Have you ever played a tacticool character before?

They're a brand seen very frequently in gun youtube. Airsofters caught onto it and now it's seen as a meme.

In fact, everything in OP's pic is pretty meme-y. The skull balaclava, the admeme pouch, battle belt AND a belly row of pouches on the plate carrier. This guy, I would venture to guess, is an airsofter or a model for airsoft products.

they are a low-middle-tier(but reasonably nice for the cost) mechanics glove, typically padded strategically for using hand-tools(but not guns).

To be fair, for a lot of gun people and military there is a distinct difference between the two.

Tacticool is kind of like mall ninjas, impractical. They wear 5.11 tactical pants in public with their m65 surplus jacket and baseball cap with a velcro spot on the front. They often don't look busy visually as they are trying to go minimalist "to prevent snagging". When in full battle rattle and on patrol they will slice the pie around every corner and chicken wing their gun or do that gay off hand grip that goes too far forward. Will regale you with the best draw methods on their CCW in different types of shirts, from tee to a tucked polo to a long coat. Exercises with a training pistol, every exercise is built around fighting.

Gear queer will get angry when their $1200 plate carrier gets dirty and will spend hours debating the nuances of different antane types for their radio set. They focus on everything EXCEPT actually operating. Will over-pack and under-perform. Spends his paycheck entirely on different MOLLE pouches. Will have 5 different SHTF rigs but cannot don them in under half an hour.

Someone seems insecure.

Pretty much, ya.

Dunno, are piloting a spec ops space robots count as "tacticool"?

You sound like you know what you're talking about.

What are you doing on Veeky Forums?

>Someone seems insecure.
That was my first post in the thread. I just thought it was funny that someone

a) hasn't heard the term 'tacticool'
b) didn't realize that the error was on their part despite obvious context clues and the existence of Google
c) thought others would laugh with them, not at them

Maybe you get bullied a lot or something, but is correct, you fucking nonce.

You're retarded. I meant if the guy was just spelling tactical as tacticool or actually meant tacticool, as referenced here:

>Some dull-eyed slut
>Le bikinis are sexy right xDDD?
>Literally no muscle mass, her only excercise must be forcibly vomiting out the banana dhe had for breakfast
>Zero trigger discipline
Am I supposed to be turned on by this shit?
>Inb4 "Don't be autistic, just turn your brain off and fap xDD"
I refuse. She's dressed like a soldier for a reason, and that reason is to increase sexual attractiveness by adding a bit of military flair. Yet everything about this contradicts any military flair that might be induced. Same with nun fetishists, I'm not one but there at least needs to be the vaguest impression of purity for it to appeal to the fetish fags. In that same way, sexy soldiers need to appear at least somewhat competent.

>Being autistic over a pinup photos

I forgot that im still in Veeky Forums

Wow. Please grow up. You are on a new guinean fuzzy pig disemination board. Nothing to lose your tacticool over.

If I can get away with making it fit in the theme of the game or the setting, yeah.

The thing about most groups though is that playing someone realistically tactical just means using your goddamned brain, playing a bit dirty, knowing when to fall back and/or use heavy assets instead of always fighting to the death, and having a basic understanding of modern tactics as opposed to just charging in, guns blazing, cos fuck it mang we're the main characters!

My group is not full of smart people.

My current Pathfinder character is pretty much a scout sniper. Bolt Ace Gunslinger+stalker cloak+heavy crossbow=THUNK. Unfortunately, I get such shitty rolls that the party's other archers manage to hit more often.

Say what you want, mechanix gloves are the only ones that don't fucking blow. We all use those shits.

Definitely airsoft, not because of the gear, but because of the soft detail on the bolt carrier, and I'm pretty sure you can see a winding gear on the bottom of the mag.

Also, that feel when you're accidentally on the barracks wi-fi and it says you are banned for requesting child pornography O___O time to start locking my door. And baricading it.

Ps the barracks Wi-Fi is shared just for any of you wise asses out there

Played an Imperial Guardsman with a /k/omrade GM.
Got a not-BAR chambered in some 7.5mm Armageddon Magnum cartridge that kicks like a motherfucker but melts even Orks.

This.

Plus your gloves are gonna get shredded eventually, may as well get some that won't break your bank account.

It's amazing how sometimes people think that actual military tactics are either very conservative or very slowly determined, rather than crazy ass firefights.

GM wanted me to lead a tacticool team of PCs, and told me to play with the actual experience I had. Asked if he was sure. Fire encounter involved a 9 man squad up against 6 hostiles, I immediately called for a retreat.

