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?
In: 1
You are missing air resistance.
>muzzle velocity of 936 meters per second
That’s the velocity when the bullet leaves the muzzle. After that it keeps slowing down due to air resistance.
If you factor in air resistance, you can still determine travel time, but because air resistance is itself dependent on velocity, it’s going to be related in a slightly more complicated way to distance, and muzzle velocity.
Also air resistance would vary slightly based on atmospheric conditions (humidity, pressure etc.). So you still might not get a perfectly uniform time to target.
You can find more details here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29?wprov=sfla1
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