Over at Abu Muqawama, Charlie posts a information bleg from Andy Exum, abu muqawama himself:
Charlie got this email this morning:Uh, Abu Muqawama wants to send out an RFI to the readership of, uh, AbuMuqawama.
Can one of you link to these two stories about this assassinated Syrian general -- who was allegedly shot from a boat, in the sea -- and ask the readership whether or not shooting someone with a sniper rifle from a f*cking boat (which is, presumably, rocking and unsteady) is or is not the hardest thing in the world. I mean, how feasible is this?AM (from Beirut)
Here's the Washington Post story:
A Syrian general shot to death at a beach resort over the weekend was a top overseer of his country's weapons shipments to Hezbollah, according to opposition Web sites and Arab and Israeli news media....
The Free Syria Web site of Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president now living in exile, said a sniper on a yacht shot Suleiman. The Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said he was struck by four bullets fired from the direction of the sea.
So I turned to my handy panel of experts - members of a private listserv on shooting that I belong to. The members are often military or police, and are far more knowledgeable about shooting and shooting history than I am or than the average mall ninja you'd meet in a gun store or online.
Here's a spectrum of the replies:
It's certainly possible - perhaps even easy. Don't forget that shooting from a small craft is only a problem in an unsteady sea. Anchored off the coast (probably no more than 50-100 yards from the beach or harbor), in a yacht (rather larger than a dinghy or rowing-boat, with a keel, which helps stability), and in a calm sea (and the Mediterranean can be a millpond at times, particularly in the early morning), such a shot would be no problem at all for a competent marksman - and Mossad probably has some of the most "competent marksmen" in the world! There are also stabilized weapon mounts available for use from small craft. I know Israel has them on larger weapons on its patrol craft, and it wouldn't take a genius to miniaturize such a mount for use with a sniper rifle. Israel produces some of the world's best equipment in this line, after all. However, I don't think such a mount would have been necessary in a calm sea.
and
If you look up what little information is available on army sniper Adelbert "Bert" Waldron, you'll find a passage in Gen. Julian Ewell's on-line book claiming that, with a single shot, Waldron shot a VC sniper out of a tree at 900 meters from a Riverine boat. I remain dubious, but I suppose all kinds of things happen in this crazy world.
and
Simple, you shoot on the up-roll. ;)
and
I did a lot of patrols on rivers in RVN, and they are usually flat calm. I can see enough stability to make a precision shot. I would need more details
to pontificate further...
and then the skeptics
Hey, they did it in Shooter and Spartan. So it must be possible, right?
and
I say no, and I saw Spartan as well.You can do lot's of things in the movies, like fly wearing just a cape. Shooting from a boat, unless your victim is also in your boat or you're using the Big Mo's 16 inch guns, can't be done.
Or I could be wrong.
So overall, a bunch of highly experienced and trained shooters do think it's possible. Over to you, Andrew...
AL, I used to shoot long range rifle competition. I hunt when I can now. A common thread with a rifle is tracing the crosshairs over the target. This comes from instablility of position, heartbeat, wind, and hypothetically wave motion. If the motion cam be "timed" the shot is theoretically possible, given the constraints of range, lighting, time, blah blah.
The use of a boat as other than a stationary "blind" would puzzle me, because yachting away from aircraft is a losing proposition. Four shots is another oddity, unless several snipers were used. I suppose an underwater escape might be used.
All in all, there really is not enough information.
Photographers and cameramen are able to take good level shots even from fast-moving boats, given the right equipment - motion-stabilizing tripods and such. The problems are similar.
For a trained sniper, I would think that the problem of shooting somebody 100 yards away from a harbored boat would be pretty trivial. At 100 yards, a bullet will deviate about 1 inch from the point of aim. The motion of the firing platform will add to that deviation. If it multiplied it by as much as 10, it would be the same deviation you get from firing over a range of 1000 yards, and snipers have frequently killed at that range or greater.
At a hundred yards it wouldnt require a sniper rifle, and a sniper wouldnt use 4 shots. You would do just as well with an M249 on a tripod and at first blush i expect it was something like that.
Its not like the person who took the shot didn't train for it. Depending on the size of the craft involved, it could very well have been just as stable as level ground.
The Syrian media also reported that Suleiman was shot 4 times. Given that a sniper on a boat in the sea would be shooting up to the target on a hotel patio & that after the first shot the target would be lying down, it would be pretty hard to see him let alone hit him 3 more times. Also, given the large mass of sniper rounds and the damage they do when they hit a body, there wouldn't be much left of it after 4 shots. Besides, aren't snipers trained to make "one-shot-one-kill"? Are the Syrians saying they let an Israeli yacht sail to within 50 to 100 yards of a high security location, fire 4 shots at a senior regime official and then get away? Nonsense.
The "Shots from the sea" scenario is a paranoid projection of the Syrian regime. Four shots sounds more like a Syrian intelligence squad hit.
Good point. Maybe the guy was skimming a little more than his bosses deemed reasonable.
I find strange that a sniper shoots four times. Moreover, even in the quietest day of the Mediterranean a small boat still moves in a way that it is perceptible through binoculars.
Stabilized machine guns (.50) aimed through also stabilized long range optical systems are usual equipment today in patrol boats. I think it can be concealled in a civil one. My preferred hypothesis: the last bullet shot before the first hit the target.
I like too the option of the Syrian intelligence squad. Why should naively swallow what our enemies tell?
The record longest distance for a sniper kill is 1.5 miles by a Canadian sniper in Afghanistan in 2002.