Does it make marksmanship, target practice and sniper skills obsolete? Can you shoot from the hip with one? Is this technology seeing widespread use? How much of a benefit and force multiplier does it bestow?
Marksmanship requires no batteries.
The most effective combat use is when you can put three or four red dots on everyone opposing you, and offer to accept a surrender. It’s limited in opportunities, but can be very effective.
Firing from the hip is pretty dumb. With laser designators you might not suffer consequences for dumb. Once in a blue moon there might be a combat situation where it would be the only choice.
If a target has limited cover, and limited concealment, you can hold your designator on him long enough that your squad may be able to direct fire more effectively. (or with a weapon not so equipped) This does inform the enemy that you are attacking. With good sniper fire, it is a warning worth not giving. Finding out you are under attack by seeing two or three guys on your side dropping to the ground is demoralizing. Seeing three wavering red dots nearby is a pretty good warning to duck for cover.
For a weight cost they can be worth it, especially in assault situations where knowing someone else is already shooting that guy might make a big difference.
Tris
I can’t give you an expert opinion but I will say that snipers have to adjust for gravity, wind and movement which would not be solved by a laser.
Also, the more guys you have with laser sites, the harder it’ll be to see which pointer is yours making for a decreasing rate of return.
Firing from the hip is less stable, so I would think that firing that way would still be less accurate even with a laser.
I have a Crimson Trace laser sight on one of my handguns. I spent a lot of time fine tuning it for accuracy, and then the red dot and the bullet matched perfectly out to about 25 yards. Three boxes of .380 later, it started to drift off again. I figured out that it was the recoil that was knocking it out of alignment. I tightened all of the screws, lined it up again and so far it has been fine.
I can’t imagine laser sighting being very effective under combat conditions.
Idea:
A laser sight that immediately determines distance and adjusts for gravity.
Lasers are extremely useful for ground troops to paint targets for combat aircraft to follow with air to ground weapons.
For a rifleman, they are good and bad. They can give your position away.
I don’t recall using them or seeing anyone else use them when I was in the Army, but that was in the early 1990’s.
A laser sight would not be visible at long range, but there are optical scopes with built-in laser rangefinders. At least one of them has an internal ballistics computer that will show you where to aim to compensate for bullet drop.
Are they able to do that with the sort of laser sights that they would have on a rifle, or do they have to use a laser designator, like the ones used for laser-guided bombs?
Also, is the pilot able to easily tell the target from the laser? You wouldn’t want him to accidentally shoot at the wrong end of the laser beam.
As an occasional target shooter, I think laser sights are generally useless except for training purposes where they can allow a third party to see where a gun is aiming, so they can see if the shooter is jerking the trigger and so forth. Red-dot sights (wiki article, not the same as lasers) are best when you want to shoot fast.
It’s a high-power IR laser. There are IR beacons set up at the friendly end for pilot ID. Here’s a video.
No.
If you wanted to. But why would you want to?
Yes. Lasers are standard issue on US Army rifles, and have been for some time now. Currently the most advanced standard issue laser is this one:
http://www.auroratactical.com/product.php?productid=16423
I had one on my M4 in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The most valuable purpose it serves is the ability to engage targets in the dark more effectively. The US military dominates the night, and this is one of the tools that ensures nocturnal combat superiority. Try using your regular sights to shoot something in the dark with no moon and no stars. Or, for that matter, inside of a dark building, or a cave.
The only laser designators I remember people using in the army were IR designators, which were only visible through night vision goggles. They were especially useful in short-range ambushes - you make sure all your targets are painted, then you take them all out in a single volley. Of course, you better hope they other guys aren’t wearing goggles too.
Regular laser sights, OTOH, are mostly useless. Think about it: a daytime firefight, everybody’s running about, there’s dust, sweat in your eyes, explosions, bullets flying all over the place, and you’re supposed to keep track of a little red dot? At least with gun sights, you know where they are.
I don’t know if they do this, but one solution to this would be to use circularly-polarized lasers. Reflection reverses the direction of polarization, so the painted target would look different (through the appropriate filter) from the source.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the AN/PEQ type IR laser devices.
Primarily they are used for target designation/communication and as laser sights if you’re using night vision goggles.
Ideally, you would want a properly shouldered rifle with a good cheek weld. This will allow you to attain proper front/rear sight alignment. If you’re running a red dot optic like an Aimpoint, proper cheek weld isn’t quite as important, but it is still something you should aim for, and it will make you more consistent with your shooting.
However, problems arise if you have giant goggles hung from your helmet and in front of your eyes. You can’t look look down the rifle in the traditional manner for reasons I think are obvious once you see a picture of these things. Using an IR laser will allow you to engage a target by putting by simply putting the IR dot on a target and firing. Rifleman typically don’t fire from the hip when they do this, they more or less have the rifles on their shoulders, but hold it a lot lower so their head is well above the sights. The laser has to be zeroed just like any iron sights or optic would have to be, so this is something you have to take into consideration. Now, shooting in this manner isn’t nearly as effective being able to use the sights, but at least your rifleman can still be in the fight and aren’t rendered totally useless once they stick on their NVG’s.
Here is a video of some guys using NVG’s and IR lasers:
Traditional red lasers like you see in movies are basically useless, in my opinion, and don’t see much military application.
There’s a pretty strong civilian market for red lasers (many may have heard of the Crimson Trace laser grips), but you’ll find few experienced shooters and instructors using these items. Some view them as a crutch, and shooters that can make proper use of sights will always be better shooters than those who only practice using their lasers. If anything they are a supplement to traditional sights, not a replacement. Also, electronic devices can and will fail. Your battery is dead, and you’ve never learned how to properly employ the iron sights. What do you do now?
Not in the least.
You can shoot from between your legs if you wanted to, but the question is why would you want to? As I mentioned earlier, good shooters user proper stances and weapon holds when putting rounds on target. Those shooters tend to have a higher percentage of hits on targets they intend to shoot.
As mentioned by another user, IR devices are frequently used in military applications. Not every soldier, marine, etc. will have one on their rifles and and carbines, however.
Every Soldier who actually uses his rifle as part of his job will have one. They are standard issue and extremely common. Can’t speak for Marines, though.