New Precision Rifles

Continuing from last post.  For quite some time now European military precsion riflemen have been using the .338 Lapua cartridge.  Our own military establishment has resisted the trend since we have a bad case of "not invented here" afflicting the military bureaucracy.  After all, the argument went, our snipers are doing a perfectly adequate job with the M-24 system in .308, and if we have to do longer shots we can always turn to the .50.  Since bureaucrats are never users, and in most cases have no operational background in sniping, they were slow to realize what the troops on the ground knew.  That most engagements were now past the 600 meter range, and that carrying the .50 up and down the mountains of Afghanistan was a task best avoided if at all possible.  Our allies, on the other hand, were making seemingly impossible shots at distances that had been reserved to the .50 for quite some time.  The world record sniper shot is now held by a British sniper using a .338 Lapua built by Accuracy International, firing a Swiss-P cartridge made by RUAG Ammotec.  The distance?  An amazing 2,475 meters.  That's one-point-five-two miles for the metrically challenged.
All this to say, things have changed.  Major U.S. manufacturers are now getting into the act, thinking it inevitable that our hide-bound military establishment will finally get off the dime.  There has been some talk that the tests now being scheduled by the military to select what they're calling an intermediate cartridge (.300 Norma, also a very good cartridge, has been mentioned) but I suspect that the .338 has the edge, if for no other reason that it is tried, tested, and proven in actual combat by a number of our allies.  Politics (and lobbying) being what they are, if there were an American made cartridge in the competition the .338 might have a problem.  But there's not. 
The advantages over the .50?  The rifle, not being subjected to the same stresses on firing mentioned in the last post, can be considerably lighter.  Half, in some configurations.  The cartridge weighs much less.  It offers terminal ballistics (a nice way of saying it kills very efficiently) out to ranges previously reserved to the .50.  It is an inherently accurate cartridge.  And as for some .50 adherents pointing out that it can still shoot farther than the .338, the truth of the matter is that the .338 can shoot out as far as our current crop of rifle scopes can manage.  Think about it.  After 1,800 meters the cross hairs on most scopes will obscure a man-sized target.  If you can't see it, how are you aiming at it?

Most of my posts thus far have dealt with the military.  There is another sniping world, and in many cases it is far more challenging - that being the world of the police precision marksman.  But we'll save that for another post.