I preferred the flight gloves, personally. didn't have the wrist covers, sure, but they were cheap, comfortable, and lasted a lot longer than I thought they would.

But even beyond this argument, the sigil isn't subdued, so he's wrong anyways.

>not running Wiley X's
Son, you are fucking up. Or at least your NCOs are fucking up.

Wtf? Conventional forces beat feet when they aren't at a 3-1 advantage but high speed operators don't really O__o

We weren't supposed to be spec ops, I sure as fucking shit wasn't spec ops, and he wanted to be realistic. I will admit I was being kind of a shithead, but sometimes you have to to teach a lesson.

It also depends on the context. Are they essential to engage to make mission?

Not that user, but if your GM expects you to play realistically, the only fights you should take--even if you have the advantage--are fights you dictate. If it's not your ambush or the enemies are fighting according to your plan, you don't take that fight; unless you're ambushed and can't find an easy way out, in which case the simplest solution is to fight into the ambush instead of stalling.

Plans within plans, mate. One of my players is an Afghan War veteran, and if you ask him to play realistically he'll plan for literal hours and stack the deck as much as humanly possible before committing.

No you're definitely right- if you were a bunch of Joe's cut off from support no leader worth his salt is gonna get you stuck in with the enemy.

Unless you were playing marines, cause marines would totally do that.

or the enemies aren't,* stupid typo.

Usually if a bunch if operators meet the enemy and they're spotted they'll dispatch their foe and try and salvage the operation- if they have blown it then obviously they beat feet.

Nope, never. Only John Woo assassins.

And that was the kicker. The whole thing was supposed to be important(What we found after the right was supposed to kick off the real plot), but the briefing told us it was a routine patrol with no CAS and no QRF(I had to ask all these questions, by the way). He wanted the plot thing we found to be solely on us, so he was trying to keep anyone else NPC wise from finding it.

No I know, but rarely ever did engagements happen on our terms. It was why things like Quick reaction forces and constant CAS flying overhead in country existed.

Marines will also stick as much of their arm in a fireant hill as they possible can if you bet them 20 bucks and follow it up with "no balls".

Marines are not paragons of good decision making.

Haha you know your shit

I was just throwing that out there on the off chance you were playing marines

Not sure how he expected that plot to work while also asking you to use actual experience to play realistically. I've never met a veteran who was comfortable taking the kind of risks PCs make when asked to "play realistically." One of the two I play with refused to attack a necessary fortification without at least a company worth of guys; I let him hire a cheap mercenary company of up-and-coming blowhards just he'd feel comfortable giving it a shot. The funny thing was I expected them to try and stealth it instead of turning it into a full-on assault; a little less 40k and a little more Metal Gear.

It was more that I was just being a shithead, as I said. I told him he didn't want me to be as realistic as possible, because I was just a fucking Joe who drove a Stryker around, not some high speed fucker.

But he insisted, saying he could make it work.

Yes. But that is asking again if it is essential to make mission.

He didn't know what he was asking for. He wasn't a bad dude, but he'd just gotten this idea of doing a super realistic campaign without understanding what that meant.

After that, he dialed it back quite a bit, so message got sent.

How little they know

It wouldve made sense if he made y'all operator AF. Otherwise yeah for sure

On a different note. Once playing a game overseas to pass the time, GM. Just running a semi-fantastical modern setting (no real magic, but lots of different races) with some guys in the local area. Most were Decon, a couple mechanics. Minor infantry background among three of the 6 players. Oh, and one guy with a commo background.

While they were murderhoboing I broke out the big guns. Half a platoon of high speed PMC Kobolds. Oh lordy. When they laid suppression and reminded the players about "Grenade Formation" that was some good times.

I'm going to be GMing shadowrun soon so I'm probably going to

A couple yeah. Tend to be the most fun characters.

Tried to, but the games either didn't last or never even started to begin with.

I tried running an operators/independent anti-terror campaign too, but I'm just not much of a GM.

You are woefully misinformed about 'high speed operators' irl, user.
Operators don't fight: they sneak and they hide. THAT is their specialty. Armies fight; operators hide. It is NOT glamorous work. Ever.

Yes, ECOAS Type Jegans are tacticool.

Bro every barracks I've ever been to from California, tO Kuwait to Japan has been banned for CP. Its kinda crazy really. And the gloves work well enough (Which is to not get your ass rammed by the gunny for not having gloves) but every range I take em off half way through

As a marine you could honestly just bet him a can of dip instead. Much cheaper

Hell no. I would only do so with a group that knows shit about combat.

