Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Genryu on November 12, 2004, 04:07:07 am
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Here. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/11/news/sniper.html)
I mean, I can understand trying to disloge snipers, but calling airstrike nearly each time, and leaving the city in ruins ? Not the best way to improve your reputation in this country...
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Man, it must suck big time to be in platoons going against those snipers. Argh.
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The SAS could have done it at night, no fuss, no bother...
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Originally posted by Clave
The SAS could have done it at night, no fuss, no bother...
peace through heavy artilllery...
but yeah, the SAS woulda had 'em running for terror :p
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Hell yeah, SAS. Next best thing would have been the Master Chief. :p (Followed up by his Aussie UNSC marines, of course.)
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Hehe, Master Chief... it would be sweet to have a squad armed with Needlers tho :eek:
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Big wusses. What're they so scared of, getting shot?
:nervous:
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High Guard Lancer Corps!
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what about a 'Mech, would that work?
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You guys are being dumb. Snipers are among the scariest things the enemy has. Out of nowhere, John Doe on your left has a bullet rip through his left eyeball, leaving a gaping exit hole in the back of his helmet, blood and brain spatter on the guy meters behind him.
And nobody has a friggin clue where the shot came from.
Go ahead, call it overkill. Morons.
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OK, you want a serious answer? Then I will say again, night attacks, clearing each building, then moving on, by the SAS. They are expert in this stuff, unlike your average grunt. Obviously you will get pockets of strong resistance, but there is no way they would have allowed themselves to be pinned by one sniper for a whole day....
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I would just direct huge speakers in the general direction of the snipers and play Michael Bolton albums non-stop.
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The SAS would probably just use a sniper themselves... they do have the best in the world at it, after all (accurate over several miles, they were taking out light armoured vehicles from 1.2 km in Afghanistan, for example)
Albiet I don't think the SAS are really intended for use in large scale, high visibility infantry operations such as this - they're more, IIRC, suited to guerrilla style attacks and recon behind enemy lines.
Originally posted by Ford Prefect
I would just direct huge speakers in the general direction of the snipers and play Michael Bolton albums non-stop.
Now that's a war crime!
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Night missions won't make any difference if the enemy is using infa-red. If they're not, then they'd be long gone.
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Originally posted by Sandwich
You guys are being dumb. Snipers are among the scariest things the enemy has. Out of nowhere, John Doe on your left has a bullet rip through his left eyeball, leaving a gaping exit hole in the back of his helmet, blood and brain spatter on the guy meters behind him.
And nobody has a friggin clue where the shot came from.
Go ahead, call it overkill. Morons.
I believe you, if only for the fact that as far as I can remember, you're the only one here with recent active military experience. But still, Americans MUST understand that to win the war, they first have to win the heart of the population. Destroying many homes by way of aerial bombardment to get rid of ONE frigging guy is not the way to go. That's why I said that it was overkill. They used the best method to get rid of the guy, but not the best method to win the war.
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Infrared is not daylight, and beaming out a few watts of infrared nightsight makes you a good target to someone with the right equipment.
But, the point is, tactics win battles - if you have the right approach, then you will succeed. It's as much mental as physical, you have to think fast, move quickly, and take aggressive action in street fighting; it's not the same as open battle....
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It's not overkill if they don't kill the sniper, of course.....
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pair of dingy three-story buildings squatting along Highway 10, dropping quarter-ton bombs each time. They fired 35 or so 155-millimeter artillery shells, 10 shots from the muzzles of Abrams tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from their automatic rifles. The building was a smoking ruin.
Could be called overkill that they used that much just for two buildings.
edit- even after doings all this the sniper/s kept on shooting :shaking:
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Yep, and that says poor tactics to me....
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Originally posted by Genryu
But still, Americans MUST understand that to win the war, they first have to win the heart of the population. Destroying many homes by way of aerial bombardment to get rid of ONE frigging guy is not the way to go. That's why I said that it was overkill. They used the best method to get rid of the guy, but not the best method to win the war.
We're agreed there.
However, just keep in mind that all those glory stories of the SAS/SpecOps/etc forces pulling off incredible missions with precision and efficiency - all that is completely and utterly dependant on intel - and it has to be accurate and updated-to-the-minute intel.
