The truth is, most soldiers are terrible shots.
I say that with experience as a Small Arms Instructor, a non-select Army competitive shooter and now as a amateur target pistol shooter.
This is caused by two main factors, environment and marksmanship philosophy.
The average soldier in any military will not fight with their rifle, but instead they fight with other equipment such as radios, trucks, pens, keyboards etc. They have hardly any time spent on rifle marksmanship outside of their very minimal mandatory annual requirements, if their military mandates it.
In Singapore, I know support soldiers that would fire less than 100 rounds during 2 qualifications during their entire active service.
-Some fight with stoves and ladles
Even if we do pick out the small percentage of combat soldiers that actually fight with firearms like infantrymen. Their shooting skills are also nowhere near “good enough” for even amateur competitive shooting.
In combat environments, very seldom are aimed shots really achievable. One of the first aspects of training to go out the window for conventional troops is marksmanship ability. You can teach a rifleman all you want about breathing, body position, trigger pull, consistency and sight alignment, but out in the field, even in training, all that rifleman is concerned about is how to pull the trigger as fast as possible in the direction of the enemy. Little skill required when 90% of all shots fired in combat are suppressive fires at vague locations.
Furthermore, militaries do not have a lot of resources. Marksmanship is often the first to be reduced when resources becomes tight even in combat units. There are simply more important things to focus on like urban warfare, than teaching a perishable skill with questionable return of investment to soldiers.
In terms of philosophy, the military and Olympic shooting are just too different. the standard target in the military is a NATO Figure 11.
The dimensions of this target is 120cm by 45cm. In military qualification shoots, shots are scored as hits or misses, any hit on any part of the target counts as a hit. A headshot is worth as much as a shot to his gonads and five rounds landing on top of one another is worth the same as 5 rounds distributed over his entire body.
On the other hand, for Olympic shooters.
5.4cm. The bullseye is 0.5cm. To get the maximum points, the shooter must place all his or her shots as close to the centre of the target as possible.
osophy.
The average soldier in any military will not fight with their rifle, but instead they fight with other equipment such as radios, trucks, pens, keyboards etc. They have hardly any time spent on rifle marksmanship outside of their very minimal mandatory annual requirements, if their military mandates it.
In Singapore, I know support soldiers that would fire less than 100 rounds during 2 qualifications during their entire active service.
-Some fight with stoves and ladles
Even if we do pick out the small percentage of combat soldiers that actually fight with firearms like infantrymen. Their shooting skills are also nowhere near “good enough” for even amateur competitive shooting.
In combat environments, very seldom are aimed shots really achievable. One of the first aspects of training to go out the window for conventional troops is marksmanship ability. You can teach a rifleman all you want about breathing, body position, trigger pull, consistency and sight alignment, but out in the field, even in training, all that rifleman is concerned about is how to pull the trigger as fast as possible in the direction of the enemy. Little skill required when 90% of all shots fired in combat are suppressive fires at vague locations.
Furthermore, militaries do not have a lot of resources. Marksmanship is often the first to be reduced when resources becomes tight even in combat units. There are simply more important things to focus on like urban warfare, than teaching a perishable skill with questionable return of investment to soldiers.
In terms of philosophy, the military and Olympic shooting are just too different. the standard target in the military is a NATO Figure 11.
The dimensions of this target is 120cm by 45cm. In military qualification shoots, shots are scored as hits or misses, any hit on any part of the target counts as a hit. A headshot is worth as much as a shot to his gonads and five rounds landing on top of one another is worth the same as 5 rounds distributed over his entire body.
On the other hand, for Olympic shooters.
15.4cm. The bullseye is 0.5cm. To get the maximum points, the shooter must place all his or her shots as close to the centre of the target as possible.
Special units?
Well most Special Ops soldiers will get more enhanced and better training than their conventional infantry brethren. But even Special Ops soldiers or even elite soldiers like Snipers fall under the same marksmanship philosophy as the greater military.
Certainly in more elite units that require a greater amount of precision and accuracy would the fundamentals of marksmanship come more into play, but still, it is a completely different environment and will still be an inferior standard of “true marksmanship” than compared to Olympic shooting.
I used to think I was a pretty good shot with my rifle in the Army, until I got to try out for the shooting team. Prone, unsupported, M16A4 with iron sights, bullseye shooting out to 300m made me change my entire perspective on marksmanship. I thought I was hot shit, coming from a unit with a lot of marksmanship experience, however this was completely different, I nevertheless did not do as spectacularly as hoped.
I also thought my shooting team training and marksmanship experience would help when I requalified on the Ultimax 100 SAW. Only to realise that firing automatic weapons requires vastly different technique.
I also thought I was a pretty good shot with my service pistol in the Army, and rightfully so. I could easily ace the standard qualifications where others failed. Until of course I left the Army and joined my local pistol club.
My “good shooting” in the Army translated to a bullseye target that looked like it got peppered by a machine gun, whilst the next lane over had all holes in a neat palm sized group.
Military Marksmanship is just no where near sports level of marksmanship! Who would have thought?