Forget the fables about Afghan marksmen, C.J. Chivers said, after spending a month and a half in Helmand Province with the Marines — but when the Afghans do field a decent marksman, it almost paralyzes the American troops, as this firsthand look at a firefight in Marja (last year) demonstrates:
You can see how much of the “fight” consists of trying to spot the enemy, and you can hear how unusual accurate fire is by how often the troops use that term — and the similar effective fire.
When a Marine does get hit, it emphasizes how important accurate fire really is. A shot through the meat of the shoulder, even with a big .303 round from a Lee-Enfield, doesn’t keep the young Marine from getting “back on his gun” after a few minutes of care from a corpsman. A shot through the bone would have been a different story entirely, and one through the head or chest would have been fatal.
Of course accurate fire is effective. This can be shown in a million different ways, but the fact is, when you get into a gunfight, making a bunch of noise just isn’t enough. Yeah, the noise can get your enemy’s head down, but he can get back up and keep firing soon after. You have to wound or kill your enemy to effectively neutralize him, and you can’t do that with innaccurate fire, even in great volume.
Two men firing 10 rounds each and killing 15 men is far more effective a battle implement than 50 men firing wildly and hitting nothing. This is the reason that the US marine corps kill ratio has always been so high and remained higher than any other branch of service — their emphasis on accurate firing rather than just volley firing and fire superiority.
I’m not saying that there is no place on the battlefield for “spray ‘n’ pray”, but those times are fewer and much more far between than most people understand.
While we may both agree that aimed fire is far more effective than unaimed fire, unaimed fire is what we see from almost all “riflemen” in combat — and it often works to drive the enemy off, even if it kills no one.