I was curious to see which was the longest recorded sniper kill and stumbled upon Craig Harrison. He was serving in Afghanistan and killed a Taliban machine gun team from 2,475 meters, or 1.5 miles away. According to a post, it took around 6 seconds to hit his targets. However, the [weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_International_AWM) he was using (L115A3) has a muzzle velocity of 936 meters per second. Using simple math, shouldn’t it have taken only 2.6 seconds to reach his target? Harrison himself claims that he had the perfect conditions with clear weather and no wind. Given all this information, what took so long for the bullet to hit? Was it because of elevation or some does my ape brain not comprehend this question?
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Bullets slow down as they travel through the air, the muzzle velocity is measured right as the bullet leaves the muzzle, and should be the fastest the bullet is ever traveling. If fired in a perfect vacuum, the bullet should maintain constant velocity, but since there is air resistance, it will continuously slow down while in flight.
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