Hey Man Nice Shot

Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier. His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barreled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high. A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 meters, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 meters. "I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people. "He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again." News Telegraph

It is a bit confusing here. Jim was not shooting a Kalashnikov. True, a Kalashnikov is 7.62x39mm rifle. However, when the U. S. says 7.62mm they usually mean a 7.62x51mm that is some times called a .308 caliber. They are not really the same thing. They will chamber each other's rounds and fire, however, the ballistics are quite different. It has to do with the number of times the bullet turns in the rifling of the barrel and the exact length of the over all cartridge. Every now and then they mean 7.62x54mm. That ammunition is based on the .306 round.
No matter how you measure it, that is a good shot. Most of the competition shooting for distance is done with .50 caliber. The bullet (the lead part that flies out the end of the barrel and does most of the damage) is heavy and keeps it's inertia for a longer period of time. Hitting a man sized target at that distance is a hell of a shot in any one's book.
Where does .223 vs 5.56x45mm come in to it? Well NATO never met a standard they didn't want to change for no better reason than to make it their own. I wonder what the difference between U. S. military MREs and NATO MREs could possibly be.