New sniper rifle

[727Sky]

The U.S. Army, Marines, and Special Forces have all replaced their sniper rifles with one system — the Barrett MK22 MRAD Precision Sniper Rifle. In this video, Chris Cappy breaks down why every American sniper switched to this new long-range bolt-action rifle and how it’s changing modern warfare. The MK22 fires multiple calibers including .338 Lapua Magnum, .300 Norma, and 7.62 NATO, offering extreme accuracy beyond 1,500 meters. It’s modular, deadly precise, and part of a new global sniper revolution reshaping U.S. military doctrine. We’ll explore how the Precision Sniper Rifle program began under SOCOM, why modular chassis systems dominate today, and how drones, AI, and battlefield sensors are transforming the sniper’s role. From the civilian precision-shooting world to Army modernization, this is the story of how America built the most advanced sniper rifle ever made.

$16,000 for the single shot bolt action rifle and figure another $4000 for glass an the suppressor..  Next life I want to be a defense contract supplier selling toilet seats, coffee makers and the all important 3 hardware store washers for a cool million.. Oh and must not forget the $750 hammers that were all the rage a few years ago..! ! 


O.K. rant over; I just hope the darn thing works like advertised and last more than a few hundred rounds down range.. At that price after firing, it should give the shooter a massage and tuck them into bed.. 

[MalevolentTwitch]

When talking about precision long range shooting, things can get extremely expensive very quickly. It actually wouldn't surprise me if the glass alone ran well over $5,000.

I mean commercially available Zeiss optics can run northwards of $4,000, Schmidt Benders can easily double that... Hell, I was looking at a Tangent Theta a couple of years ago because I really liked some of it features only to take a look at it $6,000+ price tag and I decided I'd rather just buy some better reloading equipment...

Anyway, here's a good article from the Precision Rifle Blog from about 10 years ago kinda puts things into perspective as to what is actually important. I'm specifically referencing a graph on that page that shows how decreasing a rifle's group size from 0.5moa to 0.2moa only really increases hit probability on a 10 inch circle by roughly 2% at 700 yards.

https://precisionrifleblog.com/2015/04/1...ze-matter/

In the following article, same source, it goes on to discuss how accurately estimating the range to the target is fundamentally more important than having a laser beam accurate rifle. Pulling a quote directly from the article.... "Hit percentage drops off quick! On that 10” target at 700 yards, if you’re off by just 10 yards your odds of hitting the target drop by almost 10%. If you’re off by 20 yards, you’ve got a 50/50 shot of hitting it."

https://precisionrifleblog.com/2015/05/0...ng-matter/

As note these 2 articles are part of a series that comes to the data driven conclusion that caliber selection, accurate range estimation, and accurate wind judgement are far more important factors regarding landing hits than having the most precise rifle... That being said, having equipment that is accurate enough, consistent enough, repeatable, and reliable does go a long way towards minimizing variables. And yes, I also understand that the maximum ranges presented in these article are 1000 yards, and the video is talking about extreme ranges, but that's kind of my point... If variables increase over distance, then the 3 most important factors become even more so.

[Ninurta]

I'm not really qualified to have an opinion on this rifle, since I'm not a long-range shooter. The longest shot I've ever personally made was about 600 meters from one mountain side to the next, with a Remington 700 chambered in .243 that had a bull-barrel and the biggest damned scope I've ever seen on a civilian rifle, I'm almost certain it was just a lucky slop-shot, which I've had a history of making. If I hit something at a distance, or something I couldn't see when the trigger was squeezed, it's just a lucky slop shot.

The longest shot I've ever witnessed was in Bosnia, made by a guy using a captured Russian SVD Dragunov firing 7.62x54R Russian. It was made at about 1200 meters, hitting an officer taking a piss off the top of a cliff on the other side of a gorge, which he thought kept him safe. He made a bad bet. The gorge and cliff did, however, retard pursuit long enough for the sniper team to make good their escape. The ignominy of having the boss shot dead while taking a leak probably also helped delay pursuit.

