Recently, my dad had been reading a book about microtrends. Microtrends are trends that aren't obvious or important enough to be seen in everyday life, but are still extremely popular. One of the trends in the book that my dad told me about was of what teens aged 16-20 years old wanted to be in 10 years. The author of this book surveyed teens from this age group asking them this question, and to his (and my) surprise, 10% of them said that in 10 years, they wanted to be a sniper. I found this number extremely surprising, becuase it is not a job that is known to pay a lot, nor is a job that I would think of as bringing with it a lot of glory or fun (such as an artist or athlete). It is not a job that you train for in an ordinary school, and there aren't really even that many snipers out there. What the author went on to explain, was that with the emergence of terrorists as the next big threat to our society, young people have come to see the sniper as a hero; someone who could prevent the next 9/11. In reality, the army is also realizing the increased value of snipers in this new kind of warfare, and has started to keep more snipers in the army. So, with more people wanting to be snipers, and the army wanting to employ more snipers, there will probably be a huge increase in the number of snipers in (eventually) the world.
A world where wars are dominated by snipers would be an extremely different one from ours. Now, our most 'persuasive' weapons (nuclear weapons) are the ones that can create the most destruction to the highest number of people. In a world of sniper warfare, though, I think that a lot of the damage done to civilians would be cut down. Of course, it all depends on the morality of the snipers. If the snipers were like Arrow, focused on what they were doing, only shooting people who were in uniform and obviously the enemy, the world would suddenly become a lot less scary for someone in a war torn country. You might worry that your army would all get killed by a mysterious bullet, but it would probably mean you wouldn't have to worry as much about a bomb coming your way or becoming a prisoner of war, because snipers, I think, will become much more efficient than previous methods. If, however, the snipers were ones like the men on the hills, then life would be a lot scarier for civilians. If there are snipers hanging around everywhere, then you are constantly scared because of a very real threat, but if you think that one day an atomic bomb might come your way, there isn't anything you can really do about it, and if it comes it'll be over in a second. So, you wouldn't go crazy with fear and thinking it's possible to do something.
All in all, I believe that the world is about to experience an emergence of sniper warfare as the primary type of war. I can just hope that armies focus on their real enemy, and not innocent civilians.
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Hey Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment that morally correct (if there is such thing as a moral war) sniper wars would be more beneficial for the civilians. Sadly, I do not believe that this would be the case in today's warfare. The difference between an enemy such as the Taliban and Russia is that the Taliban are poorly equipped, poorly trained, and poorly organized. That is the polar opposite of the Russians. If we were to fight Russia sniper warfare would be great until they roll a tank out or call in a helicopter with thermal sights and then everyone on your side would die. That however, is a different story. The Taliban like most of the U.S.'s enemies today do not fight a conventional warfare. They plant IED's and ambush military convoys. They also hide behind human shields. In addition to that they look exactly the same as every other civilian until they start firing. What good is a platoon of snipers in a city if they cannot identify the enemies until the enemy has identified them. This I believe is why the current administration has adopted the policy of drone and other precision airstrikes which are designed to kill any enemies with minimal collateral damage. I personally believe the most persuasive weapon is the one that you cannot defend against and also will not help their cause. If we decided to nuke Fallujah because there were too many insurgents there do you think the rest of Iraq would ever want to support us? No, of course not. With a precision strike coming from a plane (too this date no insurgent has managed to even come close to damaging a plane) that kills only the enemy and no civilians, that I believe is the perfect weapon. Snipers are humans and make mistakes. They could get caught and used for propaganda or worse: killed. A JDAM is a bomb; we fire it at known terrorists/insurgents/Taliban and it has no second thoughts. It cannot be killed/captured. It goes from point a to b and takes everyone out that we told it you. That I believe is the perfect weapon.
Rachel, I would be interesting in seeing the statistics presented in this book. A sniper is a very specific military role. Maybe the statistic was for people who wanted to join the Armed Forces? Anyways, snipers are not particularly efficient combat roles and are used in very specific situations, thus are not needed in high number. Also due to the fact that a miss could cost lives or opportunities, snipers are trained very highly, in fact the Marine's First Recon snipers are very elite and the training is very rigorous. In addition, each sniper requires a spotter, someone to look for targets and make sure the sniper is safe when focusing on looking down their scopes for long periods of time. Think of it as a buddy system. Lastly, in todays Age of Information and Computing, the idea of a sniper is becoming less important, as many of these key missions can now be carried out by Smart Bombs and Drones, which can deliver a precision kill without risking human life and relying on skill. There is far less room for human error when it comes to this new wave of precision killing technology. Morbid as this may sound, it saves lives as we don't have to carpet bomb anymore and run far less of a risk when it comes to killing civilians. However, in Bosnia the armed forces were not particularly well trained or funded. The snipers were neither well trained or equipped and lacked skill and precision.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up an interesting situation, but I do not think that an increasing amount of snipers will lead to an exclusive type of sniper warfare as opposed to the use of greater weapons. However, if we were to imagine this world, I agree that it may feel safer and it would be much more efficient. Usually, regardless of time and circumstance, innocent civilians are killed during a war. If snipers could replace the nuclear weapons to kill only those who were killing, thousands of innocent people could be saved. However, based on history and our knowledge of events such as the Holocaust, the siege of Sarajevo, and the Rwandan Genocide, it seems nearly impossible that either the perpetrator or the victim would even really care who was being killed as long as the dead remained on the opposing side. I think this is illustrative of the fact that, in a time of war, people are not be patient enough to merely kill off the enemy one by one through the use of snipers, but rather, attempt to finish several off at a time with nuclear bombs, etc. But then again, I also think this depends on the group that is being persecuted and whether or not they constitute an entire population or if they are simply a minority.
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