Question about American Sniper RE: guns used

According to the movie, the enemy sniper was about 800 yards out when Kyle killed him. That's at the upper effective antipersonnel range for a Dragunov or PSL, according to a Russian sniper that said he could reliably hit man-sized targets out to 800 meters and vehicles out to 1200. So yes, the enemy sniper WAS in range to kill him and lay the hurt on our boys.

RustyShackelford said:

As a veteran, I can honestly say I never liked the 1980s/1990s era woodland BDUs. The shirt had many flaws. The side tabs would mess with the pistol belt, the pockets were awkward to access if you wore a LCE or web gear.

Rusty

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Not a veteran, but I never particularly liked the stuff either. I played paintball and various other "war" games. I never found the pattern effective, and found it not very comfortable. I could make the grey ACU camo work by carefully choosing how I hid, and did on many occasions. Never had woodland successfully hide me.

After I discovered the Russian Flora camo, it was immediately evident how superior it was to our woodland camo. The pattern was more disruptive and blended better. It was also far more comfortable.

Ahh the 1990s ....

I did not mind the 100% cotton ripstop type woodland BDUs as much.
I even wore a ripstop BDU cap with sewn in rank for about 60% of my enlistment.
The problem in the early 1990s was the fabric and patterns could not take the heavy wear/tear & wash-ironing.
A new cotton/nylon uniform was phased in but that was around 1995 or so. This held up much better to weather/field use.

I for one like the cool ATACS pattern. It's used in many military type garments but it's not GI. The desert and the woodland green are good.

Military uniforms that make no sense are the current ANG & USAF "tiger stripes" . It's like some USAF colonel said: "hey, general we have a budget surplus, quick what do we do????"....

In his book American Sniper Chris Kyle wrote, not in his exact written words that the American Government supplied clothing boots and protective Armor was worthless. His family or himself bought what he felt was needed.

I remember this guy who was advising W Bush think his name was Donald Henry Rumsfeld.

said when asked about our military's lack of proper equipment,he replied we go to war with the equipment we have.

That was his answer I thought then what equipment, was he referring to and just what if he really understood about the needed equipment.

Looks like things had not changed much for our American fighting men.

Also if you read American Sniper, Chris Kyle himself stated he used both the TRP Springfield Armory and the SIG P220R downrange.
In one mission, his pistol gets damaged so he converts to the other model.

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Did read the book and watched the movie multiple times, that's why I asked if you were sure you saw the Sig with the hammer back.
Also in the book he only says P220 not P220R, I don't have any idea what actual model P220 Kyle had, but rest assured nobody was in any danger from Bradley Coopers cocked and holstered gun in the movie they don't give actors live rounds

Argo....

I'm not going to split hairs on who wore what and when.
For all I know Bradley Cooper toted a SIG P226 or Mk25 SEAL 9mm.


I'd add that for you watch buffs and error wizards, in Argo, actor Ben Affleck has a digital watch from 2011 in 1979.

Pockets on the upper sleeve

ah yes, dragunov would make sense but there was a line in the movie where chris kyle says something to the effect of "It looked like he was holding an AK"

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There's a scene in the movie where some sort of higher up is telling Kyle the family of a guy he shot (not depicted in the film) was holding a Koran, while Kyle explains it looked a lot like an AK to him. I don't recall a line about the Mustapha guy specifically being armed with an AK.

Close. It is called OCP (Operational Camouflage pattern) or Scorpion W2. From what I can tell it is MultiCam with less black blotches in it. The main issue "big Army" had with black was it is not a naturally produced color, so having black in uniforms does less to break up outlines than without. Word is it is made by the same company that makes Multicam but cheaper. The original reason Multicam wasn't adopted was because it was more expensive than ACU. Now the budget circle has come full around back to "Multicam." I would like to keep my surplus military crap in two colors BDU and ACU. I don't need a third.

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There's no black in Multicam, only dark brown.

The biggest reason the Army chose Scorpion W2 is that Crye submitted it for trials early on and the Big Army thinks it has the copyright on it. That allowed them to sidestep Crye's offer to buy out Mulitcam and have it taken off the market so it would be official issue. IIRC the last offer from Crye was a purchase price of $25 million - and a lot of us (you and me) would never see it offered at retail anymore.

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This. Scorpion is an Army attempt to pirate intellectual property, but of course it won't be called piracy since it's the .gov doing it.

chocolate hard shell candies....

Around 2008 or so I took a security course with a 9/11/2001 era military veteran who was still in the reserves. He gave our class students a few GI(real-recent) MREs(meals ready to eat). I opened a MRE curious to see what's changed in 20 or so years .
The US Army MRE had a package marked: chocolate with hard shell coating. Curious, I opened it to find a small bag of regular M&Ms .
I guess the DoD or DA could call candy or snacks by the trademarked brand name. Lol....

Rusty