eacock’s The Day of the Jackal opens with a bang. In the first episode (streaming now), the world’s greatest assassin (the titular Jackal, played by Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne) sets up an elaborate plan to kill a German politician. It begins with attacking the politician’s son, wounding but not killing him. The son goes to the hospital and the father follows suit, that’s where the Jackal attacks.

More accurately, he attacks from a couple of miles away. The long-distance shot involves a bespoke rifle which dismantles and transforms into a suitcase when not in use. He puts up a windmill to indicate wind patterns, takes a couple of practice shots to line up his sights, and waits for his moment. Then he fires. The bullet finds its mark after crossing a distance of 3,815 meters, that’s 12,516 feet or 2.37 miles, for those of us not familiar with the metric system.

The length of the shot spurs some understandable skepticism inside MI6 with Bianca (Lashana Lynch) informing everyone else that the longest confirmed kill by a sniper happened in Ukraine in 2023 at a distance of 3,540 meters (11,614 feet or 2.19 miles). It’s true that The Day of the Jackal’s opening episode attack outdistances any actual shot in recorded history, but the reality isn’t too far from the fiction.

What is the longest sniper shot of all time?

In 2023, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian sniper Viacheslav Kovalskyi completed a confirmed shot from 3,800 meters (12,467 feet or 2.36 miles).

Bianca (Lashana Lynch) in The Day of The Jackal Episode 105. Photo: Marcell Piti/Carnival Film & Television Limited

Snipers are a relatively new specialty on the global battlefield, only really existing in their modern form since World War II. Over the years, as weapons technologies have evolved, the distance at which snipers can reliably make shots has increased and the record for longest confirmed kill keeps getting broken. It’s also worth noting that there is no complete repository of sniper shots, and we have to lean on reliable reports which have been made available. Public knowledge is limited to those reports and is almost certainly incomplete.

To pull off shots of more than a kilometer (3,280 feet), snipers have to account for a whole host of factors and correct for them. Snipers need to estimate every external force working on the bullet – wind speed, wind direction, elevation, angle, air density, gravity, and more – from the moment it leaves the barrel until it reaches its target. Depending on the distance, they might even have to account for the curvature and rotation of the Earth.

One of the longest confirmed shots in history was taken by an unnamed Australian sniper in 2012, at a distance of 2,815 meters (9,235 feet or 1.75 miles), an entire kilometer shy of the Jackal’s fictional shot. In 2017, a new world record was set by an unnamed Canadian shooter at a distance of 3,540 meters (11,614 feet or 2.2 miles). That puts us pretty close to the range we’re looking for. In fact, that’s the exact distance Bianca provides for the longest confirmed sniper shot in history, but she cites a Ukrainian shooter.

That might be because in 2023 the record was broken again by Viacheslav Kovalskyi of the Security Services of Ukraine. He waited with his spotter for hours in freezing weather before taking a shot from 3,800 meters (12,467 feet or 2.36 miles) away. The sniper Bianca mentions is likely a fictional combination of Kovalskyi and the Canadian sniper. At a record distance that’s just 15 meters shy (about 50 feet) of the Jackal’s shot, it’s probably only a matter of time before the perpetual arms race pushes reality beyond fiction.