On August 14, fighters from the Pryvyd sniper unit set the world record for the longest sniper shot. The new record of 4,000 meters was set with a 14.5 mm Alligator rifle in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad defense zone, resulting in the elimination of two russian occupiers.
This was reported by journalist and military Yuriy Butusov, who attached to his post a video of the sniper unit at work along with drone footage of the episode. He also recalled that the previous record was held by another Ukrainian, SSU fighter Vyacheslav Kovalskyi, who used Ukrainian Horizon's Lord rifle to eliminate a russian soldier at a distance of 3,800 meters.
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At the same time, Alligator is also a representative of large-caliber sniper rifles manufactured in Ukraine by XADO-Holding. In 2021, Defense Express managed to visit the enterprise, which was then located in Kharkiv but has since been relocated.
The Alligator is a 14.5 mm caliber magazine-fed rifle. However, the video shows one of the crew manually feeding cartridges, possibly to ensure continuous fire after the magazine is empty.
The Alligator has a 1,200 mm barrel, and the muzzle velocity of its bullets ranges from 980 to 1,000 m/s. It weighs 25 kg, which is quite consistent with the caliber. If the rifle were lighter, the recoil would be much more noticeable, even with the muzzle brake and the recoil spring in the stock.
Back in 2021, XADO-Holding declared that the Alligator had a range of 2 km. It was believed that such weapons were necessary for destroying material objects, armored vehicles, and fortifications. That is why these rifles were called anti-material. However, reality has revealed not only entirely different requirements but also the true capabilities of Ukrainian weapons, which have far exceeded their creators’ expectations.
The standard dispersion of a B-32 14.5×114 mm cartridge at a distance of 1.5 km is 1×1 meter. At a distance of 4 km, even theoretically, several shots are needed to achieve the intended result. At the same time, the maximum range of a bullet fired from Alligator is 7 km.
At the same time, it is highly effective against prone targets. A 14.5 mm bullet with a core weighing over 63 grams can penetrate 20 mm of armor steel at 800 meters and is capable of piercing a wall at 4 km. Obviously, the video shows such a result.
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