ISIS Weapons - A ten-foot sniper rifle!

ISIS is great a many things. One of their best weapons that they wield so well is the media. Simply the idea of ISIS producing their own weapons adds to legitimize their abilities and provokes fears in their adversaries. Look at their social media threats aimed at soldiers in the US and how the military is reacting to it. They have won battles in Iraq by using fear and threats. A small action from ISIS results in 100 soldiers surrendering.

This weapon is merely a show piece. First and foremost the effectiveness of the weapon is highly suspect and if it was effective how many can they produce to effect the outcome of a battle. When a formidable force they will be stopped. The Kurds have accomplished this for the most part.

I am just curious how they plan to hit anything with a round that big without any mechanical assistance form any aiming systems.

I blew this picture up.. actually looks like that front tripod is just in the background and not attached.. Still too much recoil from a 23mm for any of that hardware to hold even if bolted to the concrete and I am not the expert.. My reason for trying to get as close as I could was to see if I could the "ACME" stamp...LOL.. not even sure if this makes an effective psychological weapon.

The media seems to think that a 23mm round is "3 times the size of standard rifle ammo." I guess in the sense that 23mm is 3 times the size of 7.62mm. But in that case, a 9mm handgun round is nearly twice as large as a M4 5.56mm round! In reality, this round is probably 100x larger than a "rifle" round (by weight/volume).

That posturing (firing this as a shoulder fired weapon) also makes me believe that this weapon is not actually fired. Plus the front compensator appears to move with each firing (hence the spring in the front), which would make the front tripod use rather questionable? Propaganda is definitely a big component of warfare.