"Just one shot, Nicholai."
***Just one shot, Anuta...***
Posted on 09/22/2003 7:20:23 PM PDT by blam
Israel uses Russian snipers on West Bank
By David Blair in Jerusalem
(Filed: 23/09/2003)
Veterans of Russia's campaign in Chechnya are serving in the Israeli army as highly trained snipers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Russian immigrants fill the ranks of a specialist sniper unit known as the Aliya (Immigration) brigade, the army confirmed yesterday following a report in the newspaper Ha'aretz.
Sharpshooters with experience in Chechnya have been concealed at vulnerable points where Israel is open to infiltration from the occupied territories.
A security official told Ha'aretz that the men were deployed to reinforce the defences of "weak points" in the occupied territories.
Influenced by the mystique gained by snipers on the eastern front during the Second World War, the Russian army gives them specialist training lasting for a year. By contrast, the Israeli defence forces' sniping course is only five weeks long.
This makes the Russian snipers, especially those with combat experience in Chechnya, highly prized. Most are believed to have fought in Russia's offensive against Chechen separatists between 1994 until 1996.
The security official said they had "more patience" and better technical skills than their counterparts trained in Israel.
Most snipers are armed with Barrett .50 calibre semi-automatic rifles, accurate to a range exceeding 1,000 yards.
Since the Palestinian intifada began three years ago, Israeli snipers have acquired a psychological significance out of proportion to their numbers. They have been crucial to maintaining the siege on Yasser Arafat's Muqata compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israeli forces destroyed a house in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, killing a Hamas operative who was trapped inside.
Basel Qawasmeh was believed to be the last senior Hamas member at large in Hebron. Israel said he was responsible for organising dozens of attacks.
Great movie, great scene!
"Just one shot, Nicholai."
***Just one shot, Anuta...***
And the lady behind the rifle isn't bad either.
Regards,
L
And the lady behind the rifle isn't bad either.
Regards, Oh, you like the old SVD, Snaperskaya Vintovka Dragunova, maybe to be replaced by the newer VSK and SVU...and maybe not; the old *oar* works pretty good and is very much a known quantity.
Maybe some of these pics you'll find exciting, too. After all, the Russians have been finding *Palistinians* among their foes in Chechnya, so there's no reason for them not to go on safari for the Dukhai in Israel, too, if so invited by the Israelis. Interesting that both services have similar ideas about the employment of snipers as *designated marksmen* though their equipment is very different. Hope the Israelis pick up a few useful ideas from their visiting firemen, and I bet the russians find the Israeli sniper instructors and shooting coachs at the Israeli sniper training center at Mitkan Adam to be interesting and *not bad* too.
With top-quality ammunition, anyway. In the past the Israelis tried to skimp on ammo costs and used general-issue M33 .50 caliber MG ammo instead of match grade in their Barretts, and got correspondingly less useful results. Hopefully, they've corrected that flaw... or their Russian visitors pointed it out to them. But the Barrett .50 very nicely turns what the other people thought was cover into concealment.
Not all of them. The Israeli Naval Commando snipers are quite good, having picked up some of their ideas about sniper employment from their webfooted cousins, the U.S. Navy SEALs. Several of the Israeli antiterrorist and counterterror units are exceedingly good, as expected, and have carte blanch insofar as equiopment and training goes. And even the Mishmar Esrachi police reservist snipers using old M14s and bolt-action Mausers often outshoot their army counterparts- they're sniper's by choice and not assigned to the tasking as a *detail* and they practice continually...sometimes on live targets.
Another for you, with a SVD with the newer improved handguards:
Good girl- she zeroes her SVD with the iron sights, too, not just the PSO-1 telescope. But probably doesn't use *the soup* unless running tracers. Quite a few of the Russian snipers using non-corrosive primed ammunition keep cleaning rods away from the bores of ther rifles unless they've got a real good reason to go poking around in there.
Machinegunners are less fussy; likely her girlfriend with PK uses that stuff in the MG, particularly the gas piston chamber. Pick one. And don't get cute gurls with automatic weapons jealous.... [you oughta see their cute pal the BTR-70 driver!]
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