Are snipers and recon still valid in infantry battalions?

[Kiwigrunt]

Ken White's sniper:

An individual with an effective long range weapon and sighting appendage designated to fire at high value targets, materiel and personnel with a strong probability of success who is part of the fire support effort.

Kaur:

I think that this is more appropriate to define designated marksman. I'd like to borrow sniper's definition from Mark Spicer's book "Illustrated manual of sniper skills."

Mark Spicer's sniper through Kaur:

Sniping is the employment of individual shooters from concealed positions with no warning, from any distance, depending on the range of the weapon. This is not to say, of course, that to maximize the chances of sniper surviving to fight again, the longer the distance between him and the victim the better. Conversely, if the sniper is able to conceal himself and engage successfully at close range, then that is also sniping.

Thanks Kaur.
You illustrated one area where I still can't see snipers being replaced by DMs. I think the issue is in Ken’s last part of his definition: "who is part of the fire support effort".
For as far as the snipers are indeed an integral part of the overall fire support effort, then I can probably agree that a DM is just as useful, if not more so. The strength of a sniper is in the "individual" aspect of his capabilities, supported by his much advanced field-craft skills as compared to average rifleman. A DM is an average rifleman with exceptional shooting skills (I think).
Now I know what Wilf is going to say here, regarding witchcraft etc, and I don’t disagree for as far as the myth-status and such almost celebrity-level exaggerations. But I still can see a potential use for the combination of these exceptional shooting skills and exceptional field craft skills, resulting in the ‘sniper’.

And here lies of course the attraction/risk of having snipers used for the scouting/recon role, which is probably understandable but not necessarily advisable. Conversely that doesn’t mean that there should be a law against it either, IMO.

I think the same level of justification for specialized scouts as compared to recon by line-platoons was well made here:

Ken’s Post 27 of the current parallel thread.

Reconnaissance is a necessary and vital function. It IS everyone's job as Wilf says -- it also requires a few, not many, specialists that can do it stealthily, quickly, thoroughly and tell you accurately what's out there without fighting for it. They need to be a bit better than the average bear.

Bringing that concept back to snipers, I can still see a justification for a number of snipers, probably at battalion level. At lower levels, probably concentrate on DMs.