This Ukrainian sniper rifle is bigger than a human | War On Tape | Daily Mail

This Ukrainian sniper rifle is bigger than a human | War On Tape | Daily Mail

what we’re looking at here is the world’s longest sniper rifle in action in Ukraine we think these guys are from the ghost of back moot sniper unit the rifle they’re carrying is the snipex alligator and it is huge but snipers are supposed to be stealthy so what’s the point of a rifle so big it takes two men to carry it we’re going to examine this clip delve into the history of rifles like this and speak to an expert to find out at 6′ 6 in without a sign it is bound to be taller than the person shooting it it weighs almost 30 kilos that’s 66 lb and it fires a 14.5x 114 mm57 caliber round that was originally used in Soviet heavy machine guns it’s fed by a box magazine and it has a bolt action which makes it more accurate to stop The Recoil taking the sniper’s head off it has a muzzle brake on the end of the barrel a front bipod a rear monopod a padded shoulder rest and a padded cheek rest down here is a carrying handle to make it easier to transport and the barrel can be detached so it can fit inside vehicles in this video a sniper and his spotter are taking part in a covert Mission thought to be somewhere near bmot in September last year as the footage starts you see the sniper pushing the bolt into place loading a bullet into the chamber he takes his time to pick his Target using dials to adjust his scope at this distance he will need to carefully take account for things like wind which may push the bullet to the left or the right right of his Target and he’ll also need to take into account gravity which will drag the bullet downwards and cause it to fly in an arc rather than a straight line and perhaps even the Coriolis effect the rotation of the earth which in the northern hemisphere would push the bullet slightly to the right over extreme distances though in truth this effect is very subtle once he’s happy the sniper opens fire but he doesn’t seem all that pleased with his first attempt so he reloads finds his Target second time time and after a few tense moment he fires a second shot he waits a few seconds while the bullet is in the air and then says the target is down now he and his comrade pack up the rifle and make their getaway a second piece of footage shows them carrying the rifle back to a trunk which is waiting nearby they load the rifle into the back before both of them jump in to keep it secure and then they take off this is how the ghost of bmot sniper unit operated for months in 2020 three after the city fell to Yi pran’s vag The Mercenaries led by a sniper whose code name is Ghost their mission was to make the occupation of the city unbearable for the Russians ghost explained that they would ride Vehicles into battle before jumping off and walking to a sniping spot they had picked out for themselves generally that was a field somewhere overlooking bmot once there they would set up their rifles and wait for up to 16 hours for any Russians unlucky enough to wander into their crosshairs as of October October 2023 the unit’s body count was 500 Russian soldiers not a single one of their snipers was killed in return and that was the last time we heard from Ghost at this point you might be thinking well that’s all very impressive but what’s the point of a sniper rifle that’s so big two men have to carry it after all snipers are supposed to be stealthy and good luck sneaking up on anyone while lugging Vang around and you would be right except in this case it doesn’t matter because this rifle made targets aren’t people the alligator is known as an antimaterial rifle and that’s because it’s supposed to shoot things things like armored vehicles truck transports radar arrays parked Jets even helicopters from a mile away the alligator is powerful enough to put a bullet straight through the armor of a Russian BTR troop transport and you don’t need to be particularly stealthy when you’re taking out loud large Vehicles not that the rifle can’t kill people in fact it’s very good at it because it’s firing such a large bullet with such a lot of force behind it the alligator’s effective range is 1 and A4 miles but Ukraine has used it to kill Russian soldiers well beyond that in November 2022 one sniper claimed to have hit a Target at 1.68 mil that was the second longest sniper kill in history at least until a different Ukrainian sniper used a similar rifle called Horizon’s Lord to take out a man 2.3 mil away and again you don’t have to be all that stealthy if the men you’re shooting at are too far away to see or hear you antimaterial rifles date back to the first world war when they were created shortly after the Allies invented the tank which makes sense when you think about it since that’s the thing they were supposed to kill the TG rifle was based on the much smaller Mouser and fired a 13 mm bullet that was enough to go through the relatively thin armor of