Generally speaking I confine myself to shots I know I can make, which avoids a lot of ribbing. If I make one by luck that I wasn't sure of, then that's just a slop shot. I never call a shot like that in serious circumstances, only in informal cases for beer-bets. That way, If I miss I'm only out a few beers rather than my one-and-only precious life.

So,I'm not really qualified to say whether lugging a 15 pound rifle over hill and dale, along with spare barrels, bolt faces, and magazines for quick-caliber-changes is a good idea or not. That's out of my wheelhouse, so I'll leave it to the professionals to make that determination.

I think it would be a good idea for the generals to leave that decision in professional hands, too, but that ain't how generals usually work.

I will say, though, that I do not believe that any Ukrainian ever made a 4 kilometer kill with a rifle, drone-assisted targeting  or not. I believe that's just another attempt at propaganda coming out of that war, and a piss-poor one.

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[MalevolentTwitch]

I'm not really qualified to have an opinion on this rifle, since I'm not a long-range shooter. The longest shot I've ever personally made was about 600 meters from one mountain side to the next, with a Remington 700 chambered in .243 that had a bull-barrel and the biggest damned scope I've ever seen on a civilian rifle, I'm almost certain it was just a lucky slop-shot, which I've had a history of making. If I hit something at a distance, or something I couldn't see when the trigger was squeezed, it's just a lucky slop shot.

The longest shot I've ever witnessed was in Bosnia, made by a guy using a captured Russian SVD Dragunov firing 7.62x54R Russian. It was made at about 1200 meters, hitting an officer taking a piss off the top of a cliff on the other side of a gorge, which he thought kept him safe. He made a bad bet. The gorge and cliff did, however, retard pursuit long enough for the sniper team to make good their escape. The ignominy of having the boss shot dead while taking a leak probably also helped delay pursuit.

Generally speaking I confine myself to shots I know I can make, which avoids a lot of ribbing. If I make one by luck that I wasn't sure of, then that's just a slop shot. I never call a shot like that in serious circumstances, only in informal cases for beer-bets. That way, If I miss I'm only out a few beers rather than my one-and-only precious life.

So,I'm not really qualified to say whether lugging a 15 pound rifle over hill and dale, along with spare barrels, bolt faces, and magazines for quick-caliber-changes is a good idea or not. That's out of my wheelhouse, so I'll leave it to the professionals to make that determination.

I think it would be a good idea for the generals to leave that decision in professional hands, too, but that ain't how generals usually work.

I will say, though, that I do not believe that any Ukrainian ever made a 4 kilometer kill with a rifle, drone-assisted targeting  or not. I believe that's just another attempt at propaganda coming out of that war, and a piss-poor one.

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When I got out of the Army, I became heavily invested in 3 Gun, and eventually, PRS competitions. I found it kept me very active and was quite useful at maintaining and even improving myself and my marksmanship. Let me be clear, I never went through the Army's Sniper Course... My astigmatism disqualified me out of the gate. That's neither here nor there, but what is important, to me at least, is that some of the guys I would compete against during these PRS events were actually former snipers, and they are insanely skilled... But the key thing they would hammer down over and over again to anyone who asked their advice was the importance of the mental and physical aspects of "Software" vs the purely mechanical aspects of "Hardware." Which I absolutely agree with...

...And then they'd caveat that with the necessity of ridiculously expensive glass. 

To your point about lugging spare barrels, bolt faces, etc... along with a 15 lb monstrosity of a rifle all over creation though, I don't think that's the actual intent. Changing calibers in the field on the fly doesn't sit right with me purely because of the fact that Point of Impact can shift, even minutely, even when switching back to the original barrel... Hell let's say it's as little as .05mil in any direction... Well, that's still a .5cm shift at 100 meters that you can't account or plan for... Stretch that out to 1500 meters? That could be the difference between a hit, and just exposing your position. Not mention that when switching calibers, you would now have to carry all the data from the previous time you used that caliber and "re-zero" the rifle for that caliber without a firing a test group... No, I think the idea is to lessen the load on basic, background logistics. Instead of shipping and inventorying 4 different rifles, each with their own case.. You now only worry about 1 rifle with 4 barrels, all of which can fit in 1 slightly larger case... And then set the rifle up for each individual intended mission. That's the logic I'm speculating they're actually going for anyway...

