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Sniper Guide By An AEG User.


balberoth-the-destroyer

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Bal,

 

I wouldn't knock either your 'training' or your 'professionals' but be aware that they will stick to a proven curriculum that they believe (or have been instructed to believe) will give best results at any one time.

 

This is subject to & frequently does,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,change.

 

The point I am making is that it is unwise to believe that any 'training' you receive, is either 'the best' or 'the only' way to achieve something.

 

More importantly it is very unwise to dismiss 'experience' out of hand just because you can't quantify it within your own belief system.

 

"A day in the bush is worth a year in the class room".

 

This is not to say that you wont get the 'best' (as decided by the decision makers) that they believe is available & suitable to what they believe your needs will be.

 

There are those of us that follow blindly & those that have the ability to assess info & decide for themselves what the appropriate & suitable techniques will be.

 

 

Greg.

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Of course, but any training is modified by the experience of the instructor, in a lot of the fieldcraft training I have received the most useful bits I learned were the ones that weren't in the lesson, but that the instructor added in himself because he had found it useful.

 

I'm only making the point that having some real training under your belt is worth a hell of a lot of arbitrary and enemy-skill-dependent trial and error based learning.

If you're playing with a whole field of newbies you will get away with poor techniques without noticing the flaws, and usually your mind isn't creative enough to just dream up some of the more outlandish stuff on your own anyway, so having a grounding in how it's really done is worth at least a few years of trial and error (in my opinion, and backed up by observations of other players)

 

I just found the implication that "I've been airsofting for ages so I'm better than the real soldiers (who are the instructors after all)" mildly offensive.

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I just found the implication that "I've been airsofting for ages so I'm better than the real soldiers (who are the instructors after all)" mildly offensive.

 

Erm... I never implied the above. Yet its obviously flawed, as it is if reversed. ie "I have been in the military a fair bit, so am therefore going to be better than REAL Airsofters (who are the players of the sport after all)."

 

No offense, but again I find I disagree with some points here.

 

I don't think being trained by someone who is experienced, suddenly imparts that experience. Like the guy from the military on here the other month who insisted "I am the best in the world, as I have been trained by the best in the world." Interestingly he insisted he was a fieldcraft instructor yet only had 2 years experience. :mellow: Sounds to me like much of what is taught is very much from a manual. As we all know on these forums, such manuals are easy enough to get hold of and no substitute for time in the forest.

 

If I am honest, I found much of the fieldcraft instruction, that I ever got, was basic and not worth the same time in the actual field. Sure, it gives you an idea but it's not the same as doing it yourself, in a real situation.

 

I think it is important to see there are specific skills to this sport, that do not match the military and vice versa.

 

"in a lot of the fieldcraft training I have received the most useful bits I learned were the ones that weren't in the lesson, but that the instructor added in himself because he had found it useful."

 

Says it all really... ;)

 

You have to be able to get closer than most "real situations" would advise, in this game and still be able to go un noticed. If anything, this encourages better skill level in this specific field of stealth. Everyone can get instructed or read a book on "stealth" but unless you put it all into practice time and time again, then you are not on the top level .... just like any sport.

 

I don't use military tactics or try to replicate the "army" and that's why I don't call myself an Airsoft Sniper. I am into practicality and using whatever legal advantage I can get over my opponents through tactics. I am a "6mm HUNTER".... a new breed of gamer and proud to be doing an extreme sport that is not pretending to be anything other than what it is.....

 

after all, my years of actual gaming have all been on the relevant subject, while I appear to recall that "soldiers" are so undermanned these days that they have to do several jobs and therefore spread their time, training and experience in all these aspects...... not just the ones that would be relevant to Airsoft gaming....

 

ie. the time you spent field stripping your rifle was not relevant to what I do. Likewise for first aid. etc etc...

 

To further compound the arguement, the problem with this particular area of skills is the fact that all humans have evolved to be good hunters (after all that is what got us to the top of the food chain). Part of that is from instinct, part is from skill and part is through superior intelligence. However, just like any sport or skill; some people are just naturally better or more talented/gifted than others (just think of football).... some people are naturals and some people find it all alien to them.

 

I also point out that airsofting for a long time means very little, you may have been rubbish at it for 17 years (obviously I'm not saying you are, it's just a hypothesis).

