A soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces has set a world record for the longest confirmed kill shot in history: 3,540 meters (2.19 miles, for those who don’t speak Canadian.) The member of the elite Joint Task Force 2 dropped a fighter for the so-called Islamic State during an operation in Iraq this month, Canadian Forces announced in a statement.

The Canadian Special Operations Command can confirm that a member of Joint Task Force 2 successfully hit a target at 3,540 metres. 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.

According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Canadian shottist used a McMillan TAC-50 rifle chambered for .50 BMG, manufactured by McMillan Firearms in Phoenix, Arizona, to take down the target, firing from a high-rise. “It took under 10 seconds to hit the target.”

The Canadians are adamant that the shot was legit.

The kill was independently verified by video camera 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….”

The previous world record was set by British Corporal Craig Harrison in 2009, when he used a 8.59mm L115A3 Long Range Rifle to drop a Taliban machine gunner in Afghanistan at 1.53 miles.

The soldier has not been identified — although he can live secure in the knowledge that he’s accomplished a shooting feat of true excellence…in the service of a just cause.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

69 COMMENTS

  3. Damn and i thought i was a good sniper when i limited out on snipe last year

    I was definitely going to post pics or it didnt happen…

    • Kinda wonder how much energy that bullet had left at that distance. Obviously, enough.

      • I’d estimate about 800 ft lbs. Give or take. Using a ballistic calculation for the average velocity and weight of a 50 at that range.

  6. It is amazing how far the technology has come to permit such long range shots. Truly impressive feet by the shootist. (or is it “shotist”? The duke would have a fit if you used the latter.)

  7. FYI, your intro paragraph says 3,450 meters but the quote says 3,540 meters. Regardless, quite impressive! 10 second flight time . . . fired into a crowd of targets?

  10. Is it something in the water up there in Canada that explains Canadians making those extreme distance hits?

    • Well, Saskatchewan is the kind of place where you can watch your dog run away for 3 days. Kinda like Kansas.

      Part of it is that the Canadian sniper community is really, really small, and so they can afford to be really picky in who they select. While Canadian troops generally lack gear and political support, they general have a lot of skill and general cussedness.

    • You should read the Killing School by Brandon Webb, gives an overview of the different sniper schools in the US and Canada.

  13. Anyone reading this who has attempted truly long range precision rifle shooting knows how incredibly amazing this is. At that distance you even have to deal with curvature of the earth issues, not to mention: air temperature, wind speed and direction (between you and the target which is OVER TWO MILES AWAY), barometric pressure, etc. etc. etc. Heck, you even have to be able to shoot through radio waves bounding around. OK, I made that up.

    Then, consider the mirage you deal with at that range, in that part of the world.

    Then, optics. Heck even a 100x power optic would make this a challenging shot. I doubt the shooter had anything over 37x ….

    I’m in awe.

    Best I’ve ever done is putting rounds out to 800 yards and I thought I was pretty much of an Operator then.

  15. Not only did this Canadian sniper kill an IShole at a ridiculous distance, but I’ll wager that he was also very polite while doing it.

  16. Unless they’re using a bullet with which I’m not familiar, the exterior ballistics I’ve done on this shot indicate to me that it went sub-sonic at least 700 meters prior to hitting the target, and they had about 200+ MOA of drop to account for.

    This is assuming 800 gr pills with a G1 Bc of 1.2+ – which are made from CNC-turned brass.

  17. I wonder how many shots were actually fired. If the killing shot was first (doubt so), the sniper team was both very, very skilled and extremely lucky on wind. A bullet with G1 surpassing 1.0 helps, but it cannot read wind for you at all.

  18. Shit, and I thought I was fancy pegging 308 and 556 at 1000 yards. I’ll just pick up my toys and go cry in a corner now…

    • Oh, now that will be interesting.

      And that brings up an interesting question: could this shot even be possible? Meaning, you would have to aim high A LOT to compensate for a A LOT of drop on such a LONG shot … but do you have to aim so high that no rifle scope allows that much correction?

      • You have to remember these guys probably get few shots under 1000 yards, they could shim the scope mounts so you could not adjust the scope *down* far enough to be on at 1000 yards, would have to hold under the target, which gives a shitpotfull more adjustment *up* available. I suspect that is what is happening, along with 50X scopes and such.

        • LarryinTX,

          I get what you are saying. I would like to see the math. I can tell you this much: the amount of holdover necessary to make a shot at 3,500 yards is altogether different from the amount of holdover necessary for 1,000 yards.

      • That was my thinking, too. At that distance, I’d guess it’s more like lobbing an artillery shell than firing a bullet.

