harrison the best sniper of all time.
Why are there no Russian snipers on the list? Firstly, we never had such a cult of long-range shooting, and secondly, the army doctrine was different.
However, in a non-combat situation, Russian snipers set a world record by hitting a target located almost three and a half kilometers away from the firing position.
At the same time, it is known that the work of our sniper professionals is classified, and not only their names are not known, but also the rifles with which these masters work. It is possible that somewhere in Russia lives the heir of Vasily Zaitsev, who somewhere and sometime, in one of the conflicts, hit a target at a greater distance than any of the seven aforementioned foreigners.
Russian sniper Andrey Ryabinsky, in a team with spotters Yuri Sinichkin, Evgeny Titov and Vladimir Grebenyuk, set a world distance record aimed shooting from a sniper rifle. According to a blog post by Russian arms company Lobaev Arms, the accurate shot range 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 targeted shooting at such a distance, experts took into account many factors, including wind, Atmosphere pressure, derivation, temperature and rotation of the Earth.
Derivation is the deflection of a rotating bullet after a shot. The deflection occurs perpendicular to the plane of the oncoming air flow. The displacement of the bullet coincides with the direction of the rifling of the barrel of the weapon from which it was fired. For sniper SVD rifles derivation is up to 60 centimeters when firing at a target at a distance of one kilometer.
Many modern sights for small arms derivation is taken into account constructively. In particular, the PSO-1 for SVD is specially mounted so that after the shot the bullet goes slightly 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). A .408 caliber weapon was used to shoot at a record distance. 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 fire from a rifle is 0.3 arc minutes.
The previous world record for accurate shot range was set by the American M300 sniper rifle. It was 4157 meters. Meanwhile, in June 2017, a Canadian sniper set the record for a confirmed successful accurate shot made in combat conditions. Using a 12.7 mm TAC-50 rifle, a Canadian in Iraq killed a militant at a distance of 3540 meters.
Correction: Initially, the news stated that the SVLK-14S sniper rifle is equipped with a five-round magazine. In fact, another rifle of this family, the SVLK-14M, is equipped with such a magazine. The SVLK-14S was deliberately left single-shot by the developers to maintain maximum accuracy and firing range. We apologize to the readers.
Vasily Sychev
December 27th, 2017
Only recently I told you, as well as another interesting thing about them.
This story began almost three years ago, when Russian shooter and manufacturer of high-precision long-range rifles Vlad Lobaev saw a video on YouTube where cheerful old men from Texas hit a target with a rifle at a distance of 3,600 yards (3,292 m). Vlad decided to take on the challenge and compete with the Americans. Fortunately, he had his own weapons factory, Lobaev Arms, at hand.
The Americans fired from a custom-made ultra-long-range rifle of rare caliber .375 CheyTac. By that time, Lobaev’s company was already mass-producing the ultra-long-range rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight” in an even rarer and more powerful .408 CheyTac caliber, which allows sniper shooting at distances of over 2 km. For the record, they took a special custom “Twilight” 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), with this rifle, Lobaev’s team, after sighting shots, hit a target at a distance of 3400 m. The video with the record was posted on YouTube. The Americans reacted calmly: they say, okay, let's continue the duel in absentia.
Record rifle SVLK-14 “Twilight”
Subsonic
Not only the Americans reacted: a French sniper from the Foreign Legion, after long training, hit a 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 posted videos. The Americans also crossed 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 flight time did not match up with the initial speed and angle of inclination of the bar.
Nothing has changed in ballistics, but several hundred meters have been added. This does not happen, but since the competition was originally conceived as a competition of gentlemen, the Lobaevites decided to continue to shoot fairly with the Americans. And win by knockout - hit from four kilometers away.
Ultra-long-range shooting for shooters is considered to be shooting at a distance where at the end of the trajectory the bullet travels at deep subsonic levels, because with supersonic everything is clear - there ballistics are calculated easily, using simple mathematical methods. But subsonic ballistics is considered more difficult, and what is most unpleasant is that in this mode some physical processes occur that make it difficult to shoot at ultra-long distances.
Firstly, a re-stabilization effect occurs. The linear speed slows down per 1000 m, say, three times - from 900 m/s to 300 m/s. And the bullet rotation speed is only 5-10%. At subsonic speeds the speed is even lower, but the rotation 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 the dispersion. In addition, at low speeds, errors in assessing wind and weather conditions become noticeable.
The second factor is turbulence in the bottom part at deep subsonic levels. 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 combat these phenomena - to develop a bullet design with a different bottom design.
Classic problems for ultra-long range shooting require increased bullet weight and improved aerodynamics. Lobaev set his first record with a standard D27 bullet, an analogue of the Lost River, widely known in the West. These are elongated, solidly turned bullets for long-range shooting, also called Ultra VLD. They were no longer suitable for new records.
If you follow the path of increasing bullet mass, you will need to change the entire cartridge, or increase the chamber, or use a new progressively burning powder, or even switch to a different caliber. Another caliber (Browning.50 or domestic 12.7×108 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 There is no longer any question of pleasure from shooting.
Lobaev decided not to deviate from the old cartridge case and caliber .408 CheyTac, not to change either the dimensions or weight of the weapon. He was able to develop a heavier 30 gram D30 bullet while staying within the standard cartridge.
This was also done because the cartridge is quite accessible 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 change in the rifle's design, with 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-breaking rifle. Despite the fact that the initial speed 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 can't keep raising the scope bar indefinitely. When shooting at such distances, the rifle has large elevation angles, as when shooting overhead, almost like a howitzer.
At the top point of the trajectory, the bullet travels at an altitude of several hundred meters. No scopes allow such adjustments for aiming, so for record shooting they use special rails for the scope. However, you cannot endlessly raise the bar: the muzzle device begins to block the aiming line.
This is exactly what confused Lobaev in the last American record: the angle of inclination of the bar did not correspond to the correction required for such a distance.
Lobaev spotted a solution to this problem 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 has used it before Lobaev. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the sight on Lobaev’s record-breaking rifles runs to the left of the barrel. Which 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 to even photograph it. This system can also be used by troops: when shooting at long distances, it helps to get by with available Russian sights.
On the second try
They were going to break the record last summer in the fields near Krasnodar. For this purpose, a giant target measuring 10x10 m was made in order to at least take aim. No one knew how a bullet behaved at such distances, and there were no precise mathematical models. It was only clear that the bullets would enter the ground in the target area almost vertically, so the target was positioned at a large angle.
Another difficulty was that the soil was wet during the shooting, 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 entire team, the record failed the first time: they failed to hit even such a large target. While they were preparing for the next round, the Americans posted a video on the Internet with a 4 km record. It became clear that we needed to shoot even further.
For the past year, Lobaev and his team have been conjuring their magic on the rifle and new bullets, practically not giving out information about the project, fearing to jinx the world record, constantly approaching the coveted milestone, first taking 4170 m, then 4200.
And in October of this year, they managed the incredible: the famous shooter and promoter Andrei Ryabinsky hit a target measuring 1x1 m from a distance of 4210 m. For such a shot, it was necessary to take into account a huge number of factors, including the rotation of the Earth - the bullet spent 13 seconds in the air !
As the record holder himself said, it took him eight years to achieve this shot. So now the ball is in American territory. Or, more correctly, a bullet.
sources
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