 

By contrast I have to be re-trained in these things every time I go on detachment, yes, trained, by professionals many of whom have been in the military for longer than 17 years, if you honestly think that airsofting for a while is better for fieldcraft than being trained by people who do it for a living then you are very sadly deluded.

 

m8, you contradict yourself... the guy who trained you (who had over 17 years experience) could have been "rubbish" according to your own statement. Do you remember the guy at school, who had been there over 20 years... yet you soon found out he was not cut out to be a teacher..... and lessons involved "copying from the text book..." <_<

 

Bottom line is that someone who is highly experienced, has an edge, over someone who is fully trained, but not experienced.

 

The fact you find ghillies easier to spot than DPM is suprising to me as I find that experienced players (I know) all agree that after a while DPM becomes eay to see as your brain gets used to filtering it out of the landscape. After all, the colours are all standardised and the pattern is easy to picture in your mind. As mentioned earlier, your training should have shown you that DPM is not suppossed to be left plain and is really the base to add local camo to.

 

Maybe your ability to easily spot opponents, is a natural gift of keen senses and something I share (my hearing is way above average.)

 

Either way, I love a good debate and its always enjoyable to analyse such aspects of the sport.

 

Good hunting and Best Wishes for '08 ;)

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I just found the implication that "I've been airsofting for ages so I'm better than the real soldiers (who are the instructors after all)" mildly offensive.

 

 

Implication or not, I think that softing & soldiering are so far apart. Being trained to the very highest standard as a soldier, may make you a good soldier, but it's not going to make you necessarily good at anything else.

 

A black belt in Karate is still only a white belt in judo until he takes & passes the gradings!

 

I would hate to think that just because you can excel at one, you would be good at another. As Bushy states, you may have the ability to be good at both, but one does not equate to the other.

 

Whilst I feel that soft is a useful training aid for those involved in house clearance etc, that's about it.

 

For instance: softers can & mainly find cover behind flimsy foliage, yet we all know what a live round will do to that.

 

Conversely a softer knows that a bb is very unlikely to hit him when fired from over 80m & therefor base flanking maneuvers etc. around that premise.

 

Put a load of softers up against the army in a real battle & they wouldn't last too long.

 

Conversely put soldiers into a softing skirmish & the tables are turned. Movements are so different when lives are not at stake, ammo is limitless (with a 50m range) & 6mm ply wood is bullet proof!

 

There are parts of each that are compatible & transferable but on the whole, it's main similarity is in the 'look'! :)

 

Regarding the learning process I think all would agree that a bit of class room & study is always useful & then,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,practice, practice PRACTICE!

 

 

Greg.

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Well said.

 

There are some good points that are transferable in both airsoft and real life.

 

- Teamwork: Target ID, commanders decision making process, section/Platoon SOPs, communication

- Close country patrolling: individual movement/concealment, spotting people in bush, section formations, section IAs.

- Understanding the dynamics of battle (Prep, Reaction to effective enemy fire, Engage the enemy, Win the fire fight, assault, reorg)

- FIBUA: (in a way. But it gets messy there certainly in airsoft's usual engagement ratios)

 

All the tactical and defensive soldier skills for harbouring and etc are not often used in airsoft and is what keeps soldiers alive on the field. You also have to remember no military commander would really commit their troops unless there was a 3:1 ratio in numbers (at least a 2:1), but in airsoft we are often split into predictable scenarios with 1:1 teams.

 

At the end of the day, in this game we are loosely replicating what would happen in reality in the 'look' but our core actions are completely different.

 

A soldier will try to preserve the life of another soldier next to them by covering them while he eats, or covering them why they move to the next bound, and knows that he will do the same to the other soldier next to them. When do most airsofters do that? Perhaps consider, what would the game be like if people started to do that?

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I used to use a full burlap type ghillie. I found it effective because my opposition were not used to it, and I only used it for a few scenarios through the day. I agree with the earlier point that it helps if the opposition do not get a close look at it in the safe zone etc, so I used to keep it in a day sack and haul it out after leaving the safe area at the start of suitable scenarios, putting it on over the top of the now empty day sack (and everything else). At the time I was strictly limited to 328fps and so had a BA rifle that did not outrange AEGs, meaning that I had to allow my target to come close to guarantee a kill. I found the suit useful in appropriate situations, ie defensive ones, much less so when rapid movement was required.

 

I stopped wearing it not because it was ineffective, but simply because it was too hot, heavy and limited my movement to areas with no brambles.

 

My tuppence worth.

