New Army sniper rifle heads into combat

[Vulture6]

New Army sniper rifle heads into combat
XM110 offers ability to shoot multiple targets at close range

By Matthew Cox - mcox@militarytimes.com
Posted : May 14, 2007

Soldiers in Afghanistan recently received the Army’s new rapid-fire sniper rifle.

The Army adopted the XM110 semi-automatic sniper system in September 2006 as an upgrade to the older M24 sniper rifle.

“It’s semi-automatic, so it allows for rapid re-engagement of targets,” Staff Sgt. Jason R. Terry, a sniper instructor with the U.S. Army Sniper School, said in an Army press release.

The new sniper rifle looks like an M16 with a 20-round magazine chambered for 7.62mm ammunition. It’s a version of Knight’s Armament Co.’s MK11 MOD 0 rifle, the sniper rifle Navy SEALs have used since the late 1990s, and which Marine snipers began using last year.

The bolt-action design of the M24 requires snipers to manually feed another round into the chamber after each shot. The semi-automatic action of the XM110 will decrease lag time in between shots, Terry said in the release.

Terry and other sniper experts recently taught a three-day course at Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan to train snipers from 82nd Airborne Division on the new rifle.

The training included classroom and range time. It also “cautioned soldiers about particularly fragile parts of the weapon, which only manufacturers can repair,” the release stated.

“We learned to maintain and operate the weapon, what we can fix ourselves and what we can’t,” Pfc. Joel D. Dulashanti, a sniper with the 82nd’s C Troop, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, said in the release.

The Army plans to field about 4,500 XM110s.

The new rifles are equipped with a Leupold 3.5x10 scope, bipod and a removable sound suppressor. It has a maximum effective range equal to or better than the M24’s 800 meters, Army weapons officials maintain.

The new rifle weighs 17.2 pounds with iron sights, rifle scope and mounts, bipod and mount, a fully loaded 20-round magazine and sound suppressor. The M24 weighs 17 pounds with sling, day optic, fully loaded five-round magazine, bipod and tools.

The XM110 was designed to give snipers the ability to shoot multiple targets at close range in addition to taking longer-range precision shots with the same accuracy of the M24 sniper rifle.

This isn’t the first time the Army has adopted a semiautomatic sniper rifle. Throughout the 1980s, Army snipers used the M21, a customized version of the M14, before it was replaced by the M24 in 1988.

The Army selected the Knight’s Armament rifle in September as the winner of an open competition, but a protest from Remington Arms Co., the maker of the M24 sniper rifle, all but put the program on hold until mid-January. That’s when a Government Accountability Office report denied Remington’s protests that the Army’s evaluation of their proposal was “unreasonable and that the resulting award decision was improper.”

[Panzerman]

Soldiers in Afghanistan recently received the Army’s new rapid-fire sniper rifle.

I've only once encountered a sniper with the nerve to shoot at my squad twice, and we killed his ass for his troubles. A second shot is generally not a good idea.