How do our enemies stage ambushes without hitting anybody?

[kombatminipig]

@Sailboat

This isn’t Afghanistan-related, but it is an anecdote about bad artillery practices. At one point years ago, I saw a news story that “unknown forces” on Syria’s border with Israel launched a rocket attack. This wasn’t those home-made rockets you sometimes hear about – this was a unit of Katyusha-type rocket launcher trucks, presumably with accompanying supply train and so forth (leading me to conclude it was probably state-sponsored and not individual yahoos).

Anyway, they let fly a good salvo of artillery rockets, but they all missed.

Israel.

They missed an entire country.

The rockets apparently fell into a neutral/demilitarized zone, according to the AP report.

Reminds me of a story of the opposite. One of my Israeli cousins (a reserve captain in the paratroopers) told me that during the 2006 war in Lebanon, an Israeli Apache got hit in mid air by a friendly MLRS rocket (may also have been artillery, but I seem to remember it as rockets).
As I understood it, flight corridors were used overland for approaching aircraft, which then withdrew over the Mediterranean. Some hapless artillery commander apparently thought it was a good idea to fire through one of these corridors.

Entirely second hand and anecdotal, so please fire away if in doubt.

[rogerbox]

@JoelUpchurch

Watching movies would be the worst possible way to learn to hold a handgun. You would end up holding it sideways. I loved when I was watching “Person of Interest” and the protagonist ridiculed his opponent for holding his pistol like that.

Holding a handgun gangsta style would still be an improvement over that Indian “professional’s” style of shooting, though.

[Alessan]

@kombatminipig

Reminds me of a story of the opposite. One of my Israeli cousins (a reserve captain in the paratroopers) told me that during the 2006 war in Lebanon, an Israeli Apache got hit in mid air by a friendly MLRS rocket (may also have been artillery, but I seem to remember it as rockets).
As I understood it, flight corridors were used overland for approaching aircraft, which then withdrew over the Mediterranean. Some hapless artillery commander apparently thought it was a good idea to fire through one of these corridors.

Entirely second hand and anecdotal, so please fire away if in doubt.

That was the initial theory, but it later turned out to be a mechanical failure with the helicopter’s main rotor.

[JoelUpchurch]

@rogerbox

Holding a handgun gangsta style would still be an improvement over that Indian “professional’s” style of shooting, though.

Almost anything that followed the “front toward enemy” rule would be an improvement.

[kombatminipig]

@Alessan

That was the initial theory, but it later turned out to be a mechanical failure with the helicopter’s main rotor.

Ah, darn. The theory made a better story at least =)

[LSLGuy]

OTOH, deconflicting artillery / rocket fires and airplane / helicopter traffic is an actual (and difficult) problem faced in all Combined Arms combat.

When I was dealing with this stuff the Army’s semi-joking attitude was “Big Sky, Little Bullet”. In other words:“USAF can takes its chances; we’re gonna shoot from wherever to wherever whenever we want.”

In reality we both had a bureaucratic process to deconflict axes of artillery fire from axes of airborne ingress/egress. How well that would work in a big & fluid battle was never tested for real.
In a war where the enemy has an effective Air Force there was also the problem of how to transit our “friendly” air defenses while going to and from our targets on the bad guy side. Because that looked to our air defense forces a lot like enemy aircraft going from and to *their *targets on *our *side.

It’s a blip; KILL IT!! was NOT the attitude we wanted our air defense folks to have.

[treis]

@Leo_Bloom

This image is of a soldier (specialized commando unit?) of a 980,000-strong 2nd-world, ostensibly trained Army: India. It was taken during the response to terrorist slaughter in Mumbai on 26/11.

Indian "Commando" Mumbai marksmanship technique - Gun Culture

IIRC, the image was reprinted and ridiculed so often in Israeli media that a government type mentioned that the exposure might piss off the Indians–a strong ally and huge military trader–particularly given that a contract would assuredly soon be tendered for training by Israeli special forces in anti-terrorist operations.

He was surely literate, knew left from right, etc.

I wonder whatever happened to this guy?

If you look where he is aiming there is a wall at about eye level. Proper shooting technique would mean he would be blasting the wall. He’s holding the gun like that in order to shoot over the wall, not because that’s how he normally shoots. I’m not saying it’s a brilliant tactic, but spraying and praying into a room isn’t the worst idea in the world.

[YoDoc]

@treis

If you look where he is aiming there is a wall at about eye level. Proper shooting technique would mean he would be blasting the wall. He’s holding the gun like that in order to shoot over the wall, not because that’s how he normally shoots. I’m not saying it’s a brilliant tactic, but spraying and praying into a room isn’t the worst idea in the world.

Spray and pray is the reason US weapons have max effective ranges for point and area targets. Suppressive fire is basically Spray Over That Way, and those are pretty effective…