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It's sort of pointless now that rpstrong showed me the error of my thinking.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

You see, all you need to do is set the riffle to it's highest point in the trajectory arc and the laser to the center of the scope. At any distance now, the riffle is no longer being aimed except in a general direction. So once the laser kicks in, the bullet will guide itself to the target. All you have to do is get close and aim the laser right when the trigger is pulled.

I was originally thinking the gun had to be aimed before firing so the laser would have to be in the field of view at the same time. According to this site a .50 cal sighted in a 1000 yards or 915 meters will be roughly 45 inches high at 200 yards and 300 inches low at 1500 yards or 1371 meters. Now most scopes and military sights will have adjustments that can be tuned for the differences in distance. But as you can see, with almost a difference of 350 inches (29 feet or 8.8 meters) between 200 yards and 1500 yards, a laser centered at 1000 yards will have to be adjusted the same or be out of the field of view. So if you had to aim the riffle before shooting, you would also have to adjust both the laser and scope. But because the bullet is guided, you just need to make sure the bullet is high enough in the trajectory arc in order to follow the laser to the target. The laser can be centered at this sighting reference and remain on target.

So basically, I was over thinking it without paying attention to the correct details.

I understand your concern, and refuse to trivialize it with some flip comment. It is a valid concern, and has been pondered for centuries within military establishments of the world.
Siege engines, artillery (including the V-1 and V-2 rockets in WW2, ICBM, etc....), are examples of this.

Your concern is really a matter of scale.

As an ex-US Army sniper, I can see both sides of this.
On one hand, you can become callous to the killing of another person, and losing the restraints that holds us back from doing so everyday, at whim. (I believe this is the root of your concern-also addressed on Star Trek TOS, "A Taste of Armageddon"[season 1, episode 23])
On the other hand, you could do 'mental gymnastics' to rationalise your job. Someone has to do the dirty work, and all the better if that someone finds the job distasteful.
(a good account of this is "One Shot,One Kill" about Carlos Hathcock, USMC sniper)
In Hathcock's own words:

"Hell," he once said, "anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks. . . . I never did enjoy killing anybody. It's my job. If I don't get those bastards, then they're going to kill a lot of these kids we got dressed up like Marines. That's the way I look at it."

Well, if it really is any good, you might be able to read about a review about it in the near future here: http://www.snipercentral.com/

Yeah, I thought I had read about long ranges from weapons of this type: http://www.snipercentral.com/psg90.htm but it seems like the ranged speced in the text is much shorter, so I guess the other things where just very lucky shoots.

the most famous sniper of all time used a mosin-nagant m28

http://www.snipersparadise.com/History/hayha.htm

A mosin nagant was also the first military rifle with scope. Although article is off, it wasn't off by much

http://www.snipercentral.com/mosin.htm

Surely they'd use the (AK-47 based) M-76? I'd have thought the basic AK-47 to be far too inaccurate, even with a scope.

http://www.snipercentral.com/m76.htm

Yeah, no kidding! Gosh, if someone aimed EXACTLY at my blue-tooth cell phone, held up to my ear, by the time the bullet traveled 300 yards it would be AT LEAST 12 inches lower and 2 or 3 inches to either side! HA! The joke is on them!

Yeah, no kidding! Gosh, if someone aimed EXACTLY at my blue-tooth cell phone, held up to my ear, by the time the bullet traveled 300 yards it would be AT LEAST 12 inches lower and 2 or 3 inches to either side! HA! The joke is on them!

50 cal sniper rifles like this can be used to immobilize enemy vehicles.

Put a bullet through the engine block and that particular truck won't move again.

Notice how the lady obviously does not have the upper body strength required to even hold up the weapon

A fully-loaded M-16A2 with undermounted grenade launcher weighs a total of about twelve pounds. My mother could carry that today, and she's not exactly young.

A Barrett M82A1--which is a big honkin' piece of hardware (click here)--weighs about thirty pounds. So as a rough guess, I'd say the hardware she's carrying there in the screenshot (a rifle I can't place, although it looks vaguely Dragunovish, which would make it nine and a half pounds fully loaded) weighs no more than twelve pounds.

So either you don't know jack about women, if you think they can't carry a twelve-pound weapon, or you don't know jack about firearms. Take your pick which. :)

(Up until her 50th birthday, my mother could beat me in skeet shooting. Her preferred rig was a twelve-gauge firing three-inch magnum rounds. So please don't tell me "real women can't handle hardware like that." Real women, especially real women who come from Alabama and grow up hunting and fishing with their fathers, most definitely do handle hardware like that.)

With both the 15.2 and the .50, you're looking at more of a anti-material i.e. anti-vehicle weapon.

How about a .338 lapua?
"For military extreme long-range anti-personnel purposes, the .338 Lapua is king. Even the .50BMG falls short (Do to accuracy problems with current ammo). This caliber is not recommended for Law Enforcement"