Without proper intel, you can't plan properly.
Without a plan, you're reacting, not acting.
And when you're stuck reacting to the enemy, you can't take initiative, can't go on the offensive. And that's the way to lose a war for sure.
So, put yourself in the position of those Marines. They find themselves under sniper fire. Obviously they had no prior intel on there being a sniper there specifically, otherwise they'd have set up a sniper of their own and taken him out before allowing him to pin them down. So, there's no specific prior intel.
That means that the SAS, with all due respect, is only as useful as any other trained military force. Yeah, their equipment is a notch above the rest, their training a notch more intensive and comprehensive than the rest, but I'm willing to wager that if you ask any special forces person what the "secret" to their success is, he'd say that it's all in the planning and intel.
So no, the SAS wouldn't have made a bit of difference in that case.
And as for the sweeping house-to-house idea - heh. I did exactly that in Jenin in early 2002. Scary as hell, since you have general guidelines on how to clear a generic "structure", but of course you have no specific intel on each and every building. But if you want to minimize the collateral damage, if you want to prevent civillian loss of life, then that's what you have to do. Obviously this was not as high on the priority list of the US forces as it was on the IDF's. :doubt:
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I can't find any online links, but the **** is going to hit the fan when people start seeing the latest videos from Fallujah... mainly the one with the US Marine killing the unarmed, injured rebel lying on the floor bleeding out.
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No such thing as overkill. Just "open fire" and "I need to reload."
Schlock Mercenary joke.
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Originally posted by vyper
I can't find any online links, but the **** is going to hit the fan when people start seeing the latest videos from Fallujah... mainly the one with the US Marine killing the unarmed, injured rebel lying on the floor bleeding out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/default.stm
See BBC News & Video on the bottom right (there'll probably be the uncesnored version floating around soon if not already)
Of course, the main issue of that one IMO is why a previous goup of marines left badly wounded hostiles in an abandoned building overnight. Because it's always likely you'll get at least one lone nutter in the military (!), but leaving prisoners to (effectively) die sounds like a military policy-stroke-decision going beyond the actions of one individual.
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Be funny to see how they justify this...
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Originally posted by vyper
Be funny to see how they justify this...
Presumably the dumping of injured wil be classed as either a necessity (under fire? - but I thought Falluja was under control and 'liberated'...), or a logistical error.
And the execution will either be judged as the soldier going a bit nuts (having been recently injured), or that the executed bloke was moving in such a way as to indicate a bomb was strapped round him.
something nice & tenuous will be found, no doubt.
NB: in cases anyones wondering, this isn't the footage of a marine peering over a wall, and then apparently shooting a man identified as wounded earlier
this is a group of marines going into an abandoned building to pick up a group of injured insurgents dumped the previous day by another unit. One marine identifies one man (one of the survivors, along with another bloke in better shape - the others obviously died in the night) as still breathing. He then shoots the guy - who looks quite elderly IIRC - point blank as the camera is still focused on said injured guy (the bbc footage is understandably blanked out at this point). There are no weapons visible in the building beyond the marines (according to the embedded reporter who took the footage... NBC, I think), and they have checked / are checking for booby traps. IIRC there is no discernable movement beyond breathing from the executed bloke prior to his death, only shallow breathing and maybe a very slight head movement as he wakes up.
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War is Hell....
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Welcome to the age of televised war, right in your living room. Average people do not understand the intricacies of the battlefield - heck, most grunt-level soldiers don't either.
War has always been this "cruel" and "inhumane". Boo-frickety-hoo. Lazy ass public only complains when the images are shown during their microwave dinner over the dining room 23" plasma HDTV. "Eww, that was disgusting! Did you see that, honey? Oh, pass the rice, please." But the hundreds and thousands of written sources on the brutalities of war never got much notice, did they?
Lazy (m)asses. Go fight with your eternally-midnight-blinking VCRs and let the military fight their own fight. :disgusted:
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So...people are becoming increasingly and visually aware of exactly how **** a solution to problems war is, and you'd rather they went "fair enough, lets send in more youngsters to fight"?
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On one occasion, the snipers tensed when they heard movement in the direction of a smoldering building. A cat sauntered out, unconcerned with anything but making its rounds in the neighborhood.
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"Can I shoot it, sir?" a sniper asked an officer.
