Snipers Sniping & Countering them

[JMA]

Skeen certainly was rather keen on that being prepared point, and repeated it many times. He also wrotethat you could far tell more about the leadership, moral and discipline about a unit from all those small details in the field than by it's performance on the parade square. I think it is hard to argue against that. Of course doing the basics right under often very difficult circumstances requires a lot from training to the leaders and troops.

I downloaded Skeen's book and read through it. He is right on the money.

I suggest that you can indeed form an accurate opinion about a unit through observation alone. Watching videos like the recent BBC series on Afghanistan and/or for example the movie Restrepo will give you a good idea. Weaknesses in fieldcraft, weapon handling, combat drills, combat leadership etc tend to jump out at you (and my my case often so vividly that I want to shout "you are going to get yourself killed you f**king idiot. Where is the sergeant? Where is the damn officer?") Often I can't bear to watch yet there are people who say they thought it was a great video/movie and saw nothing untoward... maybe that says something about them, I don't know.

Yes it is difficult to set a standard (and maintain it) until it becomes an ingrained part of unit culture because we tend to get lazy and slack off if there appears to be no immediate threat. It takes a great effort in a unit to achieve operational competence and no matter how good the CO and officers are if the Sergeants Mess (being the senior NCOs) are limited/weak you can go whistle into the wind it is not going to happen.

[ganulv]

Watching videos like the recent BBC series on Afghanistan and/or for example the movie Restrepo will give you a good idea. Weaknesses in fieldcraft, weapon handling, combat drills, combat leadership etc tend to jump out at you (and my my case often so vividly that I want to shout "you are going to get yourself killed you f**king idiot. Where is the sergeant? Where is the damn officer?") Often I can't bear to watch yet there are people who say they thought it was a great video/movie and saw nothing untoward... maybe that says something about them, I don't know.

I thought Restrepo was a very good movie but I know what you mean about wanting to shout during your viewing. I watched it with my better half, neither of us have any military background but both of us being anthropologists we still managed to be unpleasantly surprised a number of times—wearing shorts in a country with endemic leishmaniasis and malaria took me aback a bit, but not as much as the fact that none of the Americans seemed to be able to say anything as basic as “stop” or “remain calm” in the local language (not a criticism of any of the individual soldiers, mind you, but certainly of their employer).