Honestly, I have no idea how sniper combat with, ahem, near-peer enemy is supposed to look like. Like how does a high-tech military deal with enemy snipers?
Ever seen the Iraqi sniper video? It's like thirty minutes of American troops losing their heads, over and over again, all allegedly recorded by one guy with one rifle. If you don't have air support (a helicopter is better than a strike aircraft for this purpose) the only thing you can do is mitigate the damage and hope you find them eventually.
Helicopters and close air support (like the A-10 aircraft) usually. And artillery and mortars.
But if you're dealing with a near peer enemy, they have those things too. So it basically turns into WW1 with airstrikes in place of trenches as the main cause of death until someone gets air superiority.
These things scare the shit out of me. It's a hop-skip-jump from loitering anti-tank munitions to declaring a curfew then having a robot shoot anything with a thermal signature.
Civilian police already do this, and they're a hell of a lot cheaper and more prolific than flying robots.
Civilian police also have the advantage of a highly advanced processing system (ie, human brain) that allows them to distinguish between "poor black guy in a wheel chair who was coming right at me!!!" and "rich white lady in an SUV who can do whatever she likes because she pays my salary".
you're thinking about it wrong that's the whole point it's a transfer of funds from the government to private weapons companies which donate generously to campaigns and lucratively employ former politicians.
All my knowledge about snipers comes from Enemy at the Gate (I know, I know) so I assumed not letting people know your precise location was an important part of being a sniper.
Yes, but unless we're talking hardcore secret squirrel spec ops sniping (the kind who crawl for literal days to get to a hill, wait three more days, then shoot the nuts off a general before crawling back out again), most are engaging within a few hundred metres, and it'll be easy enough to start to narrow down their location.
If you're approaching a village that has a tall building, you probably assume they're in that building - otherwise you just keep taking cover until you get a good idea of a general location and direction, then call in mortars and artillery to flatten everything in that grid square. That's essentially how the Soviets tried to kill Simo Haya: they knew roughly which patch of woods he was operating in, so they just levelled the woods.
There's the "sniper" stuff that's, like, shooting somebody four miles away and hitting them by aiming at the sun.
Then there's the "sharp shooter" stuff where they're doing SWAT team styled "trying to shoot enemies that are shooting at my team" stuff. Pretty hard to keep your position concealed when you're constantly sending rounds downrange from the same location.
I think Designated Marksman" is the term the US uses. The Soviets had a thing where they had a guy at squad level with a powerful, accurate rifle and mid-range optics so the squad would have built-in precision firepower. I think the US usually attaches snipers to infantry platoons. From what I remember this goes back to WWII, where the US liked to have a small number of really good snipers, while Comrade Ivan preferred to have a lot of okay snipers to back up their front line troops.
Some asshole in hollywood: "Communism doesn't work because these two really hot guys want to bang Rachel Weiss but Rachel Weiss only wants to bang one of these really hot guys. Also the Soviets definitely machine-gunned their own retreating troops that's a real thing that happened trust us."
True. But, at the same time moving positions carries significant risks, especially if you miss your target.
Also, artillery shells and hellfire missiles don't need to be nearly as precise as a sniper's bullet. There's a reason the preferred weapon of insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were roadside bombs and not rifle rounds. You didn't last long by actually engaging with the enemy in person.
Depends on a lot of things. In Chechnya the Russians dealt with snipers in high-rise apartments by using armored vehicles with 23mm anti-aircraft guns to stitch the entire building. Meaning they went up and down the apartments with exploding cannon rounds systematically blowing the shit out of each apartment until they were confident the sniper, and anyone else in the building, was dead.
The other conventional method of dealing with snipers is to figure out roughly where they are and drop artillery on the area until the sniper is paste.
The US has a system called Boomerang (If your city has Shot-Spotter tech you're familiar with it) that uses an array of microphones and computers to figure out where a shot came from and roughly how far away it was. This can be used to dial in artillery or air strikes against the presumed location of the sniper.
You can also deploy your own snipers to hunt the sniper. This is less Enemy at the Gates and more a couple of guys with maps and binoculars plotting out where people had been taking fire from, then triangulating possible vantage points, then directing artillery fire on those points.
I've read about the 80s Shtora system that's supposed to protect soviet tanks from being targeted by lasers and thought that maybe, considering that every Russian or US solder is equipped with a bunch of high-tech gizmos and linked in a net, they could use that to triangulate the position of the sniper.
Honestly, I have no idea how sniper combat with, ahem, near-peer enemy is supposed to look like. Like how does a high-tech military deal with enemy snipers?
Ever seen the Iraqi sniper video? It's like thirty minutes of American troops losing their heads, over and over again, all allegedly recorded by one guy with one rifle. If you don't have air support (a helicopter is better than a strike aircraft for this purpose) the only thing you can do is mitigate the damage and hope you find them eventually.
Can I get a link to that? I need something wholesome to make my day even better.
Here's one, kinda shit quality: https://archive.org/details/201223_20201225
lol lmao
taking a shot every time a yankee gets shot
Helicopters and close air support (like the A-10 aircraft) usually. And artillery and mortars.
