Shooter's Bible Guide to Rifle Ballistics

34. A day in the desert

He produced a photograph, poorly composed, taken in difficult light. The men inside, dark and out of focus, stared beyond, over the rifle to a spot of orange. It had been a vehicle of some sort. The incendiary bullet had unhinged it. A bright spot in the desert, a memorable moment in a long tour.

The Army is supposed to break things. When things blow up, it’s a good day.

“We were there together,” says Jon Weiler. “Ryan nailed that one.” Jon—lean, bright-eyed and intense—hails from Tennessee. He logged six years in the 10^th Mountain Division and 82^nd Airborne before coming to work for Barrett as a shooting instructor. Ryan Cannon—stocky, with a gunnery sergeant’s jaw and a ready smile—served in the 82^nd Airborne. He’s from Omaha.

“Here’s your rifle.” Ryan lifts an M82 Barrett from its coffin-like case, upper in one hand, lower in the other. He presents them with practiced ease, and as if they weighed much less than their combined 18 lbs. “You assemble it like this,” he continues, rescuing me from embarrassment. “Pull this collar… The springs are stout … Takes some practice.” The rifle comes together on its own. He hands it to me. “Both these pins must be in place or the gun comes apart.” He smiles and ponderous lengths of steel capitulate. I repeat the exercise. Ryan smiles again. “You’ll get faster.”

Enrollees in Barrett’s Tactical Long Range Class have all now arrived. Jon wastes no time. “We’ll use M33 ball ammo. Its 660-grain copper-jacketed bullet has a soft steel core. It starts at 2,700 fps from a 29 inch barrel. Chamber pressure averages 55,000 PSI. Expect 2-minute accuracy—that is, 12 inches at 600 yards.” We sit like high school students in trig class as Jon scrolls quickly through a Power Point summary of external ballistics. “Some of the 50-caliber ammo you’ll see is de-linked machine gun fodder. A lot of BMG is manufactured off-shore.” He says these cartridges vary, one to the next, “in case dimensions and hardness. Soft brass can cause extraction problems.” He passes around a fired hull with the rim badly bent.

The group, a dozen of us, breaks for lunch, motoring a mile to the Whittington Center’s cafeteria.

“You could have joined us for PT,” grins John when he learns I’d run a marathon a week earlier. But I had traveled late, in a rental car from Denver, passing through Raton after midnight.

“Slept like a log. Maybe tomorrow.”

The Whittington Center could pass for a piece of Afghanistan. It sprawls across the eastern hem of rugged hills shadowing a great, dry basin. Rock and sand and grizzled desert plants—”a touch of home,” grins Ryan, recalling his recent deployment as a sniper in Iraq. Like Jon, he’s employed now by Barrett. Like Jon, he gets on well with these men in fatigues and black T-shirts—men young enough to squander hours on bordello humor, old enough to have survived battle and get serious about shooting. A generation removed, I am qualified to observe them and share the line with them but not to count myself one of them. I’m here to report on the training of 50-caliber riflemen, to get a story and perhaps glimpse desert warfare through the dust.

The Center is no longer an NRA facility. It retains a strong affiliation but has its own board. Its vast complex of shooting ranges, plus on-site housing, makes the Center a destination resort for firearms enthusiasts. It hosts 170,000 visitors annually. Under Mike Ballew and now Wayne Armacost, the facility also offers two Adventure Camps for youth during the summer “to ensure that youngsters learn not only about firearms, but about the land and wildlife and their conservation.” They learn resourcefulness too in the Center’s rugged back-country. It’s home to a variety of game animals: mule deer, elk, pronghorn, cougar and black bear. Hunts in Whittington’s hills go to sportsmen lucky in the tag draws.

But we aren’t here for big game. Our shooting will be limited to the 1,000-yard range.

We reconvene in the classroom. Jon talks about the Barrett M82. “The Army calls it the M107.” He adds that for my benefit. All the other students seem to know; they’re soldiers and law officers. “It’s a short-recoil autoloader with a 10-round detachable box magazine. The barrel is button-rifled, lands pitched one-in-15.” He tells us the Leupold Mark IV scope sits 2-½ inches above bore-line, that one revolution of its elevation dial moves impact 15 minutes, that to find the paper quickly at 300 yards we should bottom the dial, then turn it up 22 clicks. He advises us to keep a light coating of high-pressure grease on the barrel extension and bolt head. “The trigger pulls 8 lbs and is not adjustable. You’ll get used to it. When you fire, keep pulling the trigger and hold it back for a count of two—to ensure that you follow through.”

Jon continues with a monologue on distance. “Shooting far, you must contend with variables most riflemen never have to think about. Like air density. Cold air is denser than warm. Air at sea level is denser than air in the mountains. As humidity goes up, air density goes down—strange but true.” He tells us that “dope”—as a shooter dopes the wind—is an acronym for “data of previous engagement” and that keeping accurate records of range conditions is the first step to learning how they affect bullet flight. “Most data is standardized for shooting at sea level at 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot and frigid weather, and high altitudes, can affect your bullet noticeably at extended range.”

He talks about ballistic coefficient—how it changes with speed and why the most accurate bullets don’t always have highest C values. “A football is aerodynamic,” he points out. “But it’s very unstable.”

