Lindsay W wrote:
If one has a GOOD rifle (solidly and evenly built, manually operated front locking bolt etc, NOT any automatic weapons) … … Oh, I've been assuming you mean "automatic" in the sense of "fully automatic" rather than "semi-automatic" (self-loading). I regard any self loading rifle as "automatic".
Righto; I was reading it in a different context :-) You might like this falling-block single-shot bullpup: http://www.favsarmi.com/1/upload/cat_pagine_interne.jpg
The problem with getting fire arms REALLY accurate (all bullets landing in 1 cm square at 100metres) is that the mechanism CANNOT be allowed to distort unevenly. In high powered weapons on firing the chamber pressure is so high that it will cause the barrel to "balloon" slightly and if the bolt or the barrel is even slightly unevenly made, it will cause the barrel to deflect off straight. For this reason a group from a weapon such as the M107 it would be good going to land 5 shots in a 5cm circle.
The other way to mitigate that is to switch to a sabot cartridge (and a smoothbore barrel), which is what all main battle tanks do now (except for UK, for backcompat with special purpose rounds).
A problem with self loading (semi automatic) weapons is its very difficult to build them SIMPLE, RELIABLE AND make the weapon accurate.
Yep, granted — tradeoff of ROF vs. simplicity/reliability/accuracy. As a friend of mine once observed: if you need a semi-auto hunting rifle, you're hunting wrong. (You mentioned .700 Nitro Express and .50 BMG, though, which are overkill for anything but big game.)
With something like the M107 or the Weatherby one would have a reasonably good chance of killing a person at 1000 metres even if they were behind 20mm armour plate, hence the M107's use as a sniper rifle.
AFAIK this is not a common operational requirement. The current generation of the R700 / M24 family is effective up to 1200m (up from 800m): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2010_Enhanced_Sniper_Rifle AFAIK, * US snipers field the Remington 700 family when they expect to kill people * US snipers field the Barrett M82 family (i.e. M107) when they expect to kill light vehicles * US DMs field accurized semi-automatics from AR-15 or M14 families (branch-dependent) However I haven't found any specific citations to back up this rule of thumb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-materiel_rifle#List_of_anti-materiel_rifl...