The Pentagon Considers This Russian Sniper Rifle A Big Threat To U.S. Soldiers: The NRA Helped Promote It
BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 11 months ago
David Corn writing at Mother Jones:
In late 2016, the US Army released a report noting that the Russian military, through experience gained during fighting in Ukraine, was undergoing a transformation and becoming a more potent battlefield threat to American forces. One troublesome development identified by the report’s authors was the increased proficiency of Russian snipers. “The capabilities of a sniper in a Russian contingent is far more advanced than the precision shooters U.S. formations have encountered over the last 15 years,” the study noted. One reason for this was the Russian military’s recent adoption of the ORSIS T-5000, a relatively new Russian-made firearm that the report called “one of the most capable bolt action sniper rifles in the world.” As one military technology expert noted, after reviewing this report, the US Army faced “being outgunned” by foes armed with the T-5000—which can be accurate at a distance of 2,000 yards—and these Russian rifles were showing up in Iraq and Ukraine. That is, this weapon posed a threat to US troops and those of its allies. Yet the National Rifle Association—which boasts it is identified with American patriotism—has helped promote Moscow-based ORSIS and its sniper rifle.
Corn goes on and on in breathtaking and dramatic fashion over this highly lethal rifle, which happens to be a .338 bolt action gun.
I guess the U.S. doesn’t have .338 bolt action guns. Oops, never mind. Guess we don’t have .50 BMG rifles. Oops, never mind, the Marine Corps Scout Snipers use them all the time. Guess the .338 is an innovative round never before seen on the battlefields of the world. Oops, never mind.
Guess David Corn bought the Pentagon picture-book hook, line and sinker. David, this report is a request for money. Do you get that, son?
By the way, nice job, Army-folks. Lots of nice, pretty, action-pictures to keep the brass and politicians interested as they turn the pages.
On May 7, 2018 at 10:28 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “ORSIS T-5000”
This is all a big nothing burger, as you have noted. Secrets are tough to keep under the best of circumstances, and no secret is more-fleeting than a military secret. And the existence of modular multi-caliber rifle systems in such common calibers as .308, 300 Win-Mag and 338 Lapua Magnum is far from being a secret. All a moderately-interested Russian or other foreign analyst would have to do to learn about such systems is hop on the internet or subscribe to any one of half a dozen U.S. gun magazines.
Only Big Green is actually dumb-enough to believe any of this is, in any way, still a secret. Systems like this have been out there for years, and not only for first-tier powers, either.
Once you understand that the real purpose of the Pentagon/DOD isn’t the fighting/winning of wars, but the perpetuation of funding for the MIC, it all falls into place.
On May 8, 2018 at 9:44 am, Pat Hines said:
The actual number one sniper rifle in the US is or will become .22 long rifle chambering.
In my opinion, naturally.
https://libertyandlead2.blogspot.com/2018/04/four-zero-zero-part-dux.html
On May 8, 2018 at 10:20 am, Jack said:
There are time (many times) where I wish I had less of your cynicism and more of your snark.
Keep it coming, please.
On May 8, 2018 at 10:54 am, Gryphon said:
Sniping is a Skill that while it requires a “Good” Rifle, it depends Much More on the Abilities of the Rifleman. There’s probably a Hundred Rifle/Ammo Combinations out there that are Effective at 800+ Meters, but ONLY if the Shooter can Use it properly. Nothingburger is correct.
On May 8, 2018 at 4:34 pm, DAN III said:
The concern should be “Why are American military anywhere in the world except on our southern, Mexican border” ?
Today’s fUSA military is nothing but a mercenary force for the New World Order. American blood and treasure has been expended in the Middle East for more than 25 years. For what ?
Time to come home. And not shed a tear for those supporting the wars of the New World Order.
On May 8, 2018 at 10:52 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Dan III
Re: “Today’s fUSA military is nothing but a mercenary force for the New World Order. American blood and treasure has been expended in the Middle East for more than 25 years. For what ? Time to come home. And not shed a tear for those supporting the wars of the New World Order.”
Major General Smedley L. Butler, U.S.M.C. (1881-1940), was a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, and one of the most-senior Marines in the Corps at the time of his retirement. Passed over for the position of Commandant of the Marine Corps in favor of colleague Major General Benjamin Fuller, Butler chose to retire and left the Corps on October 1, 1931. His last command (1927-1929) had been as the commanding officer of the Marine Expeditionary Force-China.
In due course upon retiring from the Corps, Butler joined the burgeoning anti-war movement in the United States at the time, and penned a short but powerful book called “War is a Racket,” (1935) whose sales he supported by going on a nationwide speaking tour. Two of his most-famous quotes from the book are the following:
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the masses.”
He continued, “I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers.”
