12 June 2013 Many a tear has to fall

But it’s all in the name.

Cassi Creek:

          The early rifles used in this nation were used both for meat acquisition and for sharpshooting – dispatching officers and NCOs of opposing forces in order to break chains of command and to spread confusion within the opposing ranks. 

          This technique applied by skilled sharpshooters in the Continental Army and in detached forces was sufficiently effective as to cause British Army officers to protest it as unfair. 

          The standard long gun used from the Revolutionary war period through much of the Civil War was an un-rifled musket or a rifled musket.  These were initially round ball guns with the conical bullet gradually replacing the round ball.  Ballistics for round balls tend to decay rapidly beyond 100 meters.  Other than the Whitworth sniper rifle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitworth_rifle, armed combat with long guns was not terribly accurate at any but short distances.  The march and volley tactics of the Napoleonic wars defined battles and casualties.

With the advent of bolt-action breech loading rifles, the improvements in metallurgy and chemistry led to rifles accurate to about 500 meters.  .  Accuracy beyond 1000 meters was the standard for sniper rifles through VietNam.  The Iraq wars along with Afghanistan sparked further development.  The ability to build a telescopic sight combined with environmental sensors, a ballistic computer, and laser designation/ranging , when mated with USB ports and the ability to video link every shot for someone’s log and after action reports has led us to the machine linked below. 

          Make no mistake about it, this is not a weapon designed to market to hunters, even though some will most certainly buy and use it to hunt at extreme ranges.  This is a military weapon intended to be used for long range sniping.   

This $22K sniper rifle comes with a WiFi server, USB ports, an iPad mini … and aims itself
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/18/this-22k-sniper-rifle-comes-with-a-wifi-server-usb-ports-an-ipad-mini-and-aims-itself/#FKYZyh5tfEDwAu7w.99 

“The shooter simple tells the rifle what he or she is aiming at by locking a laser on the target. The gun’s built-in laser range finder, compass, environmental sensors to gauge wind speeds, inertial measurement unit, ballistics computer, and networked tracking engine then engage. But the rifle only fires when you’re holding it in exactly the right direction to hit the target, ensuring that even the unsteadiest and untrained hands can deploy death from a distance. And every shot is recorded and streamed to your nearby iPad.” “

The technology involved makes this a highly desirable weapon to use in assassinations at long range.  The gun removes the need for a trained marksman and allows the insertion of a throwaway assassin into terrorist strikes. 

          The manufacturer, the advertisers, and the NRA can spend millions obscuring the purpose of this rifle/scope combination.  Regardless, in this instance, it is not all in the game or in the name.