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I agree generally with Bushman (and everyone else's) points about the difference between airsoft and military engagement, but I'm only really talking about the camoflage aspect of it, and that's still fairly similar, the tactics are different, but I don't think the basic techniques behind camoflage and concealment are any different whether you're fighting in Afghanistan, airsofting in Surrey, or playing hide-and-seek in your garden.

 

As an answer to "how do I know the instructor isn't rubbish" well for one thing you have to prove yourself to be allowed to instruct, and for another thing he is still alive! Being rubbish at actual combat = death.

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In the last picture you are as easily visible as he is because you are the entirely wrong colour, plus your rifle is just as visible as his, and then there's the fact that you are a much larger target, meaning that you are easier to shoot (gear hits count, yes?).

The problem isn't whether you need to provide more proof, you need to provide proof in the first place.

 

Case most certainly not closed.

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I'm the Russian player from the pictures posted above. Obviously this guy doesn't know anything about camouflage, let alone sniping.

 

The truth is that you know you are wrong, but you are too high on your horse to admit it. No need to argue, because you ARE wrong and everyone knows it.

If ghillie suits are less effective than BDU camo then they wouldn't be in use. Now, I don't know if your actually mentally challenged or not, so I am not going to call you any names. But I will point out your unbelievable ignorance.

 

I imagine you'll say black, because I'm saying white. But heres the white- YOU ARE WRONG. Not just about a suits effectiveness but almost everything else.

 

Please give up. You ask for proof when you have given no logical explanation why a Ghillie suit is less effective. I'm sure there are quality suits in the UK, and I suggest you should just shut your mouth until you have seen (or rather not seen) one of these suits being properly used by a fellow that knows what he is doing.

 

The only thing you are, is a fine example of a wannabe. Not a sniper, not a DM, and apparently not a real mil-spec airsofter. Your knowledge of sniping is misconstrued and made up, so don't speak as if you have any remote knowledge of anything military.

 

Oh, and to the guy above, Andrew has since added a very effective ghillie wrap to break up the shape of his rifle.

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Lol ghillies work well because they break up light and shapes. So they blend better, while the BDU's are on fabric which doesn't break up the light and shapes as well so it is harder to blend in. Plus ghillies also use local vegetation also that is why they work well lol. Maybe he is an Urban sniper rofl thats why the ghillie isn't working.

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As I said earlier, I only used a ghillie suit briefly, and that wasn't mine.

As I've also got kinda sick of saying, ghillie suits are not effective at airsoft ranges, I never said that they don't work at all.

 

To the guy who said that "I don't have any knowledge of anything military" I AM IN THE F*CKING MILITARY, YOU MORON.

 

As you would probably have noticed if you'd actually read the whole f*cking thread, I came to the conclusion that many ghillie suits were inadequate, and that I'm lucky in that I find them very easy to see, probably as a result of my military training on how to deal with minefields, it forces you to look at the very small details that are out of place, which is probably why ghillie suits stick out to me, but not to you.

 

To the above poster, read the thread title.

 

Besides the whole boring camoflage argument, I was always saying that the advantages of a ghillie suit are outweighed by the disadvantages, I guess I thought that was obvious, I also thought it was obvious that I agree that when you sit in one place for hours covered in local foliage the ghillie suit will work to a degree, but nobody ever does that in airsoft.

 

I think that this thread has gone downhill since Bushman stopped posting, as he has clearly been replaced by idiots, we may have disagreed (at first), but he was a pleasure to talk to, and the people posting here now obviously haven't read the whole thread, so go away, your input is not needed here, this issue was resolved at least a page ago.

 

 

Edit:

I just noticed that the bulk of Meldamine's first post was utter ###### anyway, you said that you were going to point out my "unbelieveable ignorance", well to do so requires that you actually back up your statements, just saying "I'm right, you're wrong, neh neh neh neh neh" isn't pointing out anything, it is merely demonstrating inability to argue the point, and inability to structure a coherent argument.

 

I'll also take back what I said about your input not being needed here, Meldamine, you should stay, because I really enjoy reading the ramblings of idiots, it's like reading the Darwin Awards, but with a surprise ending!

Hopefully I'll receive further amusement from this topic, if not I'll report it to the mods for locking, it has outlived its use.

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Hmmm

 

Well I've had military training, including observation.

 

Stace can be really hard to see when he wants to, and I've hardly ever seen TheBauer when he has been "in situ".

