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Article on infantry and marksmanship
There's an interesting article in Infantry magazine on the subject. The thrust of it is that the Army has neglected marksmanship, due to (1) emphasis on high-tech weapons and (2) the tendency of past wars ('Nam) to be fought in jungles at close range. Whereas WWII soldiers were trained to engage out to 600 yards, whereas today emphasis is on 200 yards and less. Also the Army (unlike the Marines) have a shortage of first-rate marksmanship instructors.
And now we're fighting in the desert and mountains, where people can see and shoot from longer range.
[Update: link corrected. Thanks...]
· shooting
Comments
I think the URL is incorrect; it wants me to log into you cPanel.
Anyway, weren't there fewer riflemen in WWII, percentage-wise? A lot of soldiers were armed with submachine guns that couldn't shoot very far.
Posted by: Alcibiades at December 21, 2006 01:41 PM
President Franklin D. Roosevelt maintained a long friendship with then (future) Marine Commandant Thomas Holcomb from the 1920's onward.
And you know what started their friendship?
An interest in long-range rifle markesmanship.
Incidentally, Holcomb, was the first United States Marine in history to pin 4-Stars on
his shoulder.
Even if his rank of General was his retirement rank.
Posted by: Marcus Poulin at December 21, 2006 04:45 PM
The Army's disinterest in marksmanship has a lot more to do with the studies showing that well under 10% of soldiers in combat ever actually consciously put the sights on another human being and pull the trigger. The percentage of "combat" troops who *never* fired their weapon is in the double digits.
Given this, the Army decided to go back to the really old days of "volley" fire and depend on area fire to maybe eventually hit something.
Posted by: bud at December 22, 2006 11:28 AM