DickHardman

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DickHardman

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DickHardman

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Mike Brewer

I was just talking to some Ranger buddies, and the article you posted may have skewed the American attitude somewhat. Most of our guys love the idea that insurgents are trying to exchange small arms fire instead of relying on IEDs. It shows a couple of "good" things. First, if IED incidents go down and small arms fire incidents goes up, the bad guys may be either running low on explosives or may be planning to use a whole bunch of explosives for one big attack someplace. Either way, it becomes easier to track and combat. Second, our guys are better at everything in terms of man-to-man warfare than the insurgents. In each and every case where the insurgents stood and fought, they lost. That includes the sniper-vs-sniper incident when the insurgent was shooting at people from a window and was taken out with the longest shot ever recorded. (http://forums.military.com/eve/forum.../5980050940001)

Our soldiers have been begging for an open fight with the insurgents, and my guess is that if they get it, we'll see a victory in a much shorter timeframe.

Mike Brewer

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5638298.html

Another indicator of the kinds of things that are being fielded (albeit currently in small numbers) to track single shots such as the ones in the article you posted. Before long, follow-up shots won't be needed to acquire and kill the bad guys.

DickHardman

........................................com/Articles/KillingShot_2430Metres.asp[/url]

kingoftheforest

Yes our military would love nothing better than a stand and fight war from the insurgent, but I hope that they are not attempting to instill false confidence in our military and the hit us hard.

They may be trying to get us to build a big head of steam and start attacking full on in a stand fight only to have strategically placed IED's and then monkey trap us into a mass killing of U.S. troops. I have confidence intell would be on top of this but sometimes as I have said before Mr. Murphy works overtime and lots of wars have been won by one little mistake.

At one battle Napoleon lost horribly because his reserves, who were from another country(maybe Prussia I believe or he could have been fighting them, but I think he was fighting the Russians, I'll look it up and get back), and their calendar was a week behind his so they showed up late or he would have routed the enemy.

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Mike Brewer

Again, nice points! Hats off to you of late, both Dick and KOTF! If I could rep you both, I would.

As for the slieight of hand, I hope you're right. I also hope that our own troops haven't forgotten their own lessons, and the fact that they too can use such tactics. I wouldn't dismiss the idea that it's what's drawn out these snipers in the first place. If I were a commander, it would make sense to use "insurgent friendly" neighborhoods to do just that. Get them to stick their heads out, and then force them to use up some of their most expensive resources and best-trained people falling for the bait...

I know that our troops are some of the finest, bravest, best-trained fighting men and women anywhere. The press gives them a bum rap at times, and paints them as some massive, bumbling force that's at the mercy of any sneaky or underhanded tactic our enemy attempts, but the facts are a lot different. Our commanders have run some damned impressive deception ops (look into the two that faked Saddam's troops into the North and West of Iraq while we swarmed up from the South), and they still have a good grasp of how to run a good head fake. We won't hear about them for a few years, I'm sure, but I have faith that our commanders and troops know how to fight a war.

Now if we can just get the politicos to let them...

Mike Brewer

Oh, and Dick - the Canook did it with a .50 cal. The Army Sergeant did it with a .308 (7.62 Nato). The effective range of the 7.62 is only about 800 meters (though snipers train, I understand, to about 1000). The .50 is used in competition shoots out to 2000 meters and beyond. Both are amazing shots, especially on bad guys in the heat of the moment, though I gotta hand it to the American for making his shot through a window!

Hats off to both of them for taking out bad guys and saving good guys!

DickHardman