Now, this is a pretty amazing shot. Take that, bad guys!

While I acknowledge the Awesomeness of the feat, I still have to keep in mind the obscene amount of luck that had to combine with extreme skill to pull that off. At that kind of range, footsteps near the shooter's tripod can move the bullet several inches off target. As could the heat coming up off a slab of asphalt road 200 meters downrange. etc etc

Second your acknowledgement...astonishing feat.

And you forgot to mention that the sniper has got to be lucky enough to catch the target in a position that's not going to change within the 10 seconds it's going to take the bullet to travel; a bug or an itch could queer the deal.

Not to detract from the feat, though, I'm curious whether anybody knows how much of the sighting job was done by the scope, itself? Just the fact that it could zero in on a target at 2+ miles indicates that it's an awfully high-tech piece of equipment.

The .50 caliber round leaves the muzzle at 800 m/s. Quick and dirty calculation comes up with a 4.5-second travel time over 3500 m.

Your quick and dirty calculation assumes an 800 Meter/second velocity over the entire distance which is ballistically impossible. The projectile begins slowing immediately upon exiting the muzzle of the weapon or perhaps a bit sooner. The actual ballistics for the .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridge are:

• Muzzle Velocity : 853 Meters/second Time of flight 0.0000000
• 250 Meters: 781.69 Meters/second Time of flight 0.306105049
• 500 Meters: 713.51 Meters/second Time of flight 0.640873963
• 750 Meters: 648.8 Meters/second Time of flight 1.008348187
• 1 KM: 587.53 Meters/second Time of flight 1.413359571
• 1.25 KM: 530.11 Meters/second Time of flight 1.861528594
• 1.5 KM: 477.07 Meters/second Time of flight 2.359082422

which is as far as my ballistics table goes. However the reports of the sniper's shot indicated a 10 second flight time, which seems quite reasonable. Additionally ou have to take the bullets trajectory into account as it will travel significantly further through the air than the actual range over the ground. FWIW given the rifle is sighted in at 500 Meters at the 1500 meter range the bullet would strike at -665.91 inches or - 16.91 Meters.

I haven't attempted to run out the numbers, but at 3000 Meters the projectile would definitely be sub-sonic likely be moving at only 150 to 200 meters per second (perhaps close to terminal velocity) but because of the weight of the .50 projectile it would still hit the target (if it hit the target) with enough energy to do significant, potentially fatal, damage to an unarmored human body.

Ya, and significant psychological damage to the other bad guys standing around there when it hits.

Other things can mess with the flight table also like air humidity, atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc.

And yep a lot of the battle can simply be predicting where the target is going to be 10 seconds from when you pull the trigger. I seem to recall one of the older distance records (from vietnam?) that was achieved by watching an officer walking around for quite some time until finally he stopped at a ditch to take a piss.