Also, I do raise an eyebrow in regards to the Ukrainian 4km kill as well. Especially considering the "Drone Assisted Targeting" bit...

[F2d5thCav]

One of the memories of training.

SF guys were introducing us to Soviet weapons.  One passed around was a Dragunov.

A good friend looked at the sight at commented, "this thing looks like a trig problem!"  Which it was, in a sense.

[Ninurta]

One of the memories of training.

SF guys were introducing us to Soviet weapons.  One passed around was a Dragunov.

A good friend looked at the sight at commented, "this thing looks like a trig problem!"  Which it was, in a sense.

Dragunovs were equipped with either a PSO-1 or a PSO-2 scope as I recall, the main difference being one was illuminated and the other wasn't. I had one that I mounted to an AK-74, but I was unimpressed with the way it sat slightly off to the side, rather than directly over the bore, so I never used it much. It was designed with a quick-detach mount that would dovetail with a scope mount on the left side of the weapon, and as luck would have it that particular AK had one of those dovetails.

It had stadia lines on the left, a flat line for the ground and a curved line just above that for range. The idea was to bracket a man-sized target between the stadia lines on the assumption that the average man was 1.8m tall, and then read off the range under the stadia, so, yeah, a trig problem but with assistance.

Then, in the center below the horizontal cross hair, there was a series of chevrons pointing upward. You'd pick the proper chevron for the range, and sight directly on the point of it in theory, or pick an aiming point between the two if the target wasn't at an exactly 100 or 200m divisible range.

The problem with mounting one to an AK, aside from that pesky offset to the side, is that it was calculated for the trajectory of a Dragunov rather than either of the AK rounds. Looked cool, but utterly useless to my way of thinking. Even with the gadget, you'd still have to apply Kentucky windage and elevation, so really all it was good for was the magnification, which was only about 4X s I recall. Really not worth the 120 bucks I paid for it on an AK.

Things I liked about it were the range estimation, the built-in rubber eye cup, and the built-in sun shade - the front section had a steel sleeve with a bayonet socket arrangement so you could just twist it and pull forward, instant sun shade. The illuminator for the reticle ran on some gawdawful Russian batteries that you couldn't get here.

In the late 90's I had a chance to buy a genuine Russian Dragunov, made at Izhmash I believe (but it might have been Izhevsk - it was a long time ago), new in the box with 4 magazines and the scope and sling and cleaning kit, for a measly 750 bucks. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't buy it. 

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[Ninurta]

...

To your point about lugging spare barrels, bolt faces, etc... along with a 15 lb monstrosity of a rifle all over creation though, I don't think that's the actual intent. Changing calibers in the field on the fly doesn't sit right with me purely because of the fact that Point of Impact can shift, even minutely, even when switching back to the original barrel... Hell let's say it's as little as .05mil in any direction... Well, that's still a .5cm shift at 100 meters that you can't account or plan for... Stretch that out to 1500 meters? That could be the difference between a hit, and just exposing your position. Not mention that when switching calibers, you would now have to carry all the data from the previous time you used that caliber and "re-zero" the rifle for that caliber without a firing a test group... No, I think the idea is to lessen the load on basic, background logistics. Instead of shipping and inventorying 4 different rifles, each with their own case.. You now only worry about 1 rifle with 4 barrels, all of which can fit in 1 slightly larger case... And then set the rifle up for each individual intended mission. That's the logic I'm speculating they're actually going for anyway...

...

You're probably right. I just heard the bit about a caliber change in under two minutes, and equated it with the end user rather than logistics and an armorer. Your assessment makes more sense. I've never been credited with an overabundance of sense.

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