Tanks like the British Mark 1 similar rifles were also used in the second world war by the Soviets like the ptrs 41 but these were designed to be used over relatively short distances and by the end of the second world war tank armor was way too thick for them to penetrate in any case so the concept largely fell out of fashion at least until an American photographer named Ronnie Barrett came up with the idea of creating a large caliber sniper rifle in the 1980s The Story Goes the Barrett was photographing US troops operating 50 caliber machine guns when the idea came to him he initially struggled to get the weapon made because it seemed like there wasn’t a market for it but he eventually found a machinist who was willing to produce his designs in 1982 the first Barrett 50 cal sniper rifle was produced and it very quickly sold out at first mostly to sport Shooters but the CIA soon placed an order to equip the Afghan mujahedin elements of which would later become the Taliban who were fighting the Soviets at the time the first national Armed Forces to adopt it were the swedes before the US Marines decided to buy some now the rifle is used by more than 50 countries and even those which don’t use it have created versions of their own while these rifles have produced some truly incredible distance kills against soldiers their main purpose is still to take out Vehicles they can’t kill tanks anymore because the armor is just too thick that job has instead been taken over by anti-tank Rockets but Rockets are expensive and difficult to produce and they’re not worth wasting on other less well armored vehicles like trucks and Troop transports and that’s where the rifle comes in using nothing more than a few cheap bullets and the skill of the sniper they can take out Vehicles potentially worth millions of dollars that’s useful no matter which army you’re in but for Ukraine which has been short of missiles since Russia invaded and is still struggling that is a huge Advantage particularly when you’re fighting a country like Russia which has more vehicles in its Army than any other Nation on Earth but do huge sniper rifles really make a difference in today’s Warfare we asked Tony neitu the South African gunsmith who designed an antimaterial rifle for his reaction obviously he’s just chambered a cartridge he’s adjusting the scope and uh he’s going to a huge muzzle blast that’s what I’m very sure of is probably dialing the scope in for the distance which is very important you’ve got to have a l range find or some means of knowing at least where you are in range to quite a good level of accuracy to be able to hit the target and that can jump around quite dramatically in a bad situation from 300 to 1,300 m in an instant so being able to change the scope very quickly and accurately important these F A Silence of some sort especially in a weapon of this type is extremely important to minimize the signature of the weapon and its position since the muzzle blast is so huge and easily visible it is a big disadvantage so having a muzzle device of some sort to minimize that will be very advantageous what I find strange about this particular one from what I understand is the barrel is not quickly and easily detachable and I think the weapon weighs in the region of about 25 k which makes it seriously unweld for example on the NTW the barrel was very quickly detachable and at least it could be broken down into two parts that one individual could carry each whereas in this case exfiltrating or moving out of where you are becomes quite an issue but the same would apply to a morot crew so it depends on the technical situation and how these things are being used the first thing I asked him was what makes an anti material rifle different from a regular rifle they were not designed to shoot individual people they were designed to shoot what they call material targets any Vehicles radar installations aircraft helicopters any kind of material would be a suitable Target or something like this so they’re not expressly designed for pinpoint accuracy in trying to hit an individual at long range that is why they use the larger calibers that they do so they can inflict damage and have some kind of armor penetration to some degree they never will be an anti-tank weapon at all even during the first world war and especially during the second world war weapons like this tire the soliton 20 mm the boys anti-tank rifle became obsolete very quickly and early on in the war the armored vehicles became much too thick to penetrate but they still retained the usefulness so they were very often used in much larger numbers than 1 if you look at the Eastern Front the Russians use the ptrs and the ptrd 145 very widely and continue to use it throughout the war because there were many vehicles trucks uh and a light of vehicles that were very vulnerable to this kind of weapon as the war grinds on anywhere those sophisticated anti-tank missiles and such like will be kept for the