Dead Men Risen: The snipers' story

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... story.html

Operating from a remote patrol base in Helmand, two British snipers were responsible for killing 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days. In one remarkable feat of marksmanship, two insurgents were dispatched with a single bullet.

Keep up the good work!

After reading the story, I do have some qualms about guys taking shots at 1000 yards. Since the enemy isn't uniformed, how do you know they are bad guys? Basing a shot on a civvie carrying a walkie talkie sounds a little too hard core for me. And if the whole base is full of Taliban, why not call in a air strike?

I watched a special on snipers on I think it was the history channel a couple of weeks ago. Amazing.

I'd still put my money on Marine snipers.

Semper Fi

SS109 wrote: After reading the story, I do have some qualms about guys taking shots at 1000 yards. Since the enemy isn't uniformed, how do you know they are bad guys? Basing a shot on a civvie carrying a walkie talkie sounds a little too hard core for me. And if the whole base is full of Taliban, why not call in a air strike?

The object of the sniping is to encourage the bad guys to leave without destroying a village full of elderly, women and children. By forcing them to limit their activities, because death could come from any direction, at any time, and to you specifically, the incentive to remain and continue in your activities is reduced substantially. Your morale erodes, and your desire to fight diminishes. When it is the commander or other leader whose day has come, the next guy in the chain of command might not be as good. Get far enough down that chain through selective attrition and you wind up with an inexperienced and thus less effective group that you are dealing with that is more easily dispatched since it is less coordinated and less cohesive due to the lack of experience among its members.

When they say that they knew the guy on the cycle with the radio was a Taliban commander it isn't the same as a random civilian in the same situation. Snipers spend more time accumulating intelligence than they do engaging targets. They spend most of their time in the hide observing, not shooting.

But at a thousand yards, you could pay/force someone to go out in your clothes to see if it was safe.

SS109 wrote: But at a thousand yards, you could pay/force someone to go out in your clothes to see if it was safe.

The guy with the radio was shot at 200 yards, not 1000 - after being identified and having warning shots fired to stop when he was even closer than that. The shot was effected 200 yards away, while the target was moving. Don't know how much time you have spent spotting SS109, but spotting isn't confined to being done with a fixed power 10x scope. The spotter is usually using something with a much higher magnification than what the shooter is. If that was a tactic being employed, the outpost would have heard about it from the locals who were upset at losing their loved ones to sniper fire as well as having had the opportunity to witness folks being forced against their will into the area before exiting the area wearing different clothes.

The article says 73 were killed in 40 days. Days that generally started at sun up and ended at sun down. Figure 2 a day, for two snipers, over a total of about 20 man hours of time. That's a lot of time spent glassing and observing for only a few minutes of engaging. Like I said, their job contains a lot more intelligence gathering than it does shooting.