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"Absolutely not!" came the reply
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hahahaha!!
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I want to see the full video, aparently the guy was playing dead, he was told not to move and then he moved and was shot, put yourself in the mareen's shoes and watch the video one time, try to think is that whould you have done in that situation?
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Originally posted by Bobboau
I want to see the full video, aparently the guy was playing dead, he was told not to move and then he moved and was shot, put yourself in the mareen's shoes and watch the video one time, try to think is that whould you have done in that situation?
IIRc he wasn't told not to move. The marine saw him move, shouted 'he's ****ing faking he's dead' and shot him.
The cameraman also said it appeared as if the marines had shot the other 4 injured when they entered the building - I'm not sure how correct / how much evidence there is for this particular claim, because I don't have the link handy (either in the bbc or Herald story, I think).
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At one point, they thought that they had a bead on someone running back and forth between the two buildings. Then Captain Christopher Spears exclaimed: "He's on a bike!"
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And somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.
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You know, if it wasn't so tragic, this'd almost read like a Mel Brooks movie :(
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Eh, theres this thing called the Geneva convention Sandwich, I'm sure you learned about it having been in the military and your country having signed it, right? I'd have thought somebody who regularly points out how humane his own army is would have been the first to speak out against the execution of wounded prisioners of war, but then again the IDF have been accused of doing the same sort of thing regularly.
Anyways more good reading on the sort of fighting that went on:
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11394781%5E663,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21battle.html?pagewanted=1&ei=1&en=f042c7a6fefd8917&ex=1102001547
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Originally posted by aldo_14
So...people are becoming increasingly and visually aware of exactly how **** a solution to problems war is, and you'd rather they went "fair enough, lets send in more youngsters to fight"?
No, I'm not saying anything for or against war at all. What I am saying is that all these people who all of a sudden are shocked by the brutal reality of war are ignoramuses. Whether that war is "good" or "bad" - justified or not, if you'd rather put it in those terms - is not the point I was making.
Originally posted by Gank
Eh, theres this thing called the Geneva convention Sandwich, I'm sure you learned about it having been in the military and your country having signed it, right? I'd have thought somebody who regularly points out how humane his own army is would have been the first to speak out against the execution of wounded prisioners of war, but then again the IDF have been accused of doing the same sort of thing regularly.
Mmm. Tell me, what army in the world doesn't use standard 5.56mm ammo? Far as I know, that was banned in the Geneva Convention for being to brutal. Of course, this was something I (thought I) learned in my early army days, when my Hebrew wasn't all that good. It was either the ammo size or the rifled barrels of the M16s, I'm pretty sure. If someone could hunt up an English version of the Geneva Convention agreements (i.e. not legalese please), I'd like to look at it.
And as for shooting those guys, yeah, I'm just as against it as the next guy. BUT, I also realize that pictures - especially pictures by reporters - never tell the whole story, and often only show the portion of the story the way the reporter/editor wants it to be told. What, you think that the editor guy in Spiderman 2 was just some Hollywood character, with no basis in reality?
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Ewwwwwwwwwwwww...sticky one...
The thing is that, you are a soldier, working in one of the worst environemts to be Infantry in, i.e. a sniper ridden city, especially when the enemy know the geography of the city better than you do. You've spent you're entire day either hiding behind rocks or firing at something you cannot actually see. That sort of day makes a man jumpy....
I'm not justitifying what happened in any way, partly because, in all honesty, I don't know what happened, but I suspect it is the same mistake being repeated over and over, the insurgents don't actually kill many GI's but they do make them nervous and trigger happy enough to ruin relationships with the Iraqis.
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Double post.....
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MegaPost........
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Posting Spree......
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MMMMMMMMMULTIPOST!!! :nervous:
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Holy ****! Where'd those come from!?!?!?!
Must have had a fit on the submit key or something..... :nervous:
edit : I like that......MMMMMMMMMULTIPOST!!! ..... :lol:
Posts edited to provide lighter reading ;)
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Originally posted by Ghostavo
MMMMMMMMMULTIPOST!!! :nervous:
ROFL!! That's worth not deleting those extra posts for! :p
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Mmm. Tell me, what army in the world doesn't use standard 5.56mm ammo? Far as I know, that was banned in the Geneva Convention for being to brutal. Of course, this was something I (thought I) learned in my early army days, when my Hebrew wasn't all that good. It was either the ammo size or the rifled barrels of the M16s, I'm pretty sure. If someone could hunt up an English version of the Geneva Convention agreements (i.e. not legalese please), I'd like to look at it.
