Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Embarrassing Details

I haven't commented on the Italian "hostage" fiasco because the initial media bleat was a whole lot of noise with too little signal. My initial opinion has been largely confirmed by this report.

(via Lucianne.com)

Update:

Lots more good stuff here at LGF.

One guy with a SAW or M60 would have torn that road can into foil if the volume of fire had been anything remotely resembling a "hail" of gunfire, as early news reports cited the "hostage" as claiming.

This is pure conjecture, but it looks like a few rounds were fired in an attempt to disable the car and ended up hitting a little high. I'm not current, but my standard BZO for my M16A2 was always set at three hundred meters. What that means is that a snap shot as the belt line of the target at ranges under three hundred meters would end up a few inches high but still lethal, while aiming at a target out around three hundred meters (where you would expect to have a bit more time to aim in) you would hold center of the chest and expect to hit POA/POI.

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the car was engaged on command, and far enough away that the command to fire was limited to a few, even one, riflemen. This also means that I believe the car may well have been detected far enough away for signals to have been flashed, too. If the guys had been surprised, and felt in imminent danger of being run over by an IED, they would have put an immediate response drill (the "Mad Minute") fire down on the visible threat. The Italians would have had to be identified by DNA if this had been the case.

My opinion is based entirely on the story and pictures I linked to above. I'm still waiting for more data to emerge.

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