But if you're dealing with a near peer enemy, they have those things too. So it basically turns into WW1 with airstrikes in place of trenches as the main cause of death until someone gets air superiority.
Loitering munitions aka suicide drones are for when you don't have complete air superiority but can still fly something up for 10-15 minutes.
The US has over a dozen loitering munition systems in public knowledge, but not all of them have deployed in actual combat.
Turkey, Russia, Israel, and France make some as well.
EDIT: Yep, Biden is going to give Ukraine Switchblade
300600 drones. These can take out tanks in20km40 km+ radius.https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-asks-biden-admin-armed-234550236.html
https://www.army-technology.com/projects/switchblade-tactical-missile-system/
These things scare the shit out of me. It's a hop-skip-jump from loitering anti-tank munitions to declaring a curfew then having a robot shoot anything with a thermal signature.
They have those too. South Korea has automatic turrets along certain corridors in the DMZ.
Civilian police already do this, and they're a hell of a lot cheaper and more prolific than flying robots.
Civilian police also have the advantage of a highly advanced processing system (ie, human brain) that allows them to distinguish between "poor black guy in a wheel chair who was coming right at me!!!" and "rich white lady in an SUV who can do whatever she likes because she pays my salary".
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How much does raining down bombs on one guy with a Dragunov hiding in an attic come out to? 50,000 US per guy killed? 200,000 US?
War isn't merely Hell. It is a wasteful, useless Hell.
you're thinking about it wrong that's the whole point it's a transfer of funds from the government to private weapons companies which donate generously to campaigns and lucratively employ former politicians.
War is a racket
:porky-happy: :brrrrrrrrrrrr:
All my knowledge about snipers comes from Enemy at the Gate (I know, I know) so I assumed not letting people know your precise location was an important part of being a sniper.
Yes, but unless we're talking hardcore secret squirrel spec ops sniping (the kind who crawl for literal days to get to a hill, wait three more days, then shoot the nuts off a general before crawling back out again), most are engaging within a few hundred metres, and it'll be easy enough to start to narrow down their location.
If you're approaching a village that has a tall building, you probably assume they're in that building - otherwise you just keep taking cover until you get a good idea of a general location and direction, then call in mortars and artillery to flatten everything in that grid square. That's essentially how the Soviets tried to kill Simo Haya: they knew roughly which patch of woods he was operating in, so they just levelled the woods.
Also worth remembering - Simo did most of his killing with an SMG, from ambush. He wasn't just killing people from a mile away with a rifle.
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There's the "sniper" stuff that's, like, shooting somebody four miles away and hitting them by aiming at the sun.
Then there's the "sharp shooter" stuff where they're doing SWAT team styled "trying to shoot enemies that are shooting at my team" stuff. Pretty hard to keep your position concealed when you're constantly sending rounds downrange from the same location.
I think Designated Marksman" is the term the US uses. The Soviets had a thing where they had a guy at squad level with a powerful, accurate rifle and mid-range optics so the squad would have built-in precision firepower. I think the US usually attaches snipers to infantry platoons. From what I remember this goes back to WWII, where the US liked to have a small number of really good snipers, while Comrade Ivan preferred to have a lot of okay snipers to back up their front line troops.
Some asshole in hollywood: "Communism doesn't work because these two really hot guys want to bang Rachel Weiss but Rachel Weiss only wants to bang one of these really hot guys. Also the Soviets definitely machine-gunned their own retreating troops that's a real thing that happened trust us."
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True. But, at the same time moving positions carries significant risks, especially if you miss your target.
Also, artillery shells and hellfire missiles don't need to be nearly as precise as a sniper's bullet. There's a reason the preferred weapon of insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were roadside bombs and not rifle rounds. You didn't last long by actually engaging with the enemy in person.
Depends on how much fire support and/or time you got.
Depends on a lot of things. In Chechnya the Russians dealt with snipers in high-rise apartments by using armored vehicles with 23mm anti-aircraft guns to stitch the entire building. Meaning they went up and down the apartments with exploding cannon rounds systematically blowing the shit out of each apartment until they were confident the sniper, and anyone else in the building, was dead.
The other conventional method of dealing with snipers is to figure out roughly where they are and drop artillery on the area until the sniper is paste.
The US has a system called Boomerang (If your city has Shot-Spotter tech you're familiar with it) that uses an array of microphones and computers to figure out where a shot came from and roughly how far away it was. This can be used to dial in artillery or air strikes against the presumed location of the sniper.
You can also deploy your own snipers to hunt the sniper. This is less Enemy at the Gates and more a couple of guys with maps and binoculars plotting out where people had been taking fire from, then triangulating possible vantage points, then directing artillery fire on those points.
I've read about the 80s Shtora system that's supposed to protect soviet tanks from being targeted by lasers and thought that maybe, considering that every Russian or US solder is equipped with a bunch of high-tech gizmos and linked in a net, they could use that to triangulate the position of the sniper.
That's exactly what Boomerang and the systems that developed from it do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShotSpotter
Apparently they may not actually work, though.
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