Militaries worldwide employ a wide range of infantry weapons to take out targets.
Still, a strong weapon is needed when that target is far away or protected behind some
type of cover or armor.
For these situations, militaries have produced some of the world's most powerful sniper rifles
to easily take out long-range targets no matter how tough they are.
Before diving into the rifles, we should note that several factors were taken into consideration
when making this list.
First and foremost, the rifle had to be chambered in anything above a standard infantry round
to be considered powerful.
Cartridges like the venerable 7.62x51mm and 7.62x54R certainly pack a punch but are outclassed
by stronger rounds.
Another crucial factor was that most of these rifles were designed to be dual-purpose anti-personnel
and anti-material rifles.
Engineers designed these incredibly powerful rounds to have enough energy to take out enemy
soldiers at super long distances after punching through things like vehicles, bunkers, and
even light armored vehicles with ease With those formalities out of the way, let’s
jump in and take a look at some of the world's biggest and most powerful sniper rifles in
service today.
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Now, back to the world's biggest and most powerful sniper rifles in service today.
The first few up include rifles chambered in the vaunted .338 Lapua round.
The original designers envisioned the .338 Lapua round to be the perfect in-between round
of the standard 7.62x51mm NATO round and the larger .50 caliber round.
The military was looking for a lightweight and accurate round like the 7.62x51mm but
had a punch that was just below a .50 cal cartridge.
The end result was the .338 Lapua.
Unfortunately for Research Armament Industries, the company that designed the round during
the 1980s, the brass casings meant to hold the powder and bullet were not strong enough
to resist the massive amount of pressure produced when firing it.
It was not until the late 1990s, when they partnered with several European firms, that
the .338 Lapua became what it is today.
After correcting the design issues with the casing, militaries worldwide scrambled to
produce rifles that could fire the round.
Arguably the most famous of these was the Accuracy International AWM sniper rifle.
First designed and manufactured in the 1980s, the UK-based company Accuracy International
wanted to make an affordable, highly customizable, and reliable sniper rifle that could be exported
worldwide.
Initially chambered in 7.62x51mm, the company started producing the .338 Lapua models in
the late 1990s.
Numerous countries have adopted the .338 Lapua models, but the most famous examples were
the L115 model rifles in service with the British and Canadian militaries.
Its simple and well-balanced design of an aluminum body with a free-floating barrel
and an adjustable pressure trigger has made it one of the most popular long-range sniper
rifles in the world.
In fact, the rifle has the record for the third longest confirmed sniper kill in history.
But the UK is not the only country to build sniper rifles around the .338 Lapua round.
Germany created the DSR-1 sniper rifle as a shorter-range, precision weapon for Germany's
elite police forces.
Its ambidextrous design, easily removable scope, and light weight have made it popular
among numerous world police agencies and militaries for use in urban environments.
American rifle manufacturer Remington also built a sniper rifle designed to take down
long-range targets using this round.
Known as the Remington MSR, short for Modular Sniper Rifle, the US Army worked with the
company to specially design armor-piercing ammunition to take out an enemy combatant
wearing body armor up to 1,500 meters.
Not only have US special forces adopted the rifle for use, but countries like Algeria,
Brazil, and France have also issued it to their troops.
The next set of rifles on this list are chambered in the venerated .50 caliber BMG rounds.
The .50 caliber round has been around for over a hundred years.
Still, it wasn’t until the American rifle company Barrett designed its first long-range
sniper and anti-material rifle in the 1980s that its popularity took off.
In 1989, the Barrett rifle company introduced the world’s first semi-automatic .50 caliber
sniper rifle to the market.
First purchased by the Swedish army, the US military soon adopted it in 1990 as its preferred
long-range sniper and anti-material rifle.
Weighing in at almost thirty pounds, the M82 Barrett is remarkably well-controlled and
easy to handle for being such a large caliber rifle.
The rifle's versatility has garnered it much praise on the battlefield and in the hands
of numerous police agencies.
The gun is so popular that it’s used by dozens of countries worldwide and has seen
action in every war since the Gulf War in 1991.
Despite holding numerous world records for extreme range sniper shots, soldiers made
three of the world's top five longest kills with another .50 caliber rifle: the MacMillan
Tac-50.
Produced in Arizona and built since 2000, this bolt-action .50 caliber sniper rifle
is regarded as one of the world's most powerful but also the most deadly.
Three of the top five longest-range kills in history, including the absolute world record
at an astounding 3,871 yards, were all made with this rifle.
This rifle is much more accurate due to the theory behind its design.
Unlike the M82, the engineers that made the MacMillan Tac-50 wanted the user to only be
the world's top trained snipers.
Though top snipers field the M82, even regular soldiers can use it in combat against lightly
armored vehicles and hardened positions.
Since the M82 is mass-produced, perhaps its tolerances are a bit looser than the MacMillan,
which the company manufactures only in small quantities for the world's most elite snipers.
Regardless of its performance against the M82, the MacMillan Tac-50 has proven to be
one of the world's most extraordinary sniper rifles.
Though the rifle can be chambered in other rounds like the .338 Lapua, as commonly used
by American sniper Chris Kyle, it’s more common to find it chambered in .50 caliber
BMG.
