SAS squads are killing tons of ISIS soldiers. They use drones to spot them, then helicopter in teams on 4 wheelers to kill them with sniper rifles at night (probably using night or thermal vision). They are killing hundreds doing that.
Poetic justice that the SAS is terrorizing the terrorists.
That is quite awesome actually, good job SAS.
Yay, we are in another war, on the ground, in the middle east. Yay…
Amazing how much more effective bullets are compared to just talking about the problem.
Welp, SAS are British troops, just to be clear (don’t know where you live.). US troops aren’t currently* engaged in ground combat in Iraq, except for some limited training and support roles.
njitt is in the UK.
Umm… That doesn’t sound like a lot. Is it?
Sorry, I can understand the frustration. However at least this is just small teams taking out ISIS cells and not a full scale military invasion.
I’m part of the problem I guess.
Finally, someone understands that you can’t fight a guerrilla war with conventional methods, ie. tanks and bombs, sniper rifles at night sounds brilliant!
It didn’t sound like a lot to me either. It’s satisfying in a “poke those fuckers in the eye” kind of way, but unless it’s scaled way up, it seems unlikely to effectively reduce their numbers. From the article:
[quote=]
The SAS’s raids are intended to degrade Islamic State’s fighting capability ahead of a spring offensive by 20,000 Iraqi and Kurdish troops next year, with the UK providing additional training for these soldiers.
[/quote]
Assuming a late spring offensive, maybe end of April, that leaves about 150 days. eight per day makes just 1200 enemy casualties between now and then. Elsewhere the article mentions that “200,000-strong ISIS forces.” That’s going to leave almost 199,000 fighters to be dealt with by other means.
David, Jock and Paddy ride again.
I’ve heard 20-30k ISIS soldiers. If they are really picking off 50 a week that is only making a dent.
Historically, one of the goals for snipers was to try to pick off the officers who were leading the enemy. This has a much greater impact on their effectiveness as a fighting force.
Possibly the SAS snipers are doing this?
That wouldn’t surprise me, you don’t throw the SAS into the equation unless you think it is going to end up in your favour. They’ll be doing their best to pick off leaders where possible.
Also, you get to know that SAS squads are stealthily creeping in at night and taking out your commanders and colleagues…how are you feeling now? what was that shadow…wild dog?
For a long time, I was keeping a running tally of how many times the second-in-command of Al Queda was killed. I was into the double digits when it got too depressing to keep going. Killing leaders may well cripple their fighting ability, but I doubt it’ll have too tremendous an effect on their morale.
A bigger concern to my mind is how many of the “ISIS terrorists” getting killed are just Iraqis in the wrong place at the wrong time… No matter how good your equipment and training are, sniping people at night is far from an exact science. I don’t know how the people of Iraq- regardless of their political flavor- find it in themselves to even leave the house anymore.
But the elephant in the room here is this- why exactly are we celebrating people getting killed? Okay, sure, part of a massive international movement invading other countries and forcing radical beliefs on them; they’ve threatened to destroy us and all we hold dear, yeah. (I wonder how many middle eastern muslims felt exactly the same way about the coalition that invaded Iraq eleven years ago?) If these people have to be fought, they have to be fought, and if they must be killed, they must be killed, but happiness in response… I can’t help thinking of all the pictures of anti-American rallies I’ve seen, where angry crowds shouting in Arabic burn effigies of American soldiers and sing the praises of those who killed them. Is that really what we want to become?
Wesley Clark, you’ve been here long enough to know to give threads descriptive titles. “Yay, I’m happy” is not a descriptive title.
People are dying! Yay, I guess?
That’ll teach 'em for killing people with a different worldview.
Killing 50 terrorist for each beheading is . . . a decent start. Yay for the team!
Reminds me of the old series Rat Patrol. A highly mobile and fast striking unit that catches the enemy by surprise. They used jeeps with mounted machine guns. IIRC Rat Patrol was very loosely based on specialized WWII African units fight Rommel.
The modern quad bikes are even faster and can go anywhere in the desert. Snipers with night scopes are another highly effective tool.
Yes, they are aiming for the terrorists who are wearing shiny new captain’s bars on their helmets.
The Rat Patrol was based on Tom Gries’ elevator pitch of “Robin Hood in the desert fighting Nazis.” The laughable premise–soldiers in jeeps taking down tanks with .50 BMG machine guns killing German tanks was complemented with the mishmash of ahistorical weapons, equipment, and uniforms as well as the implausible logistics and dominance of American soldiers who weren’t even present or participating in thr Long Range Desert Group, which itself mostly conducted reconnaisance patrols and intelligence gathering (and mostly against the Italian Army–their actions against thr Germans were mostly later when they shifted to the Mediterranean theatre of operations) rather than direct action of any kind, even harassment raiding.
It we spent all the money that has been poured over the last 12 years into nonproductive wars (where are those WMDs again) in Iraq and Afghanistan instead into energy research to obtain independence from oil reserves in thr Middle East, the US and its allies would give about as much of a good whore’s fuck about what is going on in the region as it does about Indonesia.
Stranger