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Posted: 2/12/2002 6:24:15 AM EDT
[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626448/posts[/url]
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 6:34:38 AM EDT
[#1]
Yeah, the marines have already called me twice this week trying to get me to help teach the sniper school. Too bad I'm just too busy to help out right now. [:)]
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 7:14:28 AM EDT
[#2]
Fewer than half of the 96 men chosen for sniper training each year at Camp Pendleton pass the 50-day course, which isn't open to women.
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So how come no women?
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 9:50:14 AM EDT
[#3]
"So how come no women? "

Flame me if you wish.

My answer would be "maternal instinct". There are times of war were a sniper will find himself in a situation were he will have to shoot a child. I think the Marines may not belive a woman could do this reliably.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 9:54:19 AM EDT
[#4]
Quoted:
Fewer than half of the 96 men chosen for sniper training each year at Camp Pendleton pass the 50-day course, which isn't open to women.
View Quote


So how come no women?
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why would you want to ask that question?
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 12:19:19 PM EDT
[#5]
You guys seriously believe women can't kill with the best of them?  I say give thme a crack at anything men are allowed to do.  Someone with a maternal instinct wouldn't sign on to be a sniper to begin with.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 12:30:33 PM EDT
[#6]
Yeah, there were all sorts of women snipers in the Chechnyan War.  They were mercenaries from Baltic soviet states, fought on the rebel side.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 12:36:54 PM EDT
[#7]
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 5:25:54 PM EDT
[#8]
How come no women? That's easy. Remember the conditions snipers work in. Then go watch GI Jane. Same reason no woman SEALs or Recon Marines or Delta.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 6:13:48 PM EDT
[#9]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the highest number of kills recorded by one sniper in the russian army was by a women. In times of war the women of other countrys have shown themselves very capable and even ruthless. Are there more men that will make the cut? Of course that is a fact of nature, but there are some women that are also very capable. Just to head off some of the flames, no I don't want to serve with them in a line infantry company. That is a different situation.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 7:11:43 PM EDT
[#10]
I always thought the Number 1 sniper for the soviets was Vasili Zitzev (spelling probably wrong) who was male? The reason it is not open to woman is snipers are attached to combat units which woman in the military are not allowed to participate.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 10:56:21 PM EDT
[#11]
Nay, Zaitsev was not #1 I beleive (not to positive) that the #1 title belongs to a Finn whose name I cant quite remember now. I remember his record of 500+ confirmed.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 11:24:55 PM EDT
[#12]
Hope that I don't start a flame war here, but I would like to hope that the society that we live in the US does not produce women who are capable of the cruelty shown by the VC woman in One Shot, One Kill.  As for a great sniper in the service of our armed forces, I cannot answer that, but comparison to women snipers in other conflicts might be improper.  When a nation comes down to brass tacks, women likely were employed in this role as were children.  I don't mean to come off biased here.  Just a point.
Link Posted: 2/12/2002 11:51:51 PM EDT
[#13]
Bear in mind some of the best KGB Urban snipers were women - and they all volunteered.

Do I think women could make the cut?  Sure.  Do I think they belong in line infantry?  Maybe.  Perhaps all-female units would be an interesting idea, and fielding them at, er, "the worst possible time" would be most effective.

Also, women are usually easier to train in most activities requiring hand-eye coordination and patience, and women have also been shown to have a higher tolerance for pain and discomfort than men (at a base level.  Like other mental skills, these can be improved by ANYONE!)

Also, women are less susceptible to the effects of ego (generally) and this shows in their methods and results.  

FFZ
Link Posted: 2/13/2002 1:38:54 AM EDT
[#14]
Quoted:
"So how come no women? "

View Quote


Check this out:

[url]http://www.af.mil/news/Apr2001/n20010417_0519.shtml[/url]

[img]http://www.af.mil/photos/images/0519a-01.jpg[/img]

First woman graduates from sniper school
by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell
National Guard Bureau Public Affairs
04/17/01 - CAMP ROBINSON, Ark. (AFPN) -- March is the traditional month for celebrating women's history. April 2001, however, is when 19-year-old Jennifer Donaldson made some history of her own.

She was nicknamed "G.I. Jane" at Camp Robinson in central Arkansas, near Little Rock. That's where the senior airman from the Illinois Air National Guard became the first woman to complete the only U.S. military sniper school open to females.

Donaldson and seven men graduated April 14 from the first countersniper program for Air Guard security force personnel conducted by the 8-year-old National Guard Sniper School. It was the first program of its kind for any U.S. Air Force component.

"The Air Force has been the only ground combat force in this country that does not employ snipers and countersnipers," said Army Guard Sgt. 1st Class Ben Dolan, a former Marine sniper and the school's chief instructor.

Completing the course made Donaldson, a security forces specialist from the Air National Guard's 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield, Ill., the first woman student for the National Guard's pilot training program for security people charged with protecting air bases and airplanes.

She and her partner, Staff Sgt. Frank Tallman from Kentucky, were the first team to complete and pass a 2.7-mile land navigation course through thick woods that day. She was steeling herself to do another three-hour course that night.

"I had no idea it would be this hard," said Donaldson after her first week. "I've been in the Guard for a year. I've done basic training and tech school. But I've never seen this kind of physical training. Some of us had to get fit while we were here.

"Donaldson was eligible to attend the school because women belong to Air Guard and Air Force security forces, Dolan explained.

That is not the case in the Army and the Marines because snipers are part of those infantry forces, and women cannot be in the infantry. Dolan, however, maintains that more women should be trained as snipers.

"Frankly, women are better suited mentally for this job than most men," said Dolan who has learned the sniper craft from the Marines and from the Army and who saw duty as a Marine sniper 10 years ago during the Persian Gulf War.

"A woman is best suited to counter a woman sniper," he added. "That's important because more than 50 percent of the countries that have been considered hostile to the United States, including North Vietnam and North Korea, have used women snipers.

"Women can shoot better, by and large, and they're easier to train because they don't have the inflated egos that a lot of men bring to these programs," Dolan said. "Women will ask for help if they need it, and they will tell you what they think."

"The same standards apply to men and women," Dolan insisted. "This course is designed to test their physical limits and their emotional balance."


Link Posted: 2/13/2002 8:37:59 AM EDT
[#15]
Notice please I said "reliably".....

There are always exceptions.
Link Posted: 2/13/2002 9:02:35 AM EDT
[#16]
Quoted:
Fewer than half of the 96 men chosen for sniper training each year at Camp Pendleton pass the 50-day course, which isn't open to women.
View Quote


So how come no women?
View Quote




Passing the course also requires a keen eye for details and the ability to recall what's been seen. Instructors pepper trainees with questions: How many steps are there in the staircase of your barracks? How many cars did you pass on the way to chow? And this zinger: Who failed the course so far, and in what order did they fail?

''We provide intelligence. That's 90 percent of what we do,'' said Staff Sgt. Jeff Escalderon of San Clemente.

View Quote


My wife can tell you how many and what color dirty socks I have left lying around for the last 10 years, how many pair of dirty underwear and what the sizes were, that she's had to pick up, how many dirty dishes I and any one of my children have left around the house not to mention how many times I have worn my favorite shirt since the last washing.

I think she could make it.
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