Bolder tactics spur updated sniper training

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Bolder tactics spur updated sniper training
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jun 5, 2007 14:57:51 EDT


Enemy sniper tactics in Iraq have changed, so the Army is changing the way it teaches soldiers to react to them.
The Army has for years used a react-to-sniper drill that placed a sniper at hundreds of meters away and sometimes more than a thousand.
But bolder sniper tactics mean those distances “have changed rather substantially in theater,” said Col. Kevin Shwedo, chief of staff for operations at Training and Doctrine Command.
“Right now the snipers that are in Iraq are shooting sometimes at distances of 50 meters, but because the impact of acoustics in a city degrades your ability to react, we have to change how we perform that drill in an urban environment,” Shwedo said.
Closer snipers, he said, make for significant differences in how soldiers should react.
To update the drill, a sniper task force from Fort Benning, Ga., traveled to Iraq in January to begin developing tactics, techniques and procedures for soldiers who are attacked by snipers.
The training, which soldiers begin receiving in basic training, will address initial protection of standing soldiers, identification of the sniper’s location, and treating a wounded soldier in a way that avoids sustaining more casualties in the process.
“We didn’t train that battle drill to begin with, but when we found out we were losing soldiers to snipers we knew we needed one,” Shwedo said.
He described a scenario where soldiers will automatically go to aid another who’s been shot and more of them will be wounded because no one’s keeping watch on where the sniper fire is coming from.
A training support package is being developed and will be implemented soon after it has been approved, Shwedo said, but it is not complete and there is no launch date yet.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/06/army_snipertraining_070602w/
 
We'll be out of Iraq by then :(

Thank fuck the men on the ground are doing a great job because the leadership sure has made a cluster fuck of this war! :mad::2c::soap:
 
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