Suddenly, the afternoon is over. Jon briefs us on the next day’s schedule. “We’ll fire 15 rounds to zero at 200 yards, 20 each at 600, 800 and 1,000.”

Next morning, I join the pit crew first. We plug and paste to the rhythmic thump of rifles hundreds of yards away, the crack of their bullets close overhead.

Relay number one takes all day to finish. In fact, it doesn’t. Each shooter has a spotter, as in the field. So essentially two relays must fire through before switching with the pit crew. I abandon the pits early to photograph the line against New Mexico’s red evening sun. The gaping brakes hurl amber dust high over the prone marksmen and the spotters on their flanks. Brass cases the size of whisky flasks wink as they spin forward through the haze. The rifles, hard against the sand-filled feed sacks in the shooters’ armpits, shuffle reluctantly to the cycling of the bolts. Powder residue and dirt ring the eyes of the young men as they peer intently through spotting scopes and the Leupold Mark IVs.

“Call ‘em!” snaps Jon. “Keep your body behind the rifle! Good shot! Watch the wind, spotter!

What’s the temperature? Talk to him…!”

At 600 yards lots of shots find the 10-ring; at 800, fewer. At 1,000 mirage and wind flags often tell different stories. The men must balance midrange drift against that at the target. As with .22 bullets in 100-yard matches, the spotting scopes show rippling wakes of bullets hooking through the mirage.

“Mirage doesn’t affect bullet flight,” I remind my team-mate the next morning as he bellies onto the mat. “But it shows you wind that does.” I’ve little experience shooting .50s; on the other hand, wind is wind, and its harsh treatment of my bullets in smallbore matches remains clear in memory. I hunch over the spotting scope, marking hits in the log book, coaching as best I can. “Hold 10-ring at 9 o’clock.”

“You mean 3 o’clock, don’t you?” Jon crowds my shoulder. “It’s a 4 o’clock wind.”

I concede that is so. “But he’s set up for that. The mirage at 1,000 has big waves. Wind is putting on the brakes. He’ll leak right if he holds center.” Age gives you some prerogatives, such as telling young, bright people with better eyes that your call is correct, if counterintuitive. “Conditions same. Hold at 9,” I repeat. “Four minutes out.”

Boommm! Frank triggers it well. The target sinks slowly behind the orange dust. When it comes up it wears a plug close to center at 6 o’clock. “Good call,” Jon smiles, rising.

Then it is my turn to shoot. I’ve fired plenty of rounds prone, but almost all with sling support and rifles of modest weight. The Barrett’s stout bipod is more than an accessory. Without it, the rifle would be as useful as a chair without legs. And without the bag I would never endure a 20-round string. Recoil and the great weight of the rifle’s butt quickly make themselves felt.

“Lie on top of the bag,” urges Jon. “Take some sand out if it won’t conform to your body. Bring the toe well into it. Do it exactly the same for each shot.”

That much I know. Accuracy is a measure of consistency. But getting that simple bag to behave under my bicep proves a challenge. So does the long, hard trigger pull.

“You’re doing well,” says Jon, putting a rosy spin on mediocre shooting. At 1,000 I leak a couple to the edge of the last scoring ring, 30 inches from center. “Two-minute ammunition,” Jon consoles. Still, making a silk purse from this performance will be tough. I’ve noted during the last relay that other riflemen have missed the target altogether.

The .50 is not brutal. Blast from the brake rocks me, but recoil is tolerable. While some shooters have padded the steel combs of their stocks (tampons seem the cheek-rest of choice), I find no such need.

The last day of my visit, we arrange a war zone in the pits, with cardboard silhouettes mounted on long poles. Some silhouettes are roughly the shape of human torsos. Others, smaller, offer a chest-up target only. Painted various colors, the cut-outs are designated friendly and hostile by hue. Shooters must tell at a glance, and hold fire until a legitimate target is in the clear. With the first relay on the 300-yard line, those of us manning the silhouettes raise them briefly at random places. Then we march with them, sometimes crossing friendly and hostile.

“It’s like that over there,” says Ryan. “Not much time to shoot. A high risk of collateral damage.” The exercise reminded me that these riflemen are not primarily sport hunters or target shooters. For some, Barrett’s school is grounding for additional combat. A couple are explosives experts on domestic police teams. One is returning to Iraq as a civilian contractor.

A tight schedule denies me the last day of tactical shooting with the Barrett M82. Pity. “We’ll be firing at distances of up to 1,700 yards,” Jon says. “That’s about as far as we can correct for elevation on a Mark IV when the scope base has 27 minutes of gain. The targets will be randomly placed in hilly terrain; some will be hard to see. Shooters will have to range them, determine atmospheric conditions with Kestrel instruments and make appropriate adjustments in their hold or scope settings.”

Packing up as the other shooters dismantle their 82s for cleaning, I feel a bit out of place. These are warriors, with experience in hostile environments and the prospect of using their big rifles against men who want them dead. Barrett’s Tactical Long Range Class is tailored to them. Perhaps someday I’ll attend its civilian counterpart. Right now I’ll drive north while the soldiers prepare for the final day’s event. The practice, and the Barrett .50s, might one day save them.