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Snipers

In World War II, an average of 25,000 bullets were fired for each soldier killed. By Vietnam, that number had climbed to 200,000. Yet, on average, trained snipers expend only 1.3 bullets per kill. It's no wonder they are called the "most hated men on the battlefield.

source

25,000 made me go wow. but 200k!!

no wonder Iraq had such huge weapon's dumps.


Elliot Temple on August 13, 2004

Messages (8)

Yup.

Jungle + Enemies Could Be Anywhere + Fully Auto weapons = ... Bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.


Dan at 12:29 AM on August 15, 2004 | #1071 | reply | quote

Curious to know how many were used in recent engagements; if the 200k thing is common now, or if it was indeed partially a product of the whole jungle thing.


Dan at 3:15 PM on August 16, 2004 | #1072 | reply | quote

Maybe this overstates the bullet-efficiency of snipers, though, because presumably they expend more bullets during training and practice than normal soldiers do.


David Deutsch at 9:41 PM on August 16, 2004 | #1073 | reply | quote

Maybe. It wouldn't take many practice sessions with a machine gun to use a ton of bullets though. But regardless, bullet efficiency isn't a big deal is it?


Elliot at 9:47 PM on August 16, 2004 | #1074 | reply | quote

The quote, at least, is an issue of lethality, not bullet-efficiency per se. When you fire 200,000 bullets before actually killing someone, you aren't as scary as the guy who doesn't usually even need to fire *2*.


Dan at 3:44 AM on August 17, 2004 | #1075 | reply | quote

Pffft. 1.3 bullets is weak. If snipers wanted to be REALLY elite, they'd expend LESS THEN ONE bullet per kill; now THAT would be impressive.


Not The J at 3:49 PM on August 17, 2004 | #1076 | reply | quote

Yeah!

In fact, they shouldn't even need weapons.

Wimps.


Gil at 4:41 PM on August 17, 2004 | #1077 | reply | quote

I saw the movie SWAT yesterday. The intro has a police shoot out and the police are losing badly to bad guys with AK47s and body armor. At one point a bad guy tries to get into a car to get away and then it cuts to a police sniper on the roof and he's like, "Don't worry, sir, he's not going anywhere." And headshots him. And I'm just sitting there thinking WTF. Why aren't you headshotting all of them!?! Well the answer is they wanted to make SWAT look all good when they show up and dispatch the bad dudes, but still...snipers are |337.


fr0ggE at 1:56 PM on August 24, 2004 | #1078 | reply | quote

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