Hacker News Reader

Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

Yow, if you're reading that correctly, then no one should be bothering to buy .338 Lapua rifles, since their whole point is to get reliable results beyond the 800-1200 yards you can in theory get from .30 envelope rounds like .308/7.62 NATO and .300 WM, but without the gross overkill of .50 BMG, which was intended for a material destruction role, not anti-personal.

View on HN

Right, yet in real life we see effective use of those rounds out to double that 1200 yard range.

And, of course, accuracy is only one part of effectiveness. Stopping power is also important, especially in the military role, and varies greatly between cartridges; for instance .338LM is something like 5000 ft.lbs. at the muzzle vs. .308 which is somewhere around 2900.

Regarding .50 BMG - I'm not sure there is such thing as overkill if you're one of those guys on a two-way range. ;)

Heh, but with 63% more muzzle energy than .338 LM ... well, I don't have to tell you this, but for the larger audience we're talking about a heavier weapon and more recoil, a lot more muzzle blast (more likely to be observed by the enemy), the rounds are heavier and bigger (pxlpshr has a point about the impracticability), etc. etc. Snipers have used it mostly because it was available, not because it was well suited for the purpose. And of course sometimes they're called upon to ... discretely destroy material.

They haven't caught on yet, but Barrett and others have been working on cartridges with 400 instead of 600 grain bullets and noticeably less energy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.416_Barrett#Muzzle_velocity

I thought the .416 Barrett was basically designed to get around laws that explicitly prohibit .50 BMG, rather than to be a superior alternative. (It's possible I'm thinking of .408 Cheytac here though.)

Partly, but since Barrett has a firm policy of not selling to jurisdictions like California that ban civilian use of .50 BMG only so much. It's also intended to be a superior alternative for the non-material sniping role,

All very good points. I don't really follow wildcat cartridge development, but the .416 does look like it fills a gap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com