Re: blackwater sniper
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Stephen Damron</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Joseph,
Be safe, none of them hajies are your friends. Everyone of them wants to kill you. Keep your head on a swivel.
It does look like fun. But engaging targets with a 5.56mm at 800M, not advisable. It looks like what they were doing was guarding the compound from the main avanue of approach. They needed a good long range rifle and a 240B and they would have been set. Shooting that far with an M4 is like shoot arty, you shoot and walk it in and pray for a hit.</div></div>
Yeah, 600m with an ACOG is pushing the absolute maximum you can do and still get a hit with a good, familiar issue M4. I've hit 'em at 800 before and it is a crap shoot. I figured it out once, past 600 to about 800 there was about a 1-2 in 5 chance I'd hit a man sized target anywhere on the target. You could probably also catch the bullet in a glove at that range, although I wouldn't want to try. I agree, that is 240B territory, especially for area denial. That damn 240B is also a hell of a lot more accurate than I thought too --I actually wasn't too surprised to later learn they, FN, make their sniper rifles from the same blanks!
I tried to join Blackwater once right out of the army. I got bored as shit when my buddies deployed and I was back here alone. This was before the damage I had taken really kicked my ass. Anyway, they didn't want anything to do with anyone that didn't get the free SF training the govt. gives out, and it all worked out well because I heard later on they just used those guys for bullet sponges. They got paid well, but they got sent on suicide missions.
I never saw a video, I just knew they paid like $100,000 per trip, and I didn't have to put up with usualy army bullshit.
For Bullitz, the guy wanting to join to work on weapons, look into the Marine Marksmanship Unit. They work on and build all their own shit. I load my ammo exactly how they do it too, and it does indeed work. Not sure how you get on in the Marines, in the army it was really hard to get AMU. I did get offered a job working in the SF gunsmith shop/armory with their civilian gunsmith after the army, but I went to university instead (should have taken the job! More fun!). Anyway, the guy that ran the shop was a disabled Vietnam Navy vet. He went to a gunsmith school in Colorado. They look for REAL gunsmiths, not armorers, big difference. I would have had to go to this school too. So if you can get that school under your belt, that is halfway there it looks to me. Note you cannot work as a civilian in a military arms room as a gunsmith if you are on narcotic medications. The only reason I was offered the job was another Viet vet had to retire because they put him on Vicodin. So don't get hurt if you want that job.
Plus, at that smithing school, they got to keep several weapons they built from scratch and/or modified. If you go do a tour in the military first, get your GI Bill, get that UPGRADED the first year (YES! DO THIS!) then get out. Do not reup unless you want to, you don't need to now. Now go apply at that school and use your GI Bill to pay for it and pay for all the pistols and rifles you get to work on and keep for the next two years, because they count as school supplies. Enjoy. At university, all I got was a bunch of math books to keep, nothing cool like a 686 to work on, or a Rem. 700 to bed. Sure I know everything now, but what good does that do?
When you get done, you will have the school, mil service as an armorer or weapons specialist or whatever, and that all important 5 point preference (unless you got messed up enough for ten points, but lets hope that doesn't happen). The five points means if everyone that applies gets 100% on the test but only one of you was a vet who had five points, that vet gets 105% and hence the job.
That would be my advice to Bullitz above.
