Video Day: Toying With a Sniper

I came across this on Facebook last night, and I just realized I can’t embed it. Syrian rebels toying with a sniper. Not a very good sniper if he’s falling for it. Each shot risks giving away his position. If the rebels aren’t busy trying to flank him, find out where he’s hiding, and take him out while he’s distracted with the dummy, they are dumber than he is.

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7 thoughts on “Video Day: Toying With a Sniper”

  1. I would think it was equally likely the sniper was keeping them preoccupied, while his comrade(s) flanked them. One burst from an AK 100 meters or more behind them would probably have settled their bacon.

    Only a very small percentage of armed fighters the world over have much experience or access to trainers with experience. It is why experienced guerrillas are in demand as trainers everywhere in the world where guerrilla forces exist.

    Even in the U.S. Army, almost 50 years ago, all we got in Basic Training was exposure to basic weapons and equipment. We got virtually nothing in the way of tactical infantry training. That would come later, if you went to Advanced Infantry Training, etc. The most we got in the way of tactical training was anecdotal mentions, by trainers who had already been to Vietnam, or who were veterans of the Korean War. Thrown into combat immediately after Basic, we probably would have been bigger clowns than the guys in that video.

  3. In thinking about advanced training It occurred to me that when I joined the Navy many years ago it was a full year of training before I reported aboard my first ship.

    1. Just for the sake of nostalgia and “war stories,” in my time most military planning was based on, that us conscripts were only going to be there two years, and you could only be in training up to the point where you would still have a year left to serve in Vietnam. Enlistees who had three years minimum to serve, could have more extensive training, but to the extent policy was generalized, it was driven by the two year term for conscripts. (There was about a two-week period in 1965 that the Navy drafted, but none other that I am aware of.)

      My observation was that once you got too “short” to serve a full hitch in Vietnam, the Army (at least) lost interest in you, and some people were discharged months early, probably as a result of manpower imbalances resulting from mismanagement.

  4. What language are they speaking? Didn’t sound like Arabic — but then I don’t know but a couple of words of Arabic. Foreign (non-Syrian) volunteers?

  5. I was laughing, because that kind of desperate laughter is the most infectious kind, when it hit me that this boy with such a beautiful smile will probably be dead by this time next month.
    War. Christ.

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