A sniper rifle is a high-precision, long-range rifle. Requirements include high accuracy, reliability, and mobility, concealment, and optics, for anti-personnel, anti-materiel and surveillance uses by military snipers. The modern sniper rifle is a portable shoulder-fired rifle with either a bolt action or semi-automatic action, fitted with a telescopic sight for extreme accuracy and chambered for a high-ballistic performance centerfire cartridge.
The bolt-action 7.62×51mm M24 Sniper Weapon System is capable of 0.5 MOA accuracy to maximal effective range of about 800 meters. The M24 was the United States Army standard-issue sniper rifle from 1988 to 2010.
German sniper aiming his Karabiner 98k with 4×36 Zeiss ZF39 telescopic sight.
Vietnam War era sniper rifles, US Army XM21 (top) and USMC M40 (bottom)
U.S. Marine Corps SRT sniper team with an M24 sniper rifle, during sniper training
Long range shooting is a collective term for shooting disciplines where the distance to target is significant enough that shooter has to put effort into calculating various ballistic factors, especially in regards to the deviating effects of gravity and wind. While shooting at shorter ranges, a shooter only has to slightly adjust the sights to compensate for limited bullet drop at most, but when the range is extended, wind drift will be the first factor affecting precision to the extent that it must be taken into serious account. Some would argue that long range shooting starts where assessment of wind, distance and various atmospheric conditions are equally important for the results as pure shooting skills - meaning that even if one conducts a technically perfect shot, the shooter will miss the target because of incorrect calculations, neglecting to take some elements into consideration, or merely due to unpredictable downrange conditions. It is widely accepted within interdisciplinary circles that for a standard rifle firing full-powered cartridges, "long range" means the target is more than 600 m (660 yd) away,, while "extreme long range" is generally accepted as when the target distance is more than 1,000 m (1,100 yd) away from the shooter.
BCM Europearms F Class is a rifle designed for F-Class long range competitions.
Modern military snipers are often skilled at long range shooting. Behind the shooter lies a spotter, looking for the bullet impact and suggesting adjustments. Teams of spotters and shooters are often used in both civilian and military shooting.
Observing mirage, seen as "waves" above this hot road, is often used to estimate wind speed in long range shooting.
View through a 20x power scope sight with mil-dots at 300 yards (274 meters).