But perhaps his most-profound observation was,
“There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.”
Butler has been attacked over the years after his death as being everything from a communist to a pacifist to a half-crazy old man who couldn’t handle being rejected by the Corps as Commandant and went crazy in consequence. None of the charges have ever been proven – and such ad hominem attacks only tell us how closely he is to the truth.
Whenever the nation is called upon to fight wars, especially “cabinet wars” (optional wars, hence the name) – our involvement is justified in patriotic speech-making, flag-waving and the gearing up of all of the other machinery of propaganda which support the eternal warfare state.
A few years back, the elites and neo-cons who wanted war in Ukraine justified calls for American intervention as saving a poor downtrodden people from the clutches of the evil Russians. More-recently, the bad guy de jour is President Assad of Syria. The ruling class elites want war there so badly that they have staged several false-flag terror attacks using chemical weapons, which they have tried to pin on the Assad government.
Calls for the U.S. to “take out” the “brutal” Assad government, and on and on….
It never seems to stop, does it. Today, Syria – tomorrow, who knows where? And make no mistake – it won’t be the elites who fight in these wars-of-choice, but the sons and daughters of ordinary Americans out in flyover country. The neo-cons and their buddies – they aren’t the kind to get their hands dirty; the bleeding and suffering and dying they leave to others while they rake in the profits.
If you get past all of the propaganda, cheer-leading, patriotic sloganeering and the other typical reasons offered as reasons for us to get involved in yet another Middle East war, you will find that it is almost always about more power, money and influence for the ruling class – a class that sees absolutely nothing wrong with spending the lives of soldiers so that they can make another billion dollars or close another fossil fuels deal.
The government – the deep-state – doesn’t care one bit about the fate of the Syrian civilians killed in those false-flag attacks. They claim to care only as a pretext to go to war, or as a means of gaining additional leverage over President Assad. The real reason guys like George Soros are interested is because they smell money – lots and lots of money – to be made by controlling the pipelines delivering liquid natural gas from the giant Pars natural gas field sitting astride Qatar and Iran. Whoever controls the pipeline will reap billions in profits, perhaps even trillions, in coming decades.
Let’s conduct a poll: All those in favor of going to war so that George Soros and his associates can make another billion dollars, please step forward and be counted!
Another big reason we’re been at war so often in the Middle East over the last quarter century or more, is the petro-dollar system. In return for the Saudis and their Sunni Arab friends doing business exclusively in U.S. dollars, our government has pledged to protect the Saudis from any and all threats, internal as well as external. In other words, when they say “Jump!”, our president has to ask “How high?”
Iran is on the hot-seat presently not only because of its ties to Russia, and the “Persian pipeline” which is in competition with the U.S.-NATO-EU backed “Arab” pipeline, but because her government wants to start a bourse or marketplace for petroleum products in denominations other than USD. Likewise, that’s what got Saddam Hussein in trouble with the U.S. government – he challenged the petrodollar.
Inadvertently, the deep-state let slip how it really feels about the U.S. military in a U.S. Navy recruiting ad which was broadcast on TV a few years ago, in which the navy is termed – quote – “a global force for good.”
Cynic that I am, I asked, “Yeah – but whose good??”
Ever wonder why the border with Mexico remains porous, but our troops remain in Afghanistan anyway? Well, those things are that way because that’s where the big-shots who actually run things – want them. And what are we still doing in the ‘Stan anyway? Bin Laden is dead. Our forces should have been pulled out a long time ago, but there they sit. The American people certainly aren’t being told why. And have you noticed that no one even tries anymore to defend the reasoning behind our involvement there; it is handed down from on high – take it or leave, proles.
The “real” reasons we remain in Afghanistan have nothing to do with helping ordinary Afghans; that’s all unicorns and moonbeams, smoke and mirrors. The real reason is that Afghanistan is a treasure house of strategically valuable minerals. It is also one link in the encirclement of Russia, a fence the elites have been building for some time now. The ruling class and deep state guys are big believers in Mackinder’s “Heartland” theory of geopolitics. Finally, being in the ‘Stan gives us a pretext to keep on eye on Pakistan.
As an ordinary American, what gets my goat – pardon the pun – is that Americans have been adjudged by the elites as too uninformed and unenlightened to even be told the truth about why our boys are being sent to war. If a man is volunteering to go into harm’s way, possibly to his death, don’t we at least owe him the truth as to why he is being sent in the first place? Sending men off to fight, possibly losing their lives or being maimed in the process, in the name of a lie – is wrong on so many levels that words fail me.
On May 9, 2018 at 6:13 pm, revjen45 said:
After seeing how the Russians/Soviets have done in terms of sniping/precision shooting in WW2 and after, I sincerely doubt they needed the NRA’s help to develop sniping doctrine and kit.