Rooskie rifle w/5-7km range

Not that much of a claim. I've hit a couple of targets with Boomer more than a mile away on the first shot (including a nice sized pond and a patch of ground about 2 miles square).

But, having lived in the region and dealt with 'those guys' and other boisterous claims, I'll believe it when... no, on second thought, not going to believe it. Their technology continually is playing catchup to the West.


And on second look at the picture ... there's nothing in the picture that quality gun manufacturers haven't already done in the US and Europe.
 
4V50 Gary said:
BTW, I wonder about barrel wear and throat erosion. I wonder if it's smoothbore with a finned bullet for stabilization?
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DoD announced such a smoothbore .50 weapon with a laser guidance system and had a public demonstration 10+ years ago.

While at (a large armaments company you'd recognize) ~ 10 years ago we looked at what it would involve to take an existing .50 BMG rifled barrel rifle and put in a spinning bullet fired normally out of the rifle with no modifications to the rifle, just provide a special round that could tolerate the spin and find a laser dot out to a couple of miles. (think what it takes to guide a laser guided bomb with only 1 quadrant detector instead of 4)

The company decided not to go forward (with this not too complex technology).
But in large quantities, the rounds were only a couple hundred bucks each.... A pretty cheap investment to eliminate a high value target.
 
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I'm going to call B.S. on this!

Good luck getting it to hit something at that range reliably with current technology. Then throw in the fact that we're talking about Russian technology!

Right now you can look at the king of the two mile event and see what they're using. Then think about doubling that distance and trying to hit a tank sized target. Then think about what it would take to hit a man sized target at that range and how much a person moves around.
 
I was actually thinking about this whole thing and maybe someone else can help.

The .50 is to small it's just not big enough to hold the components needed to get the job done.

I would think that a 20mm (Anzio makes a bolt action 20mm) would be the smallest that you could put some kind of laser tracking system on board. Then make the round two or three sections to hold everything.

By making the round into separate sections, you could make the main body ride the rifling and spin freely from the other sections. The other sections don't spin and have less forces impacting them.

Then use a drone, the drone would fly out in front of the sniper team searching for targets. Once found, the drone would laze the target, send info back to the team that would activate the round. Then when ready, the shooter would fire and the drone would guide the round to the laser point on target.

I don't think this idea is that far out with current technology, what does everyone else think?
 
50 shooter said:
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The .50 is to small it's just not big enough to hold the components needed to get the job done. ...
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No, it is not too small.

DoD did it with a smooth bore .50 finned based projectile. (A company) did the work (shortly later, about 10 years ago) to prove a different guidance concept would also work using an off-the-shelf .50BMG would work but with very special rounds. I have the PPT deck but unfortunately can't share it.

But anyone else could rediscover the key elements required to get it to work, then do it.
 
50 shooter said:
I was actually thinking about this whole thing and maybe someone else can help.

The .50 is to small it's just not big enough to hold the components needed to get the job done.

I would think that a 20mm (Anzio makes a bolt action 20mm) would be the smallest that you could put some kind of laser tracking system on board. Then make the round two or three sections to hold everything.

By making the round into separate sections, you could make the main body ride the rifling and spin freely from the other sections. The other sections don't spin and have less forces impacting them.

Then use a drone, the drone would fly out in front of the sniper team searching for targets. Once found, the drone would laze the target, send info back to the team that would activate the round. Then when ready, the shooter would fire and the drone would guide the round to the laser point on target.

I don't think this idea is that far out with current technology, what does everyone else think?
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Just let the drone kill the target.
 
They've already come up with defenses against drone attacks. This was after talks about using drones to attack high value targets like the POTUS.

You can do a search on it and see the videos, one makes a perfect head shot on the target! Had it been a real person, they would be dead.

Trying to defeat an incoming bullet is a lot harder. Keeping the target moving or putting up glass or plastic shields are a good defense against incoming bullets.

