
April 1970: Trying to kill a sniper - smacktoward
http://mashable.com/2017/04/29/trying-to-kill-a-sniper/
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omginternets
What a succinct demonstration of how asymmetric warfare works: how much did it
cost to attempt to kill one person?

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VLM
Its a classic glass half full / glass half empty argument.

Remember, each side killed one person.

One side can only afford to dispatch one soldier, with a non-sniper rifle, on
a sniper patrol, and the pessimism shows in that he did the spray and pray
technique every day and went home, knowing that his side couldn't bother even
providing a proper sniper rifle. "They pretend to supply us, we pretend to
fight for them". Its just bad luck that eventually a spray -n- pray weapons
policy randomly hit some poor guy on our side resulting in massive
retaliation.

The glass half empty way to look at $100K of small arms ammo to kill one guy
is it cost $100K and that's not scalable if there's more than one guy. The
other way to look at it, is this only happened once, which tells you all you
really need to know about the opfor's opinion of this tactic, and furthermore
we didn't appear to mind spending $100K on one opfor. That's why this kind of
suicide kamikaze tactic was not super popular.

Now with backpack nukes, or maybe IEDs, maybe the scales tilt. But if all you
have is an AK47 and a small amount of ammo per day, this isn't going to happen
too much.

How do you win against an opponent who demonstrably doesn't care how much it
costs to get you? Apparently, the only working strategy is you wait for him to
leave. Which seems to be pretty much how it turned out.

As a side meta comment, times have changed on our side too. Back then the Army
spent $100K on small arms ammo and they must have fired a hundred thousand
rounds up at that hill, and somehow hit the opfor although they also hit
roughly 99999 other things, hopefully not civilians. Now a days you get the
opfor on the IR drone scope and drop a single hellfire missile costing $100K
on him from the air. Its the same cost but much less visually impressive and
much lower civilian casualties or general destruction.

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omginternets
You seem to be arguing that this is a scalability issue, and I disagree. It's
a _sustainability_ issue.

Viewed in this light, it's most certainly _not_ a glass-half-full/glass-half-
empty situation. Never in all history has a state benefitted from a prolonged
state of war, and this is especially true of foreign campaigns.

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blantonl
As I started reading this article, I thought for sure this soldier had used
his camera and the long exposures to identify the location of the sniper.

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srge
Same here

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MichailP
The tone of the article, and the actions of main protagonist, makes a
disturbing picture of war. In this setting war is fun for one side
(protagonist is taking photos! just for the kicks) and life-death situation
for other side. Who is the bad guy here?

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golergka
> In this setting war is fun for one side (protagonist is taking photos! just
> for the kicks) and life-death situation for other side.

I think your comment is distorting reality on several levels.

First of all, you take the fact that one side had a journalist and jump to a
conclusion that the war was "fun" for them. How does "taking photos" entail
"just for the kicks", exactly?

But the second distortion, which does not pop out that much, but is much more
serious, is to measure different side's moral stance in a war by their
suffering. You, implicitly, say that the side that suffers the most is by
default on the moral high ground.

Is it your honest opinion on ethics of war? That suffering is the measure of
morality?

I'm asking it because this kind of logic entails several very curious
conclusions. For example, the moment one side gains the upper hand and the
other loses it, they immediately switch places, bad guys become good and vice
versa. Also, the weaker side can start conflicts and break armistices and will
remain a "good guy" as long as it ensures that it has higher casualties,
especially civilian. And, of course, any technology that would make my
soldiers or civilians safer, and, therefore, leads to less suffering on my
side, makes me less moral - and, therefore, is immoral on it's own.

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RobertoG
There is a rule of thumb for judging morality in wars: If you are fighting in
your country and the other side it's not, then, normally, you have the moral
high ground.

As all rules of thumb, it not always work but it normally does.

A consequence of this rule is asymmetry, because you only go to another
country if you have the upper hand and something to win; And a consequence of
force asymmetry is more suffering for one side than the other.

So, yes, suffering is, even if not a direct one, a good proxy for moral
stance.

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golergka
But why do we have to stick to rules of thumb and causation links?

This rule has a glaring hole in it: according to it, the moment allies landed
in Normandy and Soviet Union moved the fight into mainland Germany, Nazi Reich
became more moral than the adversary. Can't we at least come up with better
heuristics than this?

(Yes, about Godwin's law: WWII is just a classical example that has an ethical
consensus about it. If it makes you more comfortable, you can replace it with
Gondor's armies storming the Black Gate.)

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RobertoG
I think it was Borges that said 'all the discussions are about semantics.':

I could argue that the Second World War was about, you know, the world, not
about Germany. They were fighting in all Europe, that in that moment the fight
was in Germany was due to the development of the war but it was, yet, a global
war.

We need heuristics because when somebody tell us something that goes against a
developed heuristic we should be surprised and examine the evidence more
carefully. A kind of comprehension algorithm if you want. Maybe it's another
way of saying that if you are invading a country the burden of proof is on
you.

For instance, Russian intervention in Ukraine was about protecting ethnics
Russians, USA intervention in Iraq was about spreading democracy or defensive
intervention or something like that.

That goes against my heuristic, so I should stop to examine the evidence more
carefully.

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likeclockwork
I don't think either of those are counterexamples to your heuristic. Your
heuristic just highlighting your biases around those two conflicts.

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RobertoG
I can see now how adding a 'supposedly' in the 4th paragraph would make my
point more clear. Sorry about that.

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Pica_soO
Im really trying to understand the snipers motivation to go to the same
position twice. That sounds ridiculously dangerous. Why not shot one shot ,
then run for cover behind the mountain and wait for the fireworks to end?

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eveningcoffee
If you read carefully then this is what happened exactly.

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ralfd
His other pictures:

[https://get.google.com/albumarchive/112064700171231789580/al...](https://get.google.com/albumarchive/112064700171231789580/album/AF1QipOatpCCdYGZOPkZNjUyXlyChsSf6WbxgloXFDZ2?source=pwa)

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jrockway
Is Ektachrome especially red-sensitive, or is that what the illumination
actually looked like?

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bhickey
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition#/media/File:Tracer_fire_at_MCB_Camp_Pendleton_DM-
ST-89-00210.jpg)

It looks like they have a reddish hue.

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King-Aaron
Yeah, you tend to see trace rounds illuminate in reds (due to the
peroxide/nitrate/magnesium in the munitions) and greens (when they use barium
salts for them).

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King-Aaron
Places you wouldn't want to be:

1\. That hillside

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janwillemb
Tldr: a Vietnamese sniper hides in the hills. Americans spray the hill with
gunfire. Sniper escapes, but one American shot interesting long-exposure
pictures of the action.

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quickacct
Yes that is what the article is about, but I'm confused about your tone here.
Do you have something more to say or do you prefer snark when commenting on
things that don't interest you?

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photonios
Or, he's just being a nice guy and providing a quick summary. If you're like
me, you read the comments first. In this case, I found his comment and found
the summary interesting enough to read the entire article.

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quickacct
Could be the case, but they seem to be downplaying the content and the last
sentence reeks of attitude. I just think it's rather unnecessary. I could
obviously be misinterpreting the comment but it seems rather clear to me.

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janwillemb
It was meant as summary. I'm with GP and usually read the comments first too.
I'm sorry it could be misinterpreted. In hindsight, "tldr:" may sound
attitudy, and I could have written: "Summary:".