        Although, the report did indicate the shot was fired from a high rise building. Presumably the target was on or near the ground? That expands the realm of possibility quite a bit. It’s almost to the point of being somewhat of a cheat, when compared to other record holding distance shots fired from a second floor or so.

        I’m still saying “Hey, man, nice shot” on this one, but there’s an asterisk attached.

      • Wonder if the guy used one of the fairly new sighting systems where you plug in all of the data and the scope adjusts the reticle, basically showing you were to shoot for that distance and for those variables.

    • Mine says an almost 1,000 foot holdover even when zeroed at 1,000 yards. What would you use for a visual reference? This has more in common with a naval engagement than a typical sniper shot.

      • Also what is the bullet speed when it gets there? By the way the two numbers don’t match, was it 3540 or 3450?

        • “Also what is the bullet speed when it gets there?”

          I thought about that for a moment as well. Here is my response: a .50 caliber bullet that weighs over 600 grains is probably going to be plenty deadly at any velocity above 800 fps … and that bullet was probably travelling well above 800 fps even at 2 miles.

      • So, if the sniper’s rifle was zeroed for 1,000 yards (seems reasonable to me) and he would need a 1,000 foot holdover at 3,500 yards, how many MOA is that? As I stated earlier, I have to wonder if that exceeds the adjustment range of any scope.

    • He glanced the shot off the wing of a passenger jet flying overhead. He then hit a gps satellite which brought the bullet straight down, at terminal velocity on Mohammeds head bone.

      He played a lot of pool.

      • “[The sniper] played a lot of pool.”

        … and watched a lot of Beverly Hillbillies for inspiration!

    • Thats assuming it was an off the shelf .50 bmg round/gun being used. There is so much concept/wild cat crap being used by SOE guys right now, who knows what he was hit with? Shoulder fired, jet assisted, laser guided, sabot? Why not? Do you even DARPA bro? http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-04-27

    • Well, according to JBM, even if the shooter was using Hornady A-MAX ammunition [.508 G7 BC @ 2,815 FPS] (like Rob Furlong did with his [formerly] record-breaking shot), the drop from a 1,000-yard zero would be 247.5 MOA. Add to that the 26.87 MOA for the zero, and that’s very well beyond the adjustment commonly available in both the dials and reticles combined of most every scope on the market.

      They still could have done quite a few things to make this shot work, though. Used an adjustable scope base, a la Cold Shot and similar, or just picked a point in the sky above the target and walked their rounds in.

      Who knows? Still, result. That’s what counts, right?

      • I call BS …… this was 3 years ago: “DARPA’s Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program recently conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets.” …. optically tracked/guided .50 bmg rounds from DARPA’s EXACTO project. They say they had exact range and targeting data and camera footage of the engagement… sounds like optically tracked and guided bullets to me.

  26. Now if only Canada would drop that terrible leaf banner and go back to the good flag…

  27. The sniper was pissed off because C-16 was just passed in the Canadian Senate. The sniper now identifies with his own made up gender pronouns: “Skookum,” “Stag King”, and “Ass Serviette.” If you don’t use his requested gender pronouns, you are committing a hate crime by law, and you will be dragged before a tribunal.

  28. Per the gents at SOFREP:

    ” The round fired was a match grade armor-piercing incendiary (API) round. JTF2 mostly utilizes Schmidt and Bender scopes, but also some made by Night Force. Which optic used that day remains unknown at this time. The rifle had been customized in order to gain the mil elevation needed to reach a target at such great distances by attaching special rails to the weapon. The adjustments dialed into the scope by the JTF2 sniper were 113 mils of elevation and 6.5 mils of windage.”

  29. Check out the YouTube channel Mark & Sam After Work to get an idea of how such a shot might be made. Equipment, set-up, etc. Great channel if you’re into loooong range shooting. They’re Austrailian. Maybe distant cousins to the Canadians??

  30. I pulled up some generic 50 cal BMG round on a ballistics calculator; 750 gr with 2820 ft/s muzzle vel., and a G1 BC of 1.05.

    At 3875 yds it is traveling at 891 ft/s, but still has an energy of 1324 ft-lbs. My, that’s a tremendous chunk of lead.

    • I plugged in my personal pet load into Shooter.
      210 grains of H-BMG using the Barnes bore rider with a G-1 BC of 1.05 @2,750 fps.
      Using a thousand yard zero his shot with zero wind and the corialis effect turned on would drift 15 feet and a drop of 561 feet.
      Velocity is still 917 fps. It’s still carrying 1,400 foot pounds of energy.
      Time of flight is 7.46 seconds.

  32. Why is nobody giving his spotter any credit,I mean give credit to the shooter but all the hard work and skill is with the spotter.

Comments are closed.