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 have forces on them while in flight, mainly air resistance and gravity.
So you start out at 3,070 fps, .338 Lapua, I’ll guess 270 grain (bullet weight) and consult a ballistics calculator. Because of the aerodynamic drag, you’re going to be down to about 2,000 fps at 1,000 yards, and under 1,200 fps at 2,000 yards. It’s slowing down the whole time, so it will take much longer.
And then you have gravity. Gravity is going to make that bullet fall over 100 feet over 2,000 yards, so you’re going to shoot at a fairly high angle so the bullet can fly in a high arc up over and down to its target. So the bullet didn’t travel only 1.5 miles, it traveled in a big arc over 1.5 miles, meaning its path taken was over 1.5 miles.
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