 

I think much depends on the nature of the site, and the skills of the sniper. There are way too many generalisations in this thread, and I'm sorry balberoth, you've brought this attack on yourself, even if the criticism is now a bit off-target and way over the top.

 

Chill out, enjoy your time before deployment, but please consider this: There are people on these boards who actually do know more about concealment in airsoft than you do, both in theory and in practice. Some of these people are also trained observers.

 

Good luck when you get there fella!

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Well you're right in that I did bring it on myself, mostly by not really clarifying what I meant in the first place, my comments about the effectiveness of ghillie suits were meant in balance to the disadvantages (movement etc), and I still don't really think that they're worth the movement penalty, but personal preference/experience is king here.

 

I'm really quite surprised that a few people seem to have taken it as a personal attack, which it isn't, and to be honest I'd like to see someone like Bushman, Staceh or TheBauer in situ, so I could have a look at someone who we can guarantee does know their stuff, I certainly can't rule out the possiblity that I've not seen enough decent snipers.

 

In reference to that Boeotian who claimed that the rest of my guide was wrong too, I'd like to refer you to the stream of people on the first page who seemed quite happy with it.

 

Ps, if you don't know what a Boeotian is then look it up, Johann Gauss (one of history's greatest mathematicians) was rather fond of the term.

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Ok, this is my last post on Arnies, I've had it with all the euro-trash (no offense to the non euro-trash, I am european myself) on this forum. Just because you are in the military, doesn't mean you know anything. your tactical logic makes me question the quality of the training you were given.

 

In some cases, yes, BDUs are better than ghillie suits. But the way you are wording your argument makes it seem like you think BDU is better in all situations. Depending on the objective and the procedure to accomplish it, a Ghillie suit might very well mean life or death

 

So you've used a ghillie suit? So what, that doesn't mean you used it correctly.

 

I've seen Angelmaker use a ghillie suit and a BDU at different games, at the games where he is wearing the suit, he's able to move closer to the enemy, stay hidden, and keep hidden. If it works best for him then why argue that its wrong?

 

Carlos hathcock killed the majority of a VC company while concealed by a Ghillie suit of sorts. If he stresses the importance of concealment, you should tpp, because unlike yourself he was a true sniper.

 

I didn't read the entire thread because it took only a few of your posts to recognize you have no real sniping experience.

 

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If you'd read the thread then you wouldn't have made most of the frankly stupid comments that you've posted.

 

I'm also curious what exactly you mean by "euro-trash", because obviously you wouldn't be stupid enough to just insult the entire European membership of Arnies, would you?

 

You are in no position to question the training I was given, as you are clearly in possession of no training yourself.

 

I am not wording my argument in the way you describe, once again, read the thread.

 

I have no idea why you think Carlos Hathcock comes into this, I can only assume that you're a sniper-fanboy who's name-dropping.

As to him stressing the importance of concealment, what do you think all military training does?

 

All you have been doing so far is to nitpick at minor points, normally I'd say come back when you have a structured argument, but in this case, I really don't care, Bushman, Stace and Bauer have been over this one already, far better than you have, and I'm content to say that they've covered this rather well, I'm still dubious of the benefits of a ghillie suit unless in a specific scenario game, but my final word is that I accept that the advantages can outweigh the disadvantages in some circumstances, but only if the suit is well made and used correctly.

That conclusion was reached by intelligent debate, and is as far as I'm willing to budge on the issue anyway, there is no more room for maneouvre, and I can't see you bringing an intelligent debate to the table anyway.

 

In conclusion then, I have decided that you must be one of the aforementioned sniper-fanboys, as you have jumped into this thread without a relevant argument, purely based on being upset that "OMGZ he sed something that doesnt agree with my 1337 sniperz loadout, oh noes i must flame him to restore myself to a full level of fanboyism!!!1111!!!ONE"

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Actually, carlos hathcock only used a crude form of ghillie once in his book(s), and his interviews mention very little about them.

 

Balberoth, gimmie a nudge when you get back from the sandbox mate, I'll try and make a trip to your local.

 

Swerve, thankyou for the kind comments mate, Thebauer and myself do our best to be bloody irritating, i played today without my ghillie on and felt totally naked, although i got waay more pistol kills than long rifle kills, i in turn was spotted far more often than normal, it was most frustrating.

 

Please keep this topic civil and on track, we've managed 5 pages before the insults started, and its a nice relevant discussion for a change!

 

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