Eh, no. theres nothing in the geneva convention about ammunition calibers or barrel rifling, it concerns wmds and the treatment of prisioners and civilians. Good man Sandwich, nice to see exactly how knowledgable the IDF keeps its men on the international treatys it claims to uphold.
Btw, you may be reffering to the Hague Convention which prohibts the use of hollow-point or dum-dum bullets, these are illegal under that treaty but I dont think any other army considers them standard ammo. That would be FMJ.
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Originally posted by Flipside
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww...sticky one...
Its not a sticky one, its open and shut. The man executed a wounded and unarmed prisioned. Nobody would be going on about miigating circumstances had it been an insurgent who executed a unarmed wounded US soldier, ditch the hypocrisy.
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But it's not open and shut, as I said, I can't say what happened because I don't know what happened, I've heard a few versions even in this thread. Hypocrisy would be assuming I did.
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The argument for mitagting circumstances - in case it's not been mentioned before in this thread- is that the marine who did the shooting had recently seen a colleague killed by a booby-trapped body. So it's really a question of whether the movement seen by the injured insurgent was sufficient to justify said threat - and a secondary question of whether said marine was even in a fit mental state to be fighting (having also been injured the previous day).
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Originally posted by Sandwich
You guys are being dumb. Snipers are among the scariest things the enemy has. Out of nowhere, John Doe on your left has a bullet rip through his left eyeball, leaving a gaping exit hole in the back of his helmet, blood and brain spatter on the guy meters behind him.
And nobody has a friggin clue where the shot came from.
Go ahead, call it overkill. Morons.
Agreed.
I love how we all sit around on our little forum commenting on how incompetent everyone is when no one who does so has any idea what warfare is like.
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Riiight. You do know it was caught on camera right?
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Well, the fact of the matter is that, if this guy 'assassinated' someone then he deserves to be dealt with one way or the other, no matter what the mitigating circumstances.
However, I am not stuck in the middle of a Warzone, I don't know the pressures and fears these people, on both sides, have to live with each day. That is probably why I am uninclined to pass judgement on him.
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Originally posted by Beowulf
Agreed.
I love how we all sit around on our little forum commenting on how incompetent everyone is when no one who does so has any idea what warfare is like.
It's either that or give the military carte blanche to do what it wants without having to worry about criticism. After all, are most politicians soldiers? Usually not - so why should they tell the military what to do? In fact, most people have no experience of working in politics and balancing social welfare, etc, so maybe we shouldn't be criticising politicians either?
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Flipside, here ya go:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6556034/
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Originally posted by Gank
Eh, no. theres nothing in the geneva convention about ammunition calibers or barrel rifling, it concerns wmds and the treatment of prisioners and civilians. Good man Sandwich, nice to see exactly how knowledgable the IDF keeps its men on the international treatys it claims to uphold.
Btw, you may be reffering to the Hague Convention which prohibts the use of hollow-point or dum-dum bullets, these are illegal under that treaty but I dont think any other army considers them standard ammo. That would be FMJ.
I could have sworn there was something against 5.56mm rounds, perhaps in combination with the rifled barrels. It was in regards to how those bullets, once they encounter resistance, will completely rip the target up from the inside, going in every which way. There was this one case of a guy who got shot by one bullet and had 3 entrance wounds and 3 exit wounds.
The classic demonstration is to fill a container full of water - doesn't have to be a big container - shoebox size. Fire a 5.56 from an M-16 at 50 yards, and then go look at the entrance and exit holes. They won't be in line with each other.
Anyway, the whole thing is from my memory of what we were told over 7 years ago, in the fall of '97, so I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out I remembered wrongly. However, one thing I do remember for sure is the whole phosphor-as-a-weapon issue (phosphor grenades for example) being outlawed by the same convention. Does that help narrow things down?