TXAZ, back about 10 years ago there was a company that made .50 rounds that could be steered. Haven't heard anything since then, so either it just wasn't working or they don't want to put any more info out about them.

Knowing the size difference, I still stand by the fact that the .50 round is still to small. The jump up to 20mm is way better. Bigger payloads can be carried and the 20mm will have the ability to travel the distance that the article talks about.
 
50 shooter said:
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Knowing the size difference, I still stand by the fact that the .50 round is still to small. The jump up to 20mm is way better. Bigger payloads can be carried and the 20mm will have the ability to travel the distance that the article talks about.
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That public demo was from DoD.
They even had someone who had never shot a rifle successfully score a first shot hit with the smoothbore.

You can believe that but that’s not reality. The ability to shrink circuitry And actuators into very small spaces is a reality. “NanoMachines” that are incredibly small can do amazing things.
The company I worked for had a unique expertise in putting miniature electronics inside large and small projectiles. We did the front end work and showed you could use an off the shelf .50 BMG rifle (with rifling) but decided not to go forward for other (business) reasons.
Yes, it is possible. Been there seen that. But believe what you want.
 
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50 shooter, here's a link from 8 years ago...
And the miniaturization has only improved since then.



(June 27, 2012, 08:43 AM)

TXAZ said:
.50 with a laser assisted round. (Assisted = you have to fire within 10 MOA vs. Guided = fire in the direction and forget) The technology is there. A previous employer didn't want to go there so we canned the effort..... However :D , there is technically an obscure public domain 'how to' on this in the key technology areas (putting it in the obscure public domain was to impede others patent efforts in the relm). Is a virtually guaranteed hit for that big buck @ 2 miles in light winds worth $100/round?

Anyone interested?
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I don't doubt that it can be done, my main focus would be range and payload. The 20mm would be a better choice do to it's size Vs. the .50.
 
I still stand by the fact that the .50 round is still to small.
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TODAY....

that could be true, tomorrow???

Today your smart phone has more computing power than a machine that took up a whole room when we sent people to the moon....

AND, got them back!!

I looked at the article, nice PR job, little fact, and some fact boasted on as if it was their discovery.

a guy with one of their riles on an hill or a 3rd floor window (10m) can hit targets beyond the horizon of a standing shooter....well, no duh....


900 m/s is 2952 fps, something many current rounds can do. 1,500 m/s is 4,900 and change...something not quite reached with conventional small arms, but work is ongoing. I believe the M1 tank 120mm cracks 5,000fps with the "silver bullet'.

Hits at 5km or 7km on a man sized target?? And being able to go through 3cm (30mm) of metal (we assume at that distance, its not stated)????

They're working on it, I assume so are we,,, hasn't been done, yet...might never be, I can't say. At that distance I'd think the only way to be sure of a hit would be to be able to steer the round, at which point you're outside of a bullet and into a missile.

I think we have missiles with that range, already...with a bigger boom than a bullet. Cost will also play a part.
 
I'll put their claims in the same category as the first claims for the 408 CheyTac (claimed 3,500 fps, and 2" groups at 3,000 meters- < 1/10 MOA). Two problems: ballistics and performance capabilities of a shooter. In the 1980s when they made those claims the world record for 1,000 yds was around 7" (about 2/3 MOA), so they were claiming they would outperform the best shooters in the world with a cartridge that was new and untested. The 408 CheyTac, although impressive, never achieved it. When/if the Russians achieve it, I would like to see it. Until then it is just marketing hype.
 
A projectile becomes a missile or aircraft when it has the ability to adjust pitch, yaw and roll while in flight. Unless a human is strapped on--it takes a whole bunch of technology to make those adjusts on the fly, so to speak--stands to reason the faster the projectile is going, the more precise the adjustments would have to be. However, the faster the projectile is going the less time it spends in a particular changing mass of air.

