April 1970: Trying to kill a sniper

http://mashable.com/2017/04/29/trying-to-kill-a-sniper/

by smacktoward • 9 years ago

80 60 9 years ago

janwillemb2• 9 years ago

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.

quickacct4• 9 years ago

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?

photonios• 9 years ago

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.

omginternets3• 9 years ago

What a succinct demonstration of how asymmetric warfare works: how much did it cost to attempt to kill one person?

throwndown• 9 years ago

An instance where we do know the numbers: 9/11 attacks cost the attackers $500,000 according to intelligence estimates. The government response so far has cost $2 trillion (wars, etc.). That's a 4 million to 1 ratio.

oceanbreeze83• 9 years ago

This seems to take a very inclusive account of government spending but maybe not so for the attackers. We may need to consider the recruiting costs and ongoing operation cost for years leading up to the attack - even for expenses unrelated to the attack but part of the support and growth that led to it. You could argue that every AQ expense upto 911 was in some way building towards that event. I think if we have such a broad account of the government spend, we should do likewise for the other side. But your point is still good.

bluedino• 9 years ago

There are estimates that all in all, 250,000 rounds of ammunition are used for every person killed in the Iraq war

https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...

VLM• 9 years ago

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.

omginternets3• 9 years ago

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.

int_19h2• 9 years ago

Remember, each side killed one person.

They didn't - the sniper got away.

int_19h2• 9 years ago

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the subject of asymmetric warfare and terrorism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp_(novel)

Amazingly, it was written in 1957. But when you read it, you'll see just how much more relevant it became since then.

Just to give a taste of it:

"Next, Mowry went to the crowded main post office, took half a dozen small but heavy parcels from his case, addressed them and mailed them. Each held an airtight can containing a cheap clock-movement and a piece of paper, nothing else. The clock-movement emitted a sinister tick – just loud enough to be heard if a suspicious-minded person listened closely. The paper bore a message short and to the point. This package could have killed you. Two different packages brought together at the right time and place could kill a hundred thousand. End this war before we end you! Dirac Angestun Gesept. Paper threats, that was all – but they were effective enough to eat still further into the enemy’s war effort. They’d alarm the recipients and give their forces something more to worry about. Doubtless the military would provide a personal bodyguard for every big wheel on Jaimec; that alone would pin down a regiment. Mail would be examined, and all suspicious parcels would be taken apart in a blast-proof room. There’d be a city-wide search with radiation-detectors for the component parts of a fission bomb. Civil defence would be alerted in readiness to cope with a mammoth explosion that might or might not take place. Anyone on the streets who walked with a secretive air and wore a slightly mad expression would be arrested and hauled in for questioning."

MichailP4• 9 years ago

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?

payne92• 9 years ago

War IS disturbing.

It's most certainly life-or-death for both sides, even when resources are asymmetric.

When young men and women are forced to war against their will, they will find small ways to keep their own sanity and humanity -- they rest of us cannot possibly hope to relate.

golergka10• 9 years ago

Why necessarily "against their will"?

MichailP4• 9 years ago

Just found interesting comment from Jack Ma, about US strategy. He said that US had excellent strategy of focusing on IP and design while moving manufacturing and services to other countries. Large amounts of profits were generated, and then squandered on wars (instead of infrastructure). And then there was a nice analogy, in comments sections of the interview: "When I was 12, I made 100 dollars during a summer job we all used to do, I saved 71 dollars throughout the year and then bought fireworks and spent pretty much all of the money on 4th of July. I think our government is doing the same at a larger scale."

jrockway2• 9 years ago

protagonist is taking photos! just for the kicks

Documenting this stuff is important. The photographer didn't decide to have a war, he's just there documenting it. What you take away from the images is your own interpretation, with more concrete data about what went on than you'd get from the accounts of others.

This sort of thing makes for good art as well, because it's a pretty nice looking light show -- juxtaposed with the caveat that it's all for state-sponsored murder. War is one of humanity's darkest moments, but these photos show that there can be beauty even in life-or-death situations.

MichailP4• 9 years ago

You are right, it is important to have documents. The soldier obviously had passion for photography, judging by the aesthetics of the photos. I just got irritated by the asymmetry of the situation.

golergka10• 9 years ago

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.

RobertoG4• 9 years ago

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.

MichailP4• 9 years ago

Speaking of distorting reality, you say:

- 'journalist' while article says 'an enlisted man in the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade'

- 'just for the kicks' was sense I got from this paragraph of the article: 'Hensinger, sensing an opportunity, stuffed his Nikon camera, ...' and 'He timed his appearance for guard duty to make sure that he would be assigned to the watch tower with the widest view of the mountain and base.'

- Suffering is to some extent measure of morality. For example, recent US military operations heavily used drones. It is one thing to fly drone using XBox gamepad and kill for <insert noble cause here>, and another to shoot soldiers who invaded your country using some primitive gun. First is more similar to video game than to war. Second is more moral, and includes more suffering, no matter what mental acrobatics you use against it.

averagewall• 9 years ago

Suffering is better than nothing to measure morality. Higher suffering implies more helplessness to avoid it. Lower suffering implies you have the freedom to fight less.

Yes, if the balance of power suddenly changes, the morality can too. See the firebombing of Dresden, for instance. To maintain morality, you'd have to quickly scale back your attacks to match your newfound power instead of killing everyone because now you can.

reitanqild2• 9 years ago

You, implicitly, say that the side that suffers the most is by default on the moral high ground.

Sadly this is very common: more Arab lives are lost than Israeli - seems line Israelis are more evil.

While the reason is very straighforward - Israeli put nore effort into defending their citizens while the other side shoot rockets out of civilian neighborhoods seemingly to attract fire and international sympathy :-/

I feel more sorry for the Arabs for they have bad leadership and is punished again and again for it. But moral high ground? No way IMO.

strken• 9 years ago

It probably wasn't very fun for the man who was originally killed by AK47 fire, or his friends.

Who is the bad guy here? Well, everyone I know who has been anywhere near a war came away worse. I don't think war turns you into a good person, whether you're firing automatic weapons at sleeping men, blasting a hilltop trying to kill someone's son, or sleeping with a machete in a town where the rule of law has collapsed.

irixusr2• 9 years ago

The guy who got AKed could have burned his draft card, gone to jail for a few years and loose his SS benefits.

That's not fun either, but he wouldn't have died in a jungle half way across the world a young twenty-something to prop up the cowboy delusions of Kissinger.

mc32• 9 years ago

Snipers typically have location information asymmetry, else one would not see many snipers as a useful role in the military and rather a kamikaze role which in the great majority of cases it's not --good snipers are rare and you don't want to lose them.

jrockway2• 9 years ago

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

bhickey• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition#/media/File:...

It looks like they have a reddish hue.

King-Aaron2• 9 years ago

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).

Pica_soO• 9 years ago

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?

eveningcoffee2• 9 years ago

If you read carefully then this is what happened exactly.

ralfd• 9 years ago

His other pictures:

https://get.google.com/albumarchive/112064700171231789580/al...

blantonl• 9 years ago

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.

srge• 9 years ago

Same here

King-Aaron2• 9 years ago

Places you wouldn't want to be:

1. That hillside

April 1970: Trying to kill a sniper

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