AIUI, there is sniping the way the USMC does it, with 0317/nee 8514 Scout/Snipers (I’ve seen it written with and without the backslash) serving mainly in STA units, and there is sniping the way the US Army does it. Assuming FM 3-21.21 (FM 3-21.21, Appendix C, Sniper Employment) still, for a Stryker Brigade Combat Team, snipers are a battalion asset and above. There, they exist as a sniper squad, with a Squad Leader, and two, three-man sniper teams.
If you just need a guy who can precisely shoot people between 300-600 meters, the Squad Designated Marksman can be that guy. This site (SDM – National Guard Marksmanship Training Center), devoted to training National Guard members in marksmanship, including for competition describes the SDM this way:
It’s worth noting that the standard US infantry issued rifle, the M4, with any of the magnified combat optics like the RCO, would easily be considered by WW2 combatants to be a “sniper” rifle, if judging by its accuracy, magnification, light gathering, and ballistics. Especially if using long range ammunition like MK 318 or MK 262 Mod 0.
So, for a squad-level asset, useful for overwatch, PID, and other tasks that we lay people think of when we think, “sniper”, I’d think a SDM would qualify. They’re usually not going to have the fieldcraft of a school-trained USA sniper or USMC scout/sniper though.
Interesting. Back when I was in IDF infantry in the mid-1990s, every platoon had one guy with an M-21 (basically an upgraded M-14), who had undergone a 4-week sniper’s course but other than that was just a regular infantryman. Nowadays, I think they’ve been reorganized similar to your Stryker brigades (and given M-21s), with more extensive training, and lots of regular infantry now carry carbines with scopes and bipods.
The Israeli military never had a very high opinion of snipers - they were considered “too defensive”. I understand that’s changed a bit recently.
Women in the Canadian Forces still represent a very small percentage of front line combat roles; last I looked they were less than three percent of infantry roles and are essentially urnepresented in elite units. I have a few queries in on your question but I’m going to guess no snipers yet.
As has been alluded to by Gray Ghost, I am using the term “sniper” here to mean an actual sniper, a soldier who specializes in that particular role. In the Canadian Army a sniper is not merely a soldier with a good rifle; it is its own trade, with its own school, unique weapons, and the like. Sniper teams in a modern armed forces are elite soldiers, highly trained individuals whose skill set goes way beyond just being a really good shot. The sniper fulfills particular roles on a battlefield, and you need the right people to do those things, and shooting straight is just a part of that. Hell, I was an outstanding shot but I wouldn’t have lasted three days in sniper school. I simply did not have the physical skills, motivation, and fieldcraft skills for that.
I think one will find that the use of women in combat roles is often tied to the level of urgency faced by the belligerent power. The Soviets in WWII drew on women for traditionally male roles because, frankly, they weren’t in a position to be sticky about traditional gender roles. A modern country at peace like Germany or Canada isn’t in particular need like that. Even when at war, as Canada was in Afghanistan, today’s industrialized countries have much smaller, more specialized armies than in the past.
Good LORD, I grow weary of men asserting that a woman would not do well in a given combat role because we “can’t carry the weight”. Actually, we can. There may or may not be a huge number of female snipers, but it isn’t some sort of inability to carry the weight that prevents us from that job. While going through training or on Ex, I definitely carried more than what I weighed at the time(my kit, food and ammo plus my part of the section kit) - it was part of the job.
Yes. Women can “carry the weight”. However, it remains a very real fact that women who do “carry the weight” suffer higher rates of over-use injuries. Female physiology predisposes them to injury when carrying heavy loads, making it more difficult to sustain the same level of weight carrying for prolonged periods.
“Women have increased pelvic width, forefoot pronation, heel valgus angulation, pes planus, external tibial torsion,and femoral anteversion. Additionally, because of the estrogen influence, women have less lean body mass and greater ligamentous laxity. The combination of anatomy and physiology appears to predispose women to a higher risk of pelvic stress fracture and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears. The diagnosis of pelvic stress fracture has been reported as 1 in 367 female recruits, compared with 1 in 40,000 male recruits, and rates of ACL ruptures for female athletes range from 2.4 to 9.7 times higher than in male athletes.” PDF
“In a study of Army wheel vehicle mechanics, overuse injuries accounted for 68% of female injuries (compared with 48% of male injuries).” PDF
The issue is more complicated than, “women can’t do that” or “women can do that”. You’re right that people should not waive off the possibility of women serving in a given combat role due to their physical ability. But it’s disingenuous to suggest that there is no physiological differences that may decrease their effectiveness on average.
With that said: Yes, we will soon see women graduating sniper school and serving as snipers in the infantry. I’m not aware of any graduates yet, but women have successfully completed Ranger School; they can pass Sniper School.
Totally fair - and I will also add, that not all women (or men, for that matter) are physically suited to a career in the military, and out of those, fewer for infantry, and so on (although I have a teeny female friend that would shock many of you with how gung ho she can be).
