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23 Jun 17. Canadian special forces sniper kills Isis fighter 2 miles away, breaking British army record. The Canadian special forces sniper killed his target from a distance of 3,540m. That is the distance, as the bullet flies, between Trafalgar Square and Tower Hill. A Canadian special forces sniper in Iraq has broken a British-held record for the longest-distance confirmed kill after he shot dead an Islamic State fighter from more than two miles away.
The bullet, fired from a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle, took less than ten seconds to travel 3,540m before it hit its target.
The feat was so remarkable that the Canadian armed forces took the unusual step yesterday of confirming the action by one of its most secretive units.
“The Canadian special operations command can confirm that a member of the Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) successfully hit a target from 3,540 metres,” it said in a statement.
The distance was at the edge of the potential firing range of the weapon — about 3,750m — which uses a large .50 calibre round.
“He must have been very lucky,” said a serving British officer, who like many military experts had been sceptical about the claim until the Canadian defence ministry confirmed it.
The ministry added: “For operational security reasons and to preserve the safety of our personnel and our coalition partners, we will not discuss precise details on when and how this incident took place.”
It declined to say when or where the hit happened, but it is understood to have taken place this week. Working as part of a two-man team, the sniper was in an elevated vantage point when he took the shot to break up an attack by Isis fighters against Iraqi security forces.
Range, wind speed and humidity — important details to ensure a bullet hits the target — were calculated by his spotter, lying in hiding alongside him. The kill was independently verified from video footage and other data.
“Hard data on this. It isn’t an opinion. It isn’t an approximation. There is a second location with eyes on, with all the right equipment, to capture exactly what the shot was,” a source told The Globe and Mail newspaper, which broke the story. Precision sniper fire was required instead of an airstrike because there had been civilians in the area. The Canadian special forces, like their British counterparts, are on the ground in Iraq to support Iraqi and Kurdish troops fighting Isis.
“It was a fantastic shot,” said Daniel Saxon, 48, a former British Army sniper with years of experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia.
It is unlikely, though not impossible, that the sniper hit the target first time because of the distance, according to weapons experts. A miss, however, would raise the risk of the team being discovered as the crack of the bullet being fired could expose the position of the pair, drawing in enemy fire.
If the first shot had missed, the spotter would have helped the sniper recalculate the range and other variants before a second shot was taken, and then if necessary a third and so on until the target was down.
Whether it was a first-time shot or not, former snipers and serving soldiers were united in their admiration. “That’s pretty good shooting,” an ex-SAS officer with sniper experience said.
The new record adds more than 1,000m to the previous longest confirmed sniper kill of 2,475m that had been held by Sergeant Craig Harrison of the Blues and Royals, who wrote a book called The Longest Kill.
The British sniper, armed with an Accuracy International rifle, hit two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan in November 2009. (Source: The Times)
22 Jun 17. Paris Air Show: Rafael showcase Drone Dome laser capability. Rafael has debuted the laser capability of its Drone Dome anti-UAV system at Paris Air Show, the latest upgrade to a system designed for the detection and