Yeah, nah. "Operators", a term usually used to refer to SOF, roll in and massacre huge amounts of people constantly. You have no idea how many kill/captures the SOF focused on DA or HVTs get. I'll give you a hint, you'll be doing more work than conventional forces could dream about.

>tfw you realize everyone in your neighborhood was marine material

What?

There's no special forces group that focuses on "sneaking and hiding".

You're thinking of LRS(lurst) units, which are highly trained, but are still conventional.

Operators generally refer to Delta or like style units: small teams who are designed for pinpoint strikes. Delta's done a shitload of work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and god knows where else hitting HVTs and other specific shit. They're not force on force or anything, but they don't tend to shy away from a fight either, and most of their objectives usually involves some form of combat.

Of course, you could write pages about the various groups, their specialties, and all sorts of other shit. And this isn't even getting into the real black ops, cloak and dagger shit.

Anyways, let's just list off the common SF or equivalent teams and their missions.

Green Berets - The most nebulous in terms of mission goal. The GBs main mission is to insert themselves into sympathic local communities so they can begin forming information networks, connections with local leaders, and armed resistance groups/deniable assets. Teams are very wide ranging in their skillsets compared to most, as they need to be able to cover just about everything in the environments they're in, as well as be able to train the locals.

Delta - CAG is focused on dealing with counter terrorism style operations, which includes hostage rescue and HVT elimination. Because of this, they tend to do a lot of snatch and grabs as well in addition to more traditional(if very high value) raids.

MARSOC - I'm not super familiar with the Marine side of things, so I'm just going to lump them together. There's a fair bit of overlap here, but they're generally focused on deep recon and direct action shit, but they tend to get roped into counter terrorism stuff as well.

Pararescue - When people think of SF in the Air Force, they think of these guys. Pararescue's mission statement is in the name: their job is to insert themselves into hostile territory and retrieve downed pilots before enemy forces can reach them.

SEALs - Their primary purpose is to conduct very poorly planned operations that get most of their soldiers killed, but ensure the survivors can secure book and movie deals.

Of course, this shit is all mutable, SF groups have a major downside of being at the mercy of politicians who aren't always interested in the best planned missions(The Battle of Mogadishu aka Black Hawk Down and Tora Bora are two good examples of this)

>SF

In the context of America, SF or Special Forces refers to a specific organization, US Army Special Forces, what you're calling "Green Berets". SOF is the proper general term.

With that out of the way, first off, you're missing the Ranger Regiment, which is SOCOM's primary murder machine and gets more kill/captures than anyone due to having Direct Action and Special Reconnaissance as its primary mission profile and having more manpower available than anyone while still being SOF.

Direct Action is primarily done by the Ranger Regiment, SEALs, and MARSOC, though others do it in some capacity like Special Forces who still ventilate motherfuckers even if it's not their primary goal.

You're also technically missing DEVGRU, who are the Naval counterpart to CAG as one of the varsity teams and usually more squared away than the stereotypical SEAL.

>MARSOC
MARSOC is pretty much from Marine brass not liking that they weren't getting a slice of the SOF pie as well as the budget that goes with it, their founding was a bit of a clusterfuck but recently they've increasingly sorted themselves out. Last I checked they're doing counter-narcotic and interdiction stuff fairly often, but I believe often they're doing pretty much whatever comes their way, because they're significantly younger than everyone else and didn't come early enough to carve much of a niche

>Pararescue
Air Force SOF extends beyond this, including Combat Controllers, Special Operations Weathermen, and Tactical Air Control Parties.

>SEALs
I have a couple of severe institutional problems with SEALs and I'll grant that when working with them I have initial concerns unless I see that they're squared away, but let's not pretend that SEALs that actually have some experience under their belt aren't good and highly skilled when they're in their element and not reacting poorly to sudden contact or making poor plans.

You're more right than most people, though.

>SEALs - Their primary purpose is to conduct very poorly planned operations that get most of their soldiers killed, but ensure the survivors can secure book and movie deals.

I don't give a shit what people say, Rangers aren't fucking SF. They're an elite force, but still a conventional one. The fact that they end up being backup for so many operations doesn't make them SF by proximity.

>Playing Twilight 2000
>No lame ass "operator" shit because it's the 1980s
Feels good

AT WHAT POINT DOES

"reasonably well equipped"

BECOME EITHER

"Tacticool Operator"

"Over-Equipped"

OR

"Gear Queer"

???

