Really, how will he be able to control the domestic population in America if we can control our enemies and stop them from attacking us? He needs chaos and fear on a continuing bases to strip away our rights and freedoms. So far he is doing just that as we speak.
SNIPERS: THE NEW SUPERHEROES
By BEN WALTERS
For five days, the massed firepower of the US war machine, embodied by the colossal destroyer Bainbridge, seemed helpless -- unable to do anything against three Somali pirates in a lifeboat.
Instead, it was the smallest of powers -- three men, three guns, three shots -- which ended the standoff and rescued American Captain Richard Phillips.
In recent years, the sniper has taken on an increasingly privileged position in both military strategizing and the popular imagination -- a shift last weekend's successful operation has only helped to cement. "Nobody would have considered using a sniper team 20 years ago," says Richard Venola, editor of Guns and Ammo magazine. "But commanders' appreciation of how a sniper team can be a workhorse in the combat zone has changed. And the public opinion has changed too. Sniping is today what being a Green Beret was in Vietnam, or a Navy SEAL commando."
A wealth of pop culture testifies to this, from video games like "Sniper Elite," to Kathryn Bigelow's forthcoming Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker" and Stephen Hunter's series of novels about sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger. And America's current wars have demonstrated, in Venola's words, "how a sniper team can control 'real estate' cheaply and effectively without being in people's faces."They're also more and more integral to civilian policing. "
Any town of more than 50,000 people probably has a SWAT team nowadays, including police snipers, and the Sheriff's department would have snipers too," says John Plaster, a retired Special Forces major, founder of a sniper school, and author of the seminal training manual "The Ultimate Sniper." Plaster compares the rise of the sniper to the development of the National Football League. "Just like you had to have high school teams and college teams to produce the expertise to make a league, you had to have a bedrock of qualified instructors with mastery of their weapons and understanding of tactics [to train another generation]."Precisely what equipment the Navy SEALs used last Sunday has not been confirmed, though it might have been the SR-25, a semiautomatic rifle that combines substantial power with fast follow-up capabilities. Barrett .50 caliber ammunition, which could maintain its trajectory after piercing the lifeboat's fiberglass hull, might also have been used.
The Navy declines to confirm or deny such speculation. In fact, it declines to discuss any aspect of sniper training or practice. "Our preference is that folks not talk about it," says Naval Special Warfare Command spokesman Commander Greg Geisn. "Any time techniques and procedures are revealed, it gives opportunities for our foes to counter those techniques, and in high pressure situations where lives are on the line, it's important we have every edge available to us."Nor could Barrett confirm whether their ammunition was used, though Bob Gates, the company's vice-president of business development, points to a wide range of sniping applications for .50 caliber bullets.
"You can penetrate armor, lightly-armored vehicles, pick out a Scud missile, a generator, a radar device, or a person at 2,000 meters. The equipment is far superior to what was available in the Vietnam era."Since then, there have also been improvements in shockproofing -- the smallest knock to a rifle's sight in transit could make all the difference to that crucial first shot -- and in night vision and thermal scopes. "In Vietnam, there was very little night vision," Gates says. "Now we see in the dark, and that's why we own the dark."Today's snipers can also use specialty long-range sights -- such as the Horus Vision, which can fix targets across more than 2,500 yards (about one-and-a-half miles) -- or computerized sights, like Barrett's BORS, which adjusts for elevation, temperature and barometric pressure.
Plaster notes that a well-trained marksman, "without being lucky or exceptional, can hit a cigarette packet two football fields away. In the past, as a commander, you would not have expected someone in your unit to be able to do that with consistency. The Achilles heel used to be that commanders didn't appreciate what snipers can do or know how to use them. Now it's been proven as a concept. After Iraq and Afghanistan, they want more."
Also, as Gates notes, "they're trained to a much higher degree now than they were 30 years ago. They're not just handed a rifle with telescopic sights, they get up to 18 weeks training. And it's not just the shooting and the use of cover and concealment. They put them through psychological evaluations to see what their mind is like. It takes a certain kind of person. Not just anyone can pull the trigger."Plaster agrees. "That was within their capabilities," he says of the 100-yard shots that killed the Somali pirates. "But just placing the shot is one thing. Having the guts to be on the fantail of a bobbing ship, someone's life hanging on your ability to get that one shot -- how many people can take that kind of pressure?""It demands an extraordinary amount of inner calm and self-discipline," Venola says. "You don't have someone telling you what to do, and you're letting insects walk across your face, baking in the sun. They're introspective.
Most of the people who are top-flight marksmen wouldn't be on your A-list for parties."Snipers have proven to be exceptionally well-suited to current conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Bad guys are wearing civilian clothes, using human shields," Plaster notes. "Commanders know, more than ever, the value of being able to place a shot with precision under circumstances where other troops are not even allowed to engage. The primary kinds of conflicts we're looking at for the next decade or so are insurgencies and terrorism, where there are always going to be a lot of civilians around. You can't let loose with artillery. But you can designate snipers."
Plaster expects the proven strategic and tactical success of sniping to lead to even greater technological development. "The world record today for .50 caliber was 2,700 yards in Afghanistan. That was exceptional, and they probably fired four rounds and missed three, but they did connect against a Taliban leader. If you can develop that as a basic capability, expectations will follow."
Gates also describes ongoing research into laser weaponry, "the phaser, the proton torpedo -- everything they've talked about for years on television." The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently developing EXACTO, a "guided projectile" or smart bullet. Gates doesn't expect to see results soon, but believes "it will probably go the route of most DARPA projects. They normally don't start things they can't finish. It will reach fruition some day and it will revolutionize long-range shooting.
"Today's sniper, then, is both more capable and more respected than his predecessors. "It hasn't always been viewed as a glamorous position," Gates says. "For many years, if you were a sniper, you weren't fighting fair because you weren't in the open field. But since Desert Storm and the recognition that they can turn the flow of battle, their position has been enhanced. They're not just shooting someone from behind a tree. They're changing the battlefield."
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