purpose for which they were designed and not wasted on lesser targets and that is where a weapon like this could be quite useful next I wanted to know what kind of targets exactly an AMR would be shooting at the juiciest targets would be these rocket launchers Logistics vehicles and radar installations that are mobile how about helicopters or jets would be a rare occasion to hit a helicopter in the air unless you were by luck in absolutely the right place and the right time but as an anti-air weapon I don’t think it would be very viable at all it’s it’s such an unwieldy thing that there’s no way you could bring it to bear in a quick fashion very quickly at all but if they were on the ground absolutely lethal for sure absolutely and even though they’re not designed for it amrs can take out troops at very long distances I wanted to know from Tony what made them so lethal at long range well I think they’re powerful enough in terms of the energy that they have for example the 145 caliber has the same energy at 1,000 M that the common browning 50 has at the muzzle so that gives you an indication of the kind of power that they they have the accuracy of these things is nowhere near what an an antipersonnel rifle is the accuracy is much lower so I think these longrange hits with this type of weapon I think luck has a lot more to do with it than one thinks truly you know hitting uh a small Target at 1,700 2,200 m is extremely difficult getting your range sorted out and the further the range becomes the higher the angle of the uh drop of the bullet it becomes very difficult it’s it’s not a repeatable thing in the sense that you can lie down and consistently hit something in that sort of range so I think with experience and depending on the scenario if the guys managed to fire a couple of shots and see where they fall and where they land he can maybe walk them up onto the target it’s not a very precise science it takes a lot of experience and uh dedication so certainly you can hit at long range but hitting a small Target like a humaniz Target would be very very difficult I think luck has a lot more to do with it I think the NTW was reported as having struck someone at I think 2,400 m in the DRC that was the longest uh kill with a 145 but I think that as well was a bit of luck so what is it like to actually use a rifle like this and how easy is it to hit a Target at long range I think the big trick is the scope are you correctly zeroed in to start unless you correctly dialed in to start with and very accurately dialed in it’s very difficult to extend that to a further range because the air is just become bigger and bigger you’ve got to adjust the scope so that it correlates to the point of impact of the bullet and usually the scope will allow you to do that at a start distance of 100 m for example so at least you can dial in quite quickly and accurately and know where you are so when you suddenly move up to 1,000 M you will know what the ballistic performance of that cartridge whatever cartridge it is you’re using and you can dial it up on the scope when 16 clicks up will be 1,000 M and 23 clicks up will be 1,000 300 M and so on so that is where the real skill level becomes uh becomes important what Tony’s referring to here are wheels on the scope that allow the sniper to adjust the range physically clicking up and down to make it shorter or longer to simplify things for example on atw I had a ballistic um Range drum under the scope that was very accurately calibrated from 300 to 2,400 M so if you zero the scope correctly at the short range you could dial it up very quickly and instantaneously and come back as well without having to fiddle and be confused with all these odd numbers that Scopes normally are with so the skill level with a normal rifle like that uh snipex the alligator is the guy really has to understand what’s going on with his scope how it actually operates for him to be able to accurately dial in the distance but there’s another gas Factor as well and that’s called wind which is a much bigger Factor than than most people think because there’s no adjustment on the scope that automatically automatically allows you to dial the wind out so that that is dependent on his experience he’s got to be able to read the conditions and you can imagine how difficult that is at extended ranges and the wind is often blowing much harder out in the open than people think you know sometimes at a distance of 1,500 M it can blow a 14 5 projectile off by the length of a bus so it it gives you an idea of how how good you have to be it be able to spot your shots and compensating very very quickly for that and there’s another Factor as well it’s called Mirage in high temperature conditions Mirage can also affect you so unless a soldier or sniper is properly trained to read those conditions it becomes very difficult to actually hit something at long range Mirage is the Shimmer that distorts the way hot objects appear like a road in summer