Movie Theater Surviving the cut, "Marine Snipers!"

[Nostradumbass]

Watched this last night on the Military Channel......it was nice to see what actually goes on during Scout Sniper training. Looks like it's got a little more intense since Carlos Hathcock taught the first two week course! Just wondering how much of the class was left out or was the camera allowed in all of the training points. "obviously they left out classroom footage to keep the episode interesting for the layman.".
Just wondering if there's some actual Scout Snipers here that wouldn't mind making a comment or two about the episode.
Thanks for your time!

 

[Slapchop]

Re: Surviving the cut, "Marine Snipers!"

I found it to be very interesting as well. I'm sure that they left out plenty. It's a 3 month school, you can only cram so much into an hour long show.

Besides there is also OPSEC to think about. Its good to see these young men portrayed in a positive light.

 

[Lowlight]

Re: Surviving the cut, "Marine Snipers!"

I only saw a few segments of the show, but I still have my original training schedule and paperwork for Scout Sniper School... there is a lot of classroom and paperwork that happens within those 3 months.

You have mission planning which is a lot of work, required to be finished in a short amount of time. As well there is combined arms training, some light intel gathering, observations, stalks, shoots, kims, land navigation, the gamut of things you can expect to encounter as a Scout Sniper.

From what I saw, it was just shooting and fieldcraft / ie stalking they focused on, but fail anything twice and you can expect to be shown the door. Land navigation is a big one, as well as observations. And before stalking you have concealment training, etc. The shooting is actually quite light in comparison.

Unfortunately not seeing the whole show I can only comment on what i saw, the shooting qual and stalks... but figure for everything you saw on that show, there are 16 more hours of what you didn't see, per day. A lot of things were done during working hours, but the homework took you into the start of the next day, like the mission planning. Given at close of business, you were expected to turn it in by morning, the papers averaged about 30 pages.

it's pretty non-stop and classroom intensive.

 

[Lindy]

Re: Surviving the cut, "Marine Snipers!"

As Frank knows very well, shooting is a small part of being a military sniper. There's a reason that Scout comes before Sniper in the Marine Corps. And the Army knows that, too:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"Remember the most important job of the sniper is the collection of battlefield intelligence. The shot is sexy, but intelligence wins wars." Ed Engler, U.S. Army</div></div>

A lot of that stuff will be deemed too boring to show on TV. Too bad for TV.