Posted on 12/15/2023 6:05:54 AM PST by MtnClimber
Scout Snipers have a mantra.
I learned that mantra years ago when I was assigned to lead a platoon of these Marines. My chief scout in the platoon, a title held by the most experienced Scout Sniper, was Damon.
When we met in 2012 on Camp Lejeune, Damon was in his late twenties. His guys were at-home in the woods and with a load on their backs; they rarely complained about being dirty, tired or uncomfortable. I learned quickly that Scout Snipers were the best in the battalion, regular infantrymen who had started out carrying an assault rifle or lobbing mortars but aspired to something sleeker, freer and more elite. Before graduating the arduous Scout Sniper Basic Course to earn his new, coveted title, Damon himself had carried a machine gun on a deployment to Anbar province. I remember the front of his uniform was covered in ribbons and medals earned on combat tours. On his back were the words “Scout Sniper.” They were branded into his skin.
Similar to most competitive people, Damon didn’t like following rules, including the rule that required him to buckle the chinstrap on his Kevlar helmet. Like a kid who refuses to put on a helmet before riding his bicycle, I couldn’t get him to listen. Whenever we went to the field for training, I’d see that nylon strap dangling off his sideburns. “I know, sir,” Damon would say. Until the next time it happened, and the time after that. If only he hadn’t been so good-natured (and good at his job), I might have been more insistent that he fall in line.
But I wasn’t.
Recently, the Marine Corps decided its infantry battalions no longer need Scout Snipers. The final class graduates today from the Scout Sniper Basic Course.
(Excerpt) Read more at realcleardefense.com ...
I guess I’m bothered by the words “assault rifle” in the article. Makes me wonder who wrote it.
Or has the Marine Corp gone so far left that their weapons are now called assault rifles?
I don’t care
On the contrary, what the Marine Corps is using are honest-to-God Assault Rifles, select-fire weapons used in military applications (including infantry assaults).
This is one of the few correct applications of the term that I've seen in media.
“In times of war and not before, God and the soldier we adore. But in times of peace and all things righted, God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.”
I offer WWII Red Army snipers as proof. Not to mention the female fighter pilots of same.
Proof of what, that old men and women with shooting talent can shoot as long as the place they are shooting from is easy to get to and doesn’t involve physical hardship, things that the men they would be replacing can do.
In the American military, the question is whether they can do everything and every sniper mission that the man they are replacing can do, or does their physical weakness limit them?
The women Scout Snipers are replacing men, they aren’t just extra people adding to the group, you don’t get the female until you remove the male.
While your post didn’t make any sense in regard to the thread topic, or anything else, you cared enough to read the article and post to the thread so you must care.
Speaking of not making sense, you claim in your Tag Line to be a “NATO warrior” yet you have refused to explain what this means. Why not let others decide what honors you deserve?
“””””I don’t care”””””
It seems you really are here just to troll people disrupt threads and really aren’t interested in the topics.
*Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is actually expanding its sniper program. Including women. Go figure...*
“If they can all shoot like that I wouldn’t care if the whole department was queer.”
Harry Callahan.
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