[Genryu]

Here.

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...

[Cabbie]

Man, it must suck big time to be in platoons going against those snipers. Argh.

[Clave]

The SAS could have done it at night, no fuss, no bother...

[Turnsky]

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

[Setekh]

Hell yeah, SAS. Next best thing would have been the Master Chief. (Followed up by his Aussie UNSC marines, of course.)

[Clave]

Hehe, Master Chief... it would be sweet to have a squad armed with Needlers tho

[pyro-manic]

Big wusses. What're they so scared of, getting shot?

[Ford Prefect]

High Guard Lancer Corps!

[MicroPsycho]

what about a 'Mech, would that work?

[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.

[Clave]

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....

[Ford Prefect]

I would just direct huge speakers in the general direction of the snipers and play Michael Bolton albums non-stop.

[aldo_14]

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!

[JR2000Z]

Night missions won't make any difference if the enemy is using infa-red. If they're not, then they'd be long gone.

[Genryu]

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.

[Clave]

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....

[aldo_14]

It's not overkill if they don't kill the sniper, of course.....

[Sigma957]

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

[Clave]

Yep, and that says poor tactics to me....

[Sandwich]

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.