Pretty much any reasonably healthy young man can be trained to be a soldier and do an acceptable job. Not that many women can. And the ones who can probably will find better jobs than the military. Ronda Rousey and Serena Williams could absolutely serve in any countries military. Doubt they would give up their well paying careers for it. You need someone who is much higher strength than the average woman yet who is unable to make it in other strength and endurance based professions. A rare breed indeed.
I am quite certain women can do the job; as it stands, however, few do in the Canadian Forces. WHY women are so underrepresented in frontline combat trades is probably a complex thing but that they ARE underrepresented is beyond any doubt or question.
The fact that any reasonably healthy young man can make an acceptable soldier is rather obviously proven by the fact that every army in the modern history of the world that had instituted a raft has found that pretty much any reasonably healthy young man can be trained to be an acceptable soldier.
Or maybe, like Gal Godot, they’ll serve in the military for a bit before going on to other occupations. I have certainly never met anyone who joined the military for the money, ya know?
When I was in the former Yugoslavia during the 90’s I met a sniper who had also been a Partisan (albeit at the “tender” age of 16) in World War II. The youngest female sniper I ever encountered was 12 though she could have have passed for an older teen.
And it’s also a fact that some countries apply their draft to both young men & women. Israel, for example – they draft women, too, and seem to make reasonably good soldiers of them. The Israeli army is generally recognized as pretty effective in the area.
That’s pretty unfair to the IDF and slightly unfair to their local opposites.
Far as I can tell from literature and anecdotes( this is not first-hand knowledge, so take it with as many grains of salt as you like ), the IDF stacks up well on any objective scale to any armed forces you can name. It really doesn’t matter that opposing Arab armies are far less capable. When you are constantly surrounded by a numerically superior enemy, you hone yourself to the best you possibly can be. The IDF is far from perfect and has made their fair share of strategic and tactical blunders over the years. But they succeed mostly because they are good, not just because their opposition is crappy. Large, “crappy” modern armies can inflict a helluva a lot of damage if not properly contained, as Iran and Iraq discovered.
As for the surrounding Arab armies, many/all of them have traditionally struggled with issues of politicized leadership and poorly adapted strategic/tactical doctrine. But when given a smidgeon of imagination they can perform adequately, as Israel discovered with Egypt in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War. The IDF is not in a position to underestimate anybody.
John Keegan in *a History of War * good enough for you?
Women have been involved in war as participants since its beginnings. Thats not the point. Combat in armies falls heavily on one cohort. Young men. Not middle aged men or older boys, or girls, but young men. Combat requires strength and endurance which is best seen young fit men. And, if anything modern combat requires a much higher amount of strength and fitness than ever.
If using women was an advantage then warfare is an ever practical business, it would have been done, you’d double your available fighters at as stroke. Yet everytime it has been done, its been during times of extreme desperation. Like the Soviets against the Germans. Or the Kurds against ISIS.
Of course change is as constant in warfare as anywhere else, and the above could change. We have already seen it in air warfare. There is a very finite amount of people who can be trained as fighter pilots and it has been worth everyones while to get women in there.
Not combat Woman would be just as good at combat as the typical modern child soldier.
After WWI, child soldiers were excluded from modern European armies because they weren’t good at not falling asleep, a skill that was particularly valued in WWI.
After WWII, older soldiers were excluded because they weren’t as good at surviving POW conditions as a specific case, and poor food and demanding conditions in general.
In the American Marines, women aren’t as good at carrying heavy equipment loads – a particular and unique feature of the American military, which has an international reputation both as the best equipped force, and the force which depends most on it’s equipment. (It’s no coincidence that in the recent Thai cave rescue, the divers were an international group, but the logistics support was provided by the Americans).
FWIW, I was watching ‘sniper’ on TV, and they were featuring a sniper team that was stationed on the top of a city building. It didn’t look like ‘patrol under full load’ was any part of that deployment.
Which army regularly used “child soldiers”? Excluding drummer boys and powder monkeys on ships, I can’t think of any. The earliest age of
recruitment was 16 IIRC.
Yeah, cite… there were plenty of POW in WW1 and earlier wars.
Between the start of the flintlock musket era (1700 AD), to Korea, the basic infantry backpack was more or less stabdard and weighed about 50-60 pounds. I also recall an estimation from the mid 1960’s were they wrote that less than half of WW2 era fighter pilots would have qualified on the new jets if they had been suddenly transported to that era.
On a more cynical note, one reason that armies have always recruited young men is that they don’t have wives and children to support, and thus, in broad social terms, more disposable.
True. Also young men are a lot more easy to train to march headfirst against the enemey. Everyone else is too sensible.
Though, I read that in WW2, the one cohort which protested against killings was ytoung men. Older men and women generally had no problems. Read that what you will.