I don’t think the OP is talking about a well prepared ambush. It sounds more like harassing fire, which you’d take cover for.
I think I get where shijinn is coming from; it’s very counter-intuitive to the lay person.
Are you saying that it would be like shooting baskets–if immediately after you released the ball you receive almost no visual or auditory feedback? That the best you can get as you’re learning is someone saying “you missed somewhat to the left(ish). I think.” And that you get very little time on the court to practice?
I think building on the counter-intuitiveness is that illiteracy, lack of experience, and lack of education say nothing about innate intelligence. That if I were suddenly handed a weapon (LOOK OUT!!!) and given a few days to practice, my skills would (in my make-believe world) improve dramatically from day 1. I need no math or whatnot to make judgment differences between hitting something 100 meters away and then 500 meters–I’d end up learning both by trial and error. With enough ‘practice’, I would never be able to compete with a formally trained soldier, but my accuracy and ability to hit a target would improve despite never knowing the actual physics and math behind what I’m doing.
It’s also counter-intuitive to think that an average soldier in a firefight is doing those types of mental gymnastics in his head as he’s returning fire. That the gymnastics take place during training, eventually to be taken over by muscle memory and hand/eye coordinated learning.
Pretty much. But even getting the “missed somewhat to the left” is even more information than they are likely to get. If they miss low, they will probably see the dirt fly. But missing high, right, or left, will not provide any feedback whatsoever. And without a trained spotter with a scope, nobody will be able to help him much with his confusion.
For the average Soldier, no. But that average Soldier has an advance scope on his rifle that handles most of the range issues for him. At least as far as gravity is concerned. However, that scope does not come out of the box zeroed to his weapon. He has to go to the range. Either he, or someone in charge at the range, must understand all of the steps required to get that thing zeroed properly. Point of aim isn’t always the desired point of impact. And most importantly, that Soldier has been taught how to properly aim to begin with. Do not take this part for granted. Sight picture/sight alignment/face position/eye relief… it all plays a huge role that a person just trying to learn on his own is not going to naturally figure out. Even factory iron sights require proper zeroing before they are effective.
Here is a picture I have been looking for on my hard drive since I made my first post. I finally found it. It gives a good idea of the total lack of proper shooting knowledge/experience the Afghanis have. Here is a recent graduate of what is basically their “West Point”. He would have received the best basic marksmanship training the country can muster. Yet, he can’t even keep his eyes open when he shoots. This was not a fluke captured by the camera. This was every single pull of the trigger.
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/6565/40971435897731064659666.jpg
I’ve seen stats that during the Vietnam war US troops fired something like 50,000 rounds for every enemy killed (with the ratio for other US wars being approximately along the same order of magnitude.) True? Thoughts?
In a report by Colonel Hays Park to the USMC, he quotes statistics from the US military records regarding the consumption of ammunition in recent wars.
“In World War II, the United States and its allies expended 25,000 rounds of ammunition to kill a single enemy soldier. In the Korean War, the ammunition expenditure had increased four fold to 100,00 rounds per soldier. In the Vietnam War, that figure had doubled to 200,000 rounds of ammunition for the death of a single enemy soldier.”
The above was extracted from the book: “Snipers” by Craig Cabell and Richard Brown.
John Blake Publishing;
London 2005.
ISBN 1 84454 131 2
Maybe it’s an urban warfare thing? I only ever served in Samarra and Baghdad. Nobody ever had frags. We had 203’s, but even then I think we had maybe 2 frag rounds. Mostly smoke and shot.
Which is pretty much what I was thinking. I got blown up and rocketed and mortared a lot more than I ever got shot at, and when we did get shot at, it was this kind of sporadic, from a window, a taxi, who the fuck knows where stuff.
The AK-47 has notoriously poor aim (or if only a gunman can have bad aim, I guess you could say it just doesn’t shoot the bullet in a straight line).
The soldiers are often young and drugged up.
The terrain is very uneven.
In some cases, like poorly-trained soldiers in WWI, they may not want to hit us (especially if they are soldiers for hire). They aren’t killers, though since our guys never know, they have no choice but to treat them as such.
I don’t want to insult the Afghan kids who are suffering as much as anyone, but malnourished mother who may be addicted to opium + opium to quiet you while she works in the fields + malnourishment from birth + no formal education… honestly, you just aren’t that skilled or intelligent. It’s quite sad, actually.
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Shepherds don’t shoot their food. This is a kind of funny thought, actually. Sheep follow the shepherd straight to the mullah and willingly put their heads in the mullah’s arms and get killed there.
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Some Afghans do hunt for game with guns: not most of them. It’s like here, it’s more of a sportsman thing than a scavenging thing.
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They don’t shoot for fun in villages. Someone would think you were involved in an attack (30+ years of war) and come with arms. You wouldn’t be out camping overnight unless you were a militant.
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Many of the “militants” are actually soldiers for hire and have done nothing but trading in the market, shepherding, or agriculture their entire lives.
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In Afghanistan, you don’t raise your social standing by shooting. You raise your social standing by being able to pay people to shoot for you. Zan, zard, zamin: woman, gold, land. Guns are a means to an end.
Been in downtown Baghdad, Diyala Province, and in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province. Always had grenades. And I think I used twice as many in Baghdad than any of those rural villages. Mainly because the enemy is closer in the city. 203s were mostly HE and HE/DP with one or two White Star Clusters for signalling. Almost no smoke and no shot-rounds or less lethal at all.
In Afghanistan, I carried an M320 as a “sidearm” in a pistol-style thigh holster. Carried 8 HE and 2 Star Clusters for it in addition to the two or three M67 frags I would carry.
You sure he isn’t just squinting because of the sun? The rest of you are all wearing sunglasses.
Yes, when you bomb any school that doesn;t teach all Koran, all the time- and where women are not allowed school at all, it’s hard to rise very high.
He is facing south. The sun is behind him and to the right. His face, as you’ll notice, is shaded. Plus, I watched him shoot the entire magazine. Everytime, before he squeezed the trigger, he closed his eyes. Despite everything I was telling him between each and every round fired, he closed his eyes.
I flinched and closed my eyes when I was new with handguns too, it’s kind of a natural reaction to an explosion going off in your face until you can train yourself not to. How much time has this guy spent shooting at this point? (But pretty much there is no excuse after day 1 of people telling you “don’t close your eyes” of course… 
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Maybe the cord dangling from the gun is attached to a Taser and he’s actually wincing from pain?
I think that is kind of the point. He is a formally trained officer in the Afghan Army, and has no shooting experience, training, or skill whatsoever. Random militants out there shooting at ISAF are no different. Even if they wanted to aim, they wouldn’t know what to lign up or how. Or what to focus on when shooting–the rear of the sight, the front of the sight, or the target itself? All things a person would have to be taught.
What do they teach them at their military training, then? Is it that they’re not practicing shooting at all? Or are they doing it, but without any qualified supervision? (Did this guy in the photo ever get better?) And where did they get that helmet? It looks like WWII surplus.
Have no answers to any of those questions. He just came out to us for a visit. Took him out to the range one day during the week he was at our COP. Just by coincidence, on one of the days he was there, I was doing a range for our ANA “partners”. They were just as bad, btw. Despite having been in the Army for a while, and having been in firefights. They still can’t shoot.
Hell, I’ve been in engagements along side them, watching them shooting at the enemy. They just point in the general direction–sometimes any direction at all–and pull the trigger. And I am expected to somehow control/lead that chaos.
I think that’s a standard-issue Soviet helmet.
Oh, I thought your point was that he HAS a bunch of training and still can’t shoot.