which looks like there’s water resting on it when in fact there isn’t since barck created the first AMR almost every military in the world has built one I wanted to know why it’s quite a low cost deterent for example in a mountainous area where you might have insurgents and so on and you’ll have bunkers to keep an eye out an antimaterial rifle could be quite useful in that you could fire across valleys uh have some effect without firing expensive missiles the cost of the whole system compared to these other things you can’t waste an expensive guided missile of some kind on a suspected something going on out at a long distance so it has some usefulness I I was actually surprised at how many have been sold you know because I good experience with the unwieldiness of these things and and they really heavy and awkward to move around so again I would imagine in certain cases where you’ve got uh a base protection of some sort or mountain passes to protect or such like they could be quite useful in that sort of scenario you you can’t see them as a tactical mobile weapon in the same sense that an assault rifle is or an ordinary sniper rifle what does Tony think of the alligator rifle based on what he’s seen I find it surprising that it weighs as much as it does if you consider the Russian PT r d I think it was the single shot second old War rifle it looked very simple and like a piece of pipe but it was a lot cleverer than people think that weighed only 17 kg it didn’t have a scope so obviously its range was limited in the case of the alligator it’s 25 kg so I I just wonder why it’s as heavy as it is I don’t think they have a very efficient uh recoil system on it from what I can see one of the big problems with the rifle like that is eye relief on the scope in other words the distance of the scope from your eye becomes a bit of a problem because of the recoil so either you’ve got to mitigate The Recoil or have a scope of a long long enough eye relief that means that the distance of the scope from your face the further it can be the more violent The Recoil can become so I think in the case of the alligator it’s a normal scope probably about a 3in or what do we say about 75 mm I relief so you need the weight of the SC of the gun to be able to control it properly so it doesn’t hurt you and also the heavier any rifle is the less it recoils it might have a bit of a recoil mitigation in the butt sock to reduce the recoil a little and usually most of the recoil is taken out by a muzzle breake that’s probably the reason why it’s 25 kg and it can’t be taken down from what I can gather the barrel can’t be removed quickly so 25 kg item you can imagine is not such an easy thing you can move it maybe 50 m but beyond that you’re going to be done and how about the rifle’s destructive power 145 has I think over 30,000 jewles of energy a/ in Browning 50 Browning has got about 16,000 je so you can see the amount of energy that a 145 has is really really huge it can penetrate 30 mm of RB 500 armor plate at 100 m quite easily 30 mm armor is uh quite thick believe me so that shows you that thing is really really powerful think things like BTR would be vulnerable especially from the side I think uh 145 will punch hole through it quite easily and that class of uh earlier generation apcs would be very vulnerable to this they can also inflict damage to the sensors on a vehicle you know it’s not so easy to do that but if you shoot at the frontal aspect of the vehicle then all sorts of uh Vision blocks and uh thermal images and sighting systems that can be damaged with it and now the big question does Tony think there’s a use for huge sniper rifles such as this one in Modern Warfare an urban environment you could dump shots through windows and uh certain key locations at longer range and so on if you deployed behind the troops which are moving forward they can provide cover of some accur cover that’s maybe has less collateral damage I’ve noticed in the countries that have been sold to their requirements have been different each one of them you know they bought them for different reasons so it depends very much on each individual and what their problems are and how they try to solve them that’s where this tape stops but we’ll be back to play you through another episode of War on tape hey everyone thanks for watching if you want more videos like this in your feed don’t forget to hit like And subscribe to our YouTube channel

This is the world’s longest rifle, the SnipeX Alligator, in action in Ukraine. It weighs almost 30kg and it almost two metres long, making it longer than the person holding it. But snipers are supposed to be stealthy, so what’s the point of a rifle so big it takes two men to carry it?

#WarOnTape #DailyMailUkraine #UkraineWar #russiaukraine

0:00 About the rifle…
3:14 What’s the point?!
4:40 Other anti-materiel rifles
7:06 Speaking to expert firearms designer Tony Neophytou

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