driftrider

There is nothing about the 308 Winchester that makes it any more accurate than the .30-06 given equal quality rifles. The 308 is "good enough" for military snipers because of logistics, not performance. Just about every NATO medium machine gun and many NATO service rifles are chambered for the NATO standard 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. It only makes sense for the military to choose the same cartridge for its general purpose sniper cartridge. For true long range shooting there are better cartridges available (like, say, the 338 Lapua), but you won't find them in every friendly hootch, humvee, tank and fighting hole in the battle area. If the shipment of 338 Lapua ammo doesn't get to the snipers in the field, they're SOL. But if their rifles take 7.62x51mm NATO, in a pinch they need to look no further than the nearest M-60A3 or M240 gunner. Civilian police snipers followed suit simply because they could easily draw on military ballistics and range data, use military 7.62x51mm Match Ball ammo, and there is plenty of real world experience with the cartridge. Every professional sniper in the western world can recite the 308 Win drop table from memory and be real world accurate to within a few inches out to 1000 yards, regardless of ammo variations. Since civilian police SWAT and SRT teams generally hire from these ranks, it saves them tons of time and money to chamber their sniper rifles the same as the military.

It's also important to note that American Marine and army snipers used the .30-06 for 50 years before the 308 Win was adopted to replace it for both service rifles and medium MG's. Again, for logistical reasons.

Mike