If you went by standard Army tactics....he went by the book, and never needed any major weapon like a AR15 or such. You are correct....simple bolt-action weapon....he’s got enough time through concealment to reload. Cops are using normal cop strategies trying to deal with a character like this. I do admit....using that robot to get to him and get him in the end....was something new and probably will become the newest toy of police organizations.
SKS is semi auto with a fixed magazine. It is sometimes modified to take a removable magazine.
I don't know if it was Boston Dynamics that supplied it. I was at an open house with my grandson at the local airfield a couple of years ago, and Boston Dynamics was there with some of their military hardware. They let the kids take turns driving a remote control military robot. The guys showing it off were obviously engineers.
They had some models on display, with machine guns and sensors, which had been used in Iraq. One model looked like a small remote control turretless tank. It had sensors but no weapons, weighed about 25 pounds (10 kg). The engineer told me the Marines used them in Iraq. In one incident, the Marines were on the ground floor a building, with "insurgents" on the second floor. They tossed the minirobot satchel-style in a window, to get a look-see where the terrorists were. The terrorists jumped out the windows, into the field of fire of the grateful Marines. I love that story.
That was the FIRST killing of a suspect by drone in the U.S. Bet it’s not the last.
I’m surprised he didn’t shoot the robot before it got too close.
“..never needed any major weapon like a AR15....” Major weapon?
Tactically it might have been a clever idea. Strategically it was a really bad idea. First, it puts a new class of weapons on the table. So far the violence related to perceived bias of police based on race has been pretty much limited to firearms and other mostly less dangerous weapons or tactics. But now using explosives in on the table.
As horrible as attacks based on firearms are, the last thing we need is for the police and people willing to act violently against them to be using explosives. We certainly don't want to end up like Syria, or Iraq, where a standard tactic on both sides of the fight is to detonate bombs.
It was a stunningly stupid decision to add explosives to the range of weapons being used.