[Cyclops]

Gentleman,

First of all, This is a very excellent thread. I'm learning volumes.

My experiences with the M107 were both good and bad. I was a Sniper Section Leader in Iraq for a Light Inf. Bn. and we were issued 3 M107's. Other than firing an M82 at School this was my first experience with the .50 cal. SWS. When we were mobing at Ft. Drum we were given WWII era .50 ammo (ball) to zero with. Man we couldn't hit shit out to 500 meters consistently. I blamed the ammo. We then deployed and recieved Mk211 Mod 0. We still couldn't maintain decent groups, 3 MOA was the norm. I was so GD pissed off that I zeroed it to the best of my ability then set that bitch aside. My BC was one of those officers that brought into all of the inflated kills stories and he thought that me alone with my M107 could win the war. I had to take that bitch on all sorts of missions. One day I was in an ambush position and 4 BG's presented themselves at 900m. I fired my first round and it hit approx 4" above one of their heads smacking into a concrete wall. The funny thing is that the guy next to him went down (turns out a piece of concrete from the wall was broken loose by the round and entered his abdomin, he died several days later). I adjusted my POA and fired the second round at the same guy and it did hit him with very effective Terminal ballistics. After that the weapon mis-fired every other round. I wanted to take that M107 and throw it in a ditch with an incendiary grenade. We learned the limitations of that particular weapon system early and I didn't really use it again unless we were overwatching a TCP and were planning on using it for stopping vehicles at 500m or so. It is also important to note that it was our experience that the API and Mk211 Mod 0 is very corrosive and if you don't scrub the shit out of your chamber/barrell every 10-20 rds or so you will get malfunctions (like I experienced). The army does need to provide snipers with a better cleaning kit for the M107, the half Otis half USGI kit wasn't cutting it. The real weak link was lack of solvents strong enough to break down the build up associated with the .50 ammo.