| From: | caseless@*****.com (Stephen Allee) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [OT] Re: Sniper rifles (Was: Re: The new SR4 map (removed |
| Date: | Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:24:05 -0700 |
trops, not necessarily for the troops that you are fighting against.
It's pretty much a given that when you take a bunch of 17-21 year
olds, scare the heck out of them, keep them tired, cold, and hungry,
there is the potential for extreme violence. And that violence needs
to be channelled and controlled in a "healthy" direction. The other
side has guys that are just as stressed out, and may or may not have
committed acts that violated your rules of engagement. Now you have
one or more incidents where you can get your troops righteously angry.
They are now target-focused and ready to hunt down the butchers that
committed these heinous acts, rather than seeing it as being sent
halfway around the world to shoot at guys who are just as scared as
they are. Since the other side "broke the rules", they can be
portrayed as less than human, and it reduces the morality questions
inherant in killing another human. It also means that your troops are
less likely to make the connection between being shot at and your
officer corps (Hey, Jonesy! If we pop the Colonel, we won't have to go
outside the FOB and get shot at!)
Therefore, having a set of rules and sticking to them gives a moral
high ground to those troops, whether or not it is justified. It is
only when the restrictions imposed by these rules are outweighed by
the advantages of breaking the rules (Such as the effective range of
the .50 BMG against point targets) that you start to have issues.
To the best of my knowledge, the current record for a combat shot is
roughly 1806 meters with a .50 BMG rifle. This was done by a canadian
shooter in Afganistan firing U.S. ammunition. If I recall correctly,
there was something of a stink in several canadian papers about how
the ammo that their troops were issued started to fail miserably at
ranges greater than 1500 meters, so they were borrowing US ammo for
their long shots. By combat shot, I am referring to a cold-bore shot
from a weapon that has not been zeroed in on the target prior to that
engagement. The longest shot that I am aware of was done at just under
2500 meters with a .50 BMG M-2 machine gun. The shot was taken by
Carlos Hathcock back in the Vietnam War. The weapon used was a .50 BMG
M-2 belt fed machine gun set to single shot. It had an Unertl 8x scope
and was zeroed in by adjusting fire until it intersected the target.
