We’re guessing there isn’t a Moms Demand Action chapter in Ghanzi, Afghanistan. An Afghan girl shot dead two Taliban fighters and wounded several more after they dragged her parents from their home and killed them for supporting the government. The fighters were looking for her father — the village chief and a supporter of the … Read more
I love it when life imitates art. You know, like when you see something in some Hollywood flick, and you say to yourself, “Self, that could NEVER happen in real life.” But then you find out it can. Has. Did. As in “Afghanistan” and “British sniper” and “two kills with one bullet.” But the details are better than anything Hollywood could dream up…
AP writer Slobodan Lekic’s semi-cogent article the suitability of the M-4 in Afghanistan misses the point. Actually, it lacks one. Was he trying to introduce the Army’s new policy of having nine M-110 SASS equipped “sharpshooters” in each company? Suggesting that the U.S. military is fighting the Afghanistan war with the wrong weapons (a point he contradicts when he acknowledges that most firefights in the conflict are at distances within the M-4’s ideal operating range)? Anyway, there’s some good intel with re: the suitability of various calibers at various ranges.
The U.S. military’s workhorse rifle — used in battle for the last 40 years — is proving less effective in Afghanistan against the Taliban’s more primitive but longer range weapons . . . a U.S. Army study found that the 5.56 mm bullets fired from M-4s don’t retain enough velocity at distances greater than 1,000 feet (300 meters) to kill an adversary. In hilly regions of Afghanistan, NATO and insurgent forces are often 2,000 to 2,500 feet (600-800 meters) apart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AenGzkfdwY The New York Times has been running a series by C J Chivers dissing the marksmanship of our good friends in the Afghan police and Army. Mr. Chivers has also heavily criticized the Taliban’s shooting. As TTAG has warned many times, never under-estimate your enemy. As proof of this strategic mindset, we present this … Read more
Let’s start at the end. “For the Taliban, bad shooting sometimes has proved to be good enough,” C.J. Chivers writes for The New York Times. “For all of their shortcomings, the Taliban’s level of training and state of equipment have thus far been more than sufficient for waging a patient, low-intensity war for years, and … Read more
“You want to know where they found two of the sniper scopes, between you and me [and TTAG’s readers]?” Beretta sales-rep-turned-arms dealer Alessandro Bon asked an “associate” in a wiretapped conversation. “In Afghanistan … They fired on German soldiers with two of the sniper scopes and the serial numbers were traced … and the [German] police are investigating because they were in the hands of the Taliban … I wonder what the hell they were doing in Afghanistan.” The Watusi? propublica.com reports that Bon’s been nicked with an arms-for-cash scheme in Iran, along with four other Italians and two Iranian intelligence officials. “The Milan arms ring operated undetected for at least three years, authorities say, allegedly moving – or trying to move – sniper scopes, various types of munitions, explosive chemicals, helicopters, parachutes, helmets and scuba gear worth millions of dollars.” What, no white slaves?
“Our religions and our histories are different,” a Taliban commander tells The Times re: Iran. “But our target is the same — we both want to kill Americans.” To that end, “The Taliban fighters scurried up the craggy mountainside. As they neared the top, their 30-strong platoon split into three sections and they launched a ferocious assault on an enemy fort, opening fire from numerous positions. The bullets they sprayed at the fort’s mud-coloured walls were blank, however. They merely pretended to fire their rocket-propelled grenades. When they reached the desert at the foot of the mountain, they did not race away on motorbikes, but filed into sand-coloured tents to refresh themselves with tea and naan.” The Times has no doubts about the identity of the “hosts” for the Taliban training . . .
After a decade of dithering, the U.S. Marines are equipping two tilt-rotor transport aircraft bound for Afghanistan with the GAU-2B machine-gun. Strategypage.com reports that the Marines will retro-fit the guns to the rest of their Afghan-based fleet of MV-22 aircraft. Just in case you have no idea what this all means—save the fact that this … Read more
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