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Anyway, the whole thing is from my memory of what we were told over 7 years ago, in the fall of '97, so I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out I remembered wrongly. However, one thing I do remember for sure is the whole phosphor-as-a-weapon issue (phosphor grenades for example) being outlawed by the same convention. Does that help narrow things down?
Wouldn't that be Hague convention?
Here's some linky people might find useful when preaching about "Genova this and that! THEY FORBID NAPALM" (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/hague/hague5.html)
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The 1899 convention is the one which covers expanding or exploding bullets. If I get you right Sandwich you're saying the IDF use hollow-points as the standard round? Because no other rifle ammunition is illegal.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/b0d5f4c1f4b8102041256739003e6366/f5ff4d9ca7e41925c12563cd0051616b?OpenDocument
Neither is phosphorous as a weapon afaik.
White phosphorus shells lit up the sky as armour drove through the breach and sent flaming material on to suspect insurgent haunts.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/09/wirq09.xml
You may be thinking of Phosgene, which was one of the main gases used in ww1 and most definitley is illegal.
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Originally posted by Gank
The 1899 convention is the one which covers expanding or exploding bullets. If I get you right Sandwich you're saying the IDF use hollow-points as the standard round? Because no other rifle ammunition is illegal.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/b0d5f4c1f4b8102041256739003e6366/f5ff4d9ca7e41925c12563cd0051616b?OpenDocument
Neither is phosphorous as a weapon afaik.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/09/wirq09.xml
You may be thinking of Phosgene, which was one of the main gases used in ww1 and most definitley is illegal.
All flame weaponry (flame-throwers, FAE, thermite, napalm, TOS etc.) is legal, even though they are not to be used against targets with civilian value, or something as vague.
Bah, it all comes up to pressing and holding A, then giving your fire team a point fire area and advancing on bound overwatch, while using the other fire team's M203 gunner against the goddamn Zeke who is holding you back.
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Originally posted by Gank
Riiight. You do know it was caught on camera right?
Thank you for proving my point.
Have you been involved in urban warfare for the past two months, going from door to door watching your buddies get shot up? Do you know what it's like to pass someone you think is dead then find out he's pointing an AK at your fire team?
You don't take chances in war. How do you know that man wasn't wounded and waiting for a soldier to come closer to let go of a grenade? I am not going to take a chance that risks my life or my buddy's life, nor would any other sane individual.
I don't see a western outcry when terrorists hijack a bus full of newly trained Iraqi police men and slaughter them all, or decimate a police station and leave dozens dead.
Say what you want. It's easy to do from a keyboard.
~Beowulf
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[q]Have you been involved in urban warfare for the past two months[/q]
Have you?
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Originally posted by Beowulf
I don't see a western outcry when terrorists hijack a bus full of newly trained Iraqi police men and slaughter them all, or decimate a police station and leave dozens dead.
Actually, you do.
But it's also expected of these people - would you expect the same from professional soldiers?
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I've got a friend who swears that smaller callibur bullets are banned, since they tend to leave the victim alive to bleed to death. he said that someone named Shugart (Itallian i belive) outfitted his troops with larger bullets, because the smaller ones (before banned) would often fail to even knock over an enemy soldier, and simply made holes in them...
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Originally posted by Beowulf
Thank you for proving my point.
You dont have a point, if you read the article I posted where the cameraman who shot the footage describes the incident, you'll see that the soldier shot one wounded man and left two who were also alive, ****ting all over your arguement that he was covering his back.
Btw, who the **** are you to lecture other people on whether or not they're qualified to talk on a subject a seventeen year old obviously isnt. You're not even eligible to join the military yet, let alone lecture other people on how ****ing hard it is to be in it. You're right you're not going to take that risk, you're in college. ****ing hypocritical ******.
http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_11_21_archive.html#110107420331292115
I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time-something that now seems prophetic. It was this:
"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating. That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who's been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor -- and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground."
I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.
So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.
Originally posted by Hippo
I've got a friend who swears that smaller callibur bullets are banned, since they tend to leave the victim alive to bleed to death. he said that someone named Shugart (Itallian i belive) outfitted his troops with larger bullets, because the smaller ones (before banned) would often fail to even knock over an enemy soldier, and simply made holes in them...
Sounds like dung Hippo, you cant just change smaller caliber bullets for bigger ones, you have to change weapons as well. The problem hes heard of is a US one with the standard 5.56 round, was happening in Somalia and recently in Afghanistan. The round was supposed to be replaced, not sure if it was.