The remainder of the sniper rifles on this list are anti-material rifles, but that has
not stopped most of their militaries from using them in a long-range sniping capacity,
especially in countries like Russia, China, Serbia, and South Africa.
Of all the countries over the past thirty years that have made colossal sniper rifles,
no one has put more effort into it than Russia.
Starting with the KSVK which was first produced in 1999 and chambered in the massive 12.7x108mm
round.
This round has been in the Russian inventory since before World War Two and was initially
designed to be an anti-aircraft round.
For comparison, the 12.7x108mm is slightly more substantial than a .50 caliber round
but is less ergonomic than it.
Though the Russians had numerous anti-tank rifles made before and after WWII, these became
obsolete with the production of more powerful anti-tank rocket launchers like the RPG.
However, the Russian war in Chechnya in the early nineties convinced them of the need
for infantry to have a sniper rifle capable of penetrating buildings and vehicles to hit
insurgents in urban areas.
Within a year, Russia created a new and improved semi-automatic version of the rifle called
the OSV-96.
Contrary to popular belief, this rifle was not released in 1996; that was when its design
process started.
The main reason the KSVK came out first was the need for the rifle when the Second Chechen
war erupted in August of 1999.
Russian military leadership decided the bolt action version was easier to finish while
they waited on the semi-automatic version to be finalized.
The most recent heavy Russian sniper rifle to come out was the SVDK.
Introduced in 2006, this rifle became Russia's answer to the proliferation of .338 Lapua
chambered rifles common among Western and Western-allied nations.
Based on the wildly popular Dragunov sniper rifle, the SVDK is part of this family of
rifles.
However, what makes it different is the round it fires.
Shooting the 9.3×64mm Brenneke round, this 1920s-era big game hunting cartridge has been
the round of choice to penetrate any type of body armor Western soldiers could wear.
Though its stopping power is immense and comparable to the .338 Lapua, its accuracy is not as
desirable.
With only an effective range of 600 meters, troops outside this limit can be considered
safe from it.
Russia is not the only European country producing powerful sniper rifles.
Surprisingly, the tiny Eastern European country of Serbia has been hitting far above its weight
for decades with its wildly successful M93 Black Arrow rifle manufactured by state-controlled
arms company Zastava.
Zastava designed this bolt action rifle around the same 12.7x108mm round that the Russian
KSVK uses.
This was because this ammunition was a widespread type of anti-material round a lot of Eastern
Bloc countries had lying about that needed a useful purpose.
The Serbian military found that with this rifle, they incorporated the best aspects
of numerous European heavy sniper rifles like the German Tankgewher and infantry rifles
like the Soviet SVT-40.
The result was a simplistic yet accurate export model that was also chambered in .50 caliber
BMG.
Because of this, the M93 Black Arrow quickly became one of the world's preferred long-range
sniping and anti-material rifles among developing nations, with the rifle seeing combat in Liberia,
Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other austere locales.
Producing huge sniper rifles is not a skill limited to just European or Western nations,
and China has made its own domestic copy of the M82 Barrett since 2006, known as the QBU-10.
Chambered in the same round as the M93 Zastava and SVDK, the QBU-10 is a semi-automatic version
with a magazine capacity of five rounds and an effective range of 2,000 meters.
But to give this old round more power, the Chinese military developed an improved version
that makes the round punch through armored vehicles with ease.
The only other country on the Eurasian continent to produce a rifle like the Chinese has been
Iran.
Using the same round, the Shaher anti-material rifle has been in Iran's inventory for the
past ten years.
But unlike its Chinese counterpart, this rifle has seen plenty of combat use.
The Iranians gave an undisclosed number to Taliban forces, who used them to deadly effect
against the Afghan government.
Iranian-backed militias also used them against ISIS fighters in Iraq.
But unlike the Chinese rifle, this one is bolt action, and though the Iranians claim
it can take a man out at distances of up to two and a half miles, this feat has not been
proven yet in combat.
However, its ability to take out helicopters and light armored vehicles is not questioned
since the round has done so in numerous conflicts.
Despite stiff competition from other countries, South Africa has outgunned everyone else in
the world with their own line of powerful rifles.
Known as the Denel NTW-20, this massive rifle has been the anti-material and long-range
sniper of choice since the late nineties.
Firing the powerful 20mm round, this rifle fires the same type of round that the US Navy's
Close-In Weapon System fires against incoming missile threats.
Weighing in at almost 70 pounds, this rifle is designed to be carried and operated in
teams of two.
Though the largest caliber round it can fire is the 20mm anti-aircraft round, the South
African military made a smaller caliber barrel and receiver that operators could change out
to fire the 14.5×114mm round.
This round is of Soviet origin and was the same one fired by the vaunted PTRD and other
early Soviet anti-material rifles.
But unlike the Russians, the South Africans have actively employed this version as a long-range
sniper rifle, with the 8th longest recorded kill in history coming from a South African
special operator fighting in the Congo back in 2013 from almost a mile and a half away.
Thanks again to our sponsor - Enlisted!
They've just released their new Pacific Campaign and it’s available to play right now on
both current and last-gen Playstation and Xbox Consoles, as well as on PC, so download
it right now using our link in the description and register to receive a bonus pack that
includes multiple weapons, soldiers, and a premium account!