At 10:48 AM 11/21/02, Marc A. Schindler wrote:
Several JTF2 units have been rotated out of Afghanistan, specifically two sniper units, 6-3-Alpha A and 6-3-Alpha B. They have some interesting stories about sharing their sleeping positions (they didn't have bags, they just slept with plant and sand camouflage)
Gillie suits?
with scorpions and snakes, but the worst thing they faced was US Apache helicopters, who sometimes mistook them for Taliban. But their successes made a big difference, along with those of their US and British counterparts. 6-3-Alpha's motto is "one shot, one kill," and they have modified rifles that shoot steel-jacketed extra-powerful rounds that can pierce even light armour (including kevlar bulletproof shields).
Is that the .50-caliber sniper rifle?
(I don't know the official metric designation, but .5 inch = 12.7 mm, if that helps.)
Many nights, I am the last person in the building after class ends at 9 pm and I have to put away the lab and audiovisual equipment I've used, and frequently I'm still there when whichever campus police officer got that particular duty for that night comes around to lock up the building, and, if neither of us is in a hurry, sometimes we talk for a few minutes. One night the sergeant told me that he had done something the past weekend that he thought I would have enjoyed¹: he had gone to a tactical workshop where he had been trained to fire that .50-caliber sniper rifle.
_____
¹FWIW, what he meant was that I would have enjoyed the challenge of trying to hit a _target_ the size of a man's head a mile and a half away. So far, I have never pointed a weapon at a human being, much less fired one, and, God willing, I never will have any need to . . . although I did earn an "expert" rating with a pistol, so long as I am shooting at a man made of heavy paper . . .
2250 metres was the previous military distance kill record, set in Vietnam (official; obviously many covert successes don't make it into the book) but a Newfoundland MCpl made a 2430 m kill in Afghanistan that is apparently now the world record. The Taliban never even knew he was in anyone's scopes, and wouldn't even have heard the shot before he died. Each unit consisted of 3 men, and Mike Smith of the CBC interviewed them for an item on the news this morning (5 of them, actually -- a 6th member was seconded to them from the US Special Forces in an exchange program. Naturally he got nicknamed "Zee" which, I understand, is a popular brand of toilet paper in the US...).
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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