The most important part of your sniper weapon system is the precise alignment of your scopes sighting plane – via it’s reticle, with the weapons bore axis. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how good your gun or scope or you are. Now, what good would it be if your reticle is held “gyroscopically” on target, but the barrel of your rifle is aiming, well, who knows where? I mean, Iv’e heard some bone headed comments before, but that’s the kind of hocus pocus ninja magic stuff only the media and video game geeks come up with. But hey, the pros took and made the shots, so who cares what the talking heads and computer commandos think.

Talked about here too: http://forums.gunbroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=368179

First off, let me say great work and impressive shooting, certainly better than most of us would ever come close to. However, I don’t think these snipers’ abilities were tested to the max.

Were both ships moving…yes, but the waters in the Gulf of Aden are dead calm as are the winds at this time of year, and the mass of the stationary U.S. ship would have made any pitching on that vessel minimal if not imperceptible…at least at the reported distances of 30 to 60 yards.

Making 3 shots from 3 different shooters within a fraction of a second, that’s impressive. Having 3 live subjects that don’t make any sudden movements at the time of those shots was luck.

The MK-11 is an exceptionally accurate sniping system that could probably hit a quarter consistently at 60 yards by most people who shoulder it – but that would be in the best of conditions.

All this to say that the vast majority of us would likely not be able to make these shots. But they don’t particularly impress me as snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq have routinely hit targets out to 600+ yards with the same 7.62 round. One could reasonably expect that these shots were child’s play given the amount of training these snipers receive and the quality of their equipment.

Let the tomato throwing begin.

And they would have said USMC Scout Snipers, saying Navy snipers means SEALs, because while CNN likes to bad mouth the corps, they just don’t talk about Navy SEALs.

God Bless NATO munitions…

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2009/04/how-the-rescue-happened.html

I own both the (semiauto)AK and an AR-10 used to take down the pirates. So, it should all balance out then right?

CNN does not impress me either. They made it out like it wasn´t clear whether such violent action was really necessary. I would say that anytime anyone is being held hostage their life is automatically endangered, and as such lethal force is always justified.

Because, now you know that someone’s hobby long arm just identified him as a pirate.

French soldiers also rescued several french civilians in the same area earlier this week. 4 adults and a 3-years old kid were trying to get to Kenya despite the warnings from French marine when they came across somalian pirates. Several days later, it was decided to raid the boat and 2 pirates were killed, 3 others arrested. The owner of the boat was fatally wounded during the assault. From what I heard the 2 pirates were killed by snipers shooting from the french marine boat. I have no experience in this but it must take some serious skills to shoot from one boat to another, especially a small yacht ??