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Changing weapons was implied...
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Well changing weapons wholesale in a war isnt exactly that easy, militarys use standard weapons and ammunition so unless your enemy has something better than you you're stuck with what you've got. Its not like you can go down to the K-mart and get new guns. Anyways I believe hes reffering to Sgt Randy Shughart, US Delta Force killed in Somalia, used an M14 because the heavier round had more stopping power.
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This was a problem encountered by a lot of Middle Eastern bodyguards. The temptation was to buy the most powerful gun you could afford and equip your troops with it, but a high-v rifle is for headshots or disabling an opponent, not slowing down someone who is already dead in their own eyes.
A friend of mine was actually one of the people sent over there by the UK to train the bodyguards in using pistols and semis..... :nervous:
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Originally posted by Hippo
I've got a friend who swears that smaller callibur bullets are banned, since they tend to leave the victim alive to bleed to death. he said that someone named Shugart (Itallian i belive) outfitted his troops with larger bullets, because the smaller ones (before banned) would often fail to even knock over an enemy soldier, and simply made holes in them...
Ding. Smaller caliber [like 5.56 or 5.45] has few significant strong points. It is lighter to carry, bullet has flatter trajectory (it is more accurate in long ranges, believe it or not) and just wounding an enemy is better than outright killing him, when it comes to traditional enemies. Wounded people are great demoralizers and a burden to their comrades.
7.62x39 rounds are heavier, granted. Whether their hitting power is bigger is under dispute, general consensus being that yes, it is. re hit . But it is also a bit more inaccurate, heavier and requires heavier weapons to compensate for more brutal recoil. On full auto mode the weaknesses of light weapon + heavier ammo become quite clear.
Oh yes, bear in mind that there are quite a few "7.62" rounds around. There is the oh so common 7.62x39 - the Kalashnikov round. 7.62x52 for Russian heavier weapons, such as PK's and PKM's, is also a "7.62" round, as is 7.62x51 NATO, which weapons like G3 and M14 use.
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Originally posted by Gank
The 1899 convention is the one which covers expanding or exploding bullets. If I get you right Sandwich you're saying the IDF use hollow-points as the standard round? Because no other rifle ammunition is illegal.
No, the IDf doesn't use hollow-point as standard, nor in any other manner of which I am aware. The first hollow-point bullet I saw was in the personal handgun of a reservist, completely unconnected with the IDF.
Originally posted by Gank
Neither is phosphorous as a weapon afaik.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/09/wirq09.xml
You may be thinking of Phosgene, which was one of the main gases used in ww1 and most definitley is illegal.
Israel has phosphorous grenade launchers on many of her armored vehicles. It's quite a potent and painful anti-infantry weapon, I'm told. Burns the skin, water only excaberates the problem, etc. I saw it used twice in my whole career, both times during training excercises.
Moving on, the Belgian MAG squad-level machine gun (http://www.brainziper.com/images/mag.jpg) uses 7.62mm, and was the squad-level machine gun used by the IDF when I was in (1997). But fairly soon after I went in, they started phasing the MAGs out and replacing them with the Israeli-made 5.56mm Negev light machine gun (http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/small_arms/negev/Negev.html).
Originally posted by vyper
[q]Have you been involved in urban warfare for the past two months[/q]
Have you?
*waves*
His actions, even if unjustified, are understandable. Combat as infantry in built-up areas is pretty much the worst nightmare a soldier can have. Go watch Black Hawk Down or something - that was, on my word as a soldier - quite realistic in depicting the battlefield in buit-up areas, including the tension and nerves and such.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
It's either that or give the military carte blanche to do what it wants without having to worry about criticism. After all, are most politicians soldiers? Usually not - so why should they tell the military what to do? In fact, most people have no experience of working in politics and balancing social welfare, etc, so maybe we shouldn't be criticising politicians either?
Best post in this thread man. You said it all.
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Or did he? We can and we should criticize them. The politicians because we elected them. The military because they're using our tax money. We have the right of participation.
White phosphorous has been used as a weapon since at least the Second World War, mainly in artillery rounds. Sandwich's description of the effects is pretty much accurate.