[Uncle Jaque]

RE:

" 7.62x51mm vs. 7.62x39mm. Skill and finesse vs. hate and bumbling..."

Bear in mind, some of these jihhadists are known to carry 7.62 X 54R in various configurations, including the "Druganov" sniper rifle, which seems to have earned a modicum of respect in Afghanistan.

Although an antique by today's standards, there are still a few of the old Russian Moisin-Nagant M-91/30s floating around, and they have been picking people off from Stalingrad to Vietnam quite effectively for over a Century now.

Our Troops in VN quickly developed a healthy respect for the old M/N in the hands of a competent enemy Rifleman.
Given the abundance of all sorts of odd old weaponry in the Middle-East, I would be surprised if some of the Islammonazis are not toting a few of them around yet.

Anyone attempting to "snipe" at anything beyond about 100 meters with an AK would be, IMHO, quite the optomist - and probably a rather stupid one at that!

[Buffalo Head]

"....competent enemy Rifleman."

That is an oxymoron since WWII, particularly in the Mid-East, after the introduction of the AK-47 and it's variants. The Arabs find them particularly useful for saluting and attaching surrender flags. The target on the rooftop was probably a mercenary from somewhere.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Bear in mind, some of these jihhadists are known to carry 7.62 X 54R in various configurations, including the "Druganov" sniper rifle, which seems to have earned a modicum of respect in Afghanistan.

It's "Dragunov." I never saw one there, although there were some ROmanian FPKs (an AK-47 type weapon for the 54 rimmed, styled to look like a Dragunov -- a piece of junk).

The only thing people were using in 7.62 x 54R was the PKM general purpose machine gun.

A few rusty, shot out Mosin-Nagants were turned in by warlords looking to rotate stock in their arsenals, and a few Lee-Enfields, and some real oddities like a Canadian straight-pull Ross. Never saw a scoped rifle among the Hadjis, or any other optic (even their RPGs, they shot with iron sights). We did recover one mortar sight from the southwest of the country, the desert north of Kandahar.

The Afghan sniper is a mythical figure that was manufactured by the press and old Kipling stories. The fact of the matter is, they get no eye treatments, everyone over 35 has bad cataracts from UV exposure, they all fire AKs on "crowd control" and they hit their targets only by pure luck.

One reason that they got their clocks cleaned on Anaconda was that at the 400 and 500 yard engagement ranges they could only bring effective fire with crew served weapons where our infantry riflemen were able to plink them with M-4s and ACOG optical sights.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Rebelbase]

"" 7.62x51mm vs. 7.62x39mm. Skill and finesse vs. hate and bumbling..."

I have a 7.62 x 39mm and I don't hate anyone!

[Iris7]

"Russian Moisin-Nagant M-91/30s"

An effective weapon.

So is an AK, within it's limits. Certainly not a rifleman's weapon, for sure! But a deadly S.O.B.