All that said, I've always believed "just because I/we can't; doesn't mean someone else can't." ;)
 
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Scorch said:
I'll put their claims in the same category as the first claims for the 408 CheyTac (claimed 3,500 fps, and 2" groups at 3,000 meters- < 1/10 MOA). Two problems: ballistics and performance capabilities of a shooter. In the 1980s when they made those claims the world record for 1,000 yds was around 7" (about 2/3 MOA), so they were claiming they would outperform the best shooters in the world with a cartridge that was new and untested. The 408 CheyTac, although impressive, never achieved it. When/if the Russians achieve it, I would like to see it. Until then it is just marketing hype.
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Highpower match rifles used in 1000 yard prone events in the 1980's have tested under 7 inches 3000 feet down range. That's with at least 15 shots.

The 7mm Rem Mag rifle used by a friend on the USN team to set the Wimbledon Cup 1000 yard match at the 1970 Nationals tested about 7 inches. A USMC team friend broke that record a few years later with a 30-338 Win Mag that tested about 6 inches.

Compare those facts to these:

http://www.pa1000yard.com/info-hist/pastaggshg.php

Note the 1980 single group 1000 yard record is about 10 inches

In 1970, military teams testing rebulleted M118 match cases in semiautomatic 7.62 match rifles got MOA groups at 1000 yards. That's with aperture sights and near 5 pound triggers.
 
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If you examine each of the claims you find that not a one of them makes any damned sense, especially in a military context and most of them are also hyperbolic over-claims or simply fantasies spouted by someone that doesn't actually know what they're talking about. This is typical of Russia and especially where their military capability claims are concerned. Anyone that's worked with Russians in large numbers for a while will know about the presence of a cultural bent toward braggadocio that seems intended to test the credulity level in their audience.

They claim it's hypersonic but it misses that mark by at least 600fps. Fine. If you could make something man portable and shoulder fired which is going to be capable of even getting to 5-7km you're going to need a fairly big bullet and to make such a projectile do a legit mach 5+ without a rocket assist means barrel life would be measured in something like double digits (based on some back of the napkin math) and recoil will be something that has to be dealt with in the mechanism because it'd turn a human into a taco.

Beyond that, the energy input requirement to make something of the kind of size the bullet would have to be go 5600+fps is ludicrously inefficient. It takes about 10 grains of powder to launch a 250 grain bullet to just barely supersonic. To get it to mach 2 we need to bump up to around 40 grains. To get mach 3 we go up to ~160 grains. Notice that with each mach number we go up, we use around 4x the amount of propellant as the previous mach number required. To get it to mach 5 we'd need to take 160x4 (640gr or about 3x .50BMG's worth) and multiply the result x4 which is about 2500 grains, or over 1/3 of a pound (also about 10x what a .50BMG uses) of modern gunpowder per shot. It could be done with smaller amounts of propellant but at definite costs of pressure and durability. The above shows what kind of poor efficiency you get when pushing toward ever higher velocity generation. There's only so fast things can go which is why bigger bullets are always the solution when you run out of ability to make stuff go faster.

They claim a 7km range but you can't really look through 7km of moving air through a magnified optic at a small target and form an intelligible image without interferometry in play so no simple optic is going to do which means it pretty much has to be crew served in the end.

Target size has to be considered too, there's literally no point in shooting a rifle at something smaller than 1 minute of angle for practical reasons of both mechanics and pure human ability. That's what laser guided bombs are for. 1 minute of angle at 7km is a circle over 6 feet across. The bullet can hit at any point in that circle about half the time. That means your target needs to be fuggin huge. That's starting to get into area target territory and it's well inside materiel target territory.

If you have a target 7km away, you have options with everything from precision guided munitions to simple artillery to closing the distance. Target size, value and defensive capability need to be dealt with but there is 100% no valid reason to try to deal with it with a bloody rifle. You can't even expect to do it with a 20mm. You really need to step up into proper artillery for those distances.

Russian press releases might as well be CNN.
 
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