When the gear is more important than the user.

They are under SOCOM's umbrella making them Operator as far as the government is concerned.

Dude the 80s had Special Forces they were just more low tech and more the old commando / snake eater cliche than the ninjas supported by intel and space age tech thing we have now.

>Dude the 80s had Special Forces
Yeah, but they weren't gaylord gearqueer tacticool operator-as-fuck ninja-wannabes like we have today. They were men.

kek of truth

>"Operators", a term usually used to refer to SOF, roll in and massacre huge amounts of people constantly. You have no idea how many kill/captures the SOF focused on DA or HVTs get
This is what people actually believe....

He sure was, he sure was.

only in real life

>The GBs main mission is to insert themselves into sympathic local communities so they can begin forming information networks, connections with local leaders, and armed resistance groups/deniable assets.
In other words: sneak and hide.
>generally focused on deep recon and direct action shit, but they tend to get roped into counter terrorism stuff as well.
...sneak and hide.........
>their job is to insert themselves into hostile territory and retrieve downed pilots before enemy forces can reach them.
.......sneak and hide.............
>hostage rescue and HVT elimination
...more sneakin' and hidin'............
>SEALs
......oh dear...underwater infil/exfil can mean only one thing: sneak and hide.........
Kinda like what I said hereFunny, that.

>actual military tactics are either very conservative or very slowly determined, rather than crazy ass firefights.
Actual military tactics: a continuous fighting retreat that we call "repositioning." Like fire and maneuver, but moving away from the enemy. Until you run out of positions to retreat to and just redeploy.

>You are woefully misinformed about 'high speed operators' irl, user.
>Operators don't fight: they sneak and they hide. THAT is their specialty. Armies fight; operators hide. It is NOT glamorous work. Ever.
Are you sure? Every company liaison I've met sticks out like a sore fucking thumb.

Operators, though, are a total mixed bag. Some of them are basically well-groomed wild animals who've learned how to shoot guns. Others are mission-oriented, well-trained experts in something, like breach of hardened structures or field intelligence collection.

There's a whole lot of other kinds of operators.

I'll say this: shooting happened a lot. Operators fight differently because there's usually not an expectation of CAS or a QRF to pull their bacon out, which is the way that you're usually taught to fight in Combatives: get closer, hit hard, keep doing it until they give up or die.

>Green Berets - The most nebulous in terms of mission goal.
SF has a well-defined mission. It's MOOTW. Specifically training indigenous troops to fight. That's what SF is for. Almost all SF assets were made to do SEAL work in Iraq and Afghanistan, though.

>Delta
Delta's entire mission is CT, full stop.

>MARSOC
MARSOC's mission, as I interpret it, is to smuggle liquor in country and steal someone's ATVs. Taken individually, MARSOC Marines are well-trained, nice, and dependable. But any ravage of Marines is a fucking shitshow. They're military fratboys. Even MARSOC.

>When people think of SF in the Air Force, they think of these guys
I fucking don't. I think of TACP and CWs. I know a few PJs but I've never seen one in the field. They're insanely well-trained but they've got such a narrow mission scope: CSAR for downed AF pilots.

>SEAL
If you don't have Marines around, these guys will do. Their primary mission is tactics development, though.

SF is specific to Special Forces. Special Operations Forces (SOF) refers to the entire community.

>Actual military tactics: a continuous fighting retreat that we call "repositioning." Like fire and maneuver, but moving away from the enemy. Until you run out of positions to retreat to and just redeploy.
Huh, that's interesting. My unit's tactical training wasn't like that; the only tactic highland units seem to have is: attack!!!!!!! And it sounds like i'm kidding, but i'm not. And I'm also not saying that attack is better than retreat; just different. Interesting.

>Almost all SF assets were made to do SEAL work in Iraq and Afghanistan, though.
Wasn't that because their co was a seal? A fuckup of a seal, iirc?? Didn't his ineptitude lead to some deaths?

he's right though, there are far better military pinups and that disgusting shit isn't one of them

>Wasn't that because their co was a seal? A fuckup of a seal, iirc?? Didn't his ineptitude lead to some deaths?
It was mostly the lack of people with enough training to go after HVTs. SF trains for everything because they should be able to teach everything. Re-allocating them was easier than training more operators.

What I'm getting out of this is "fuck fair fights." Retreating from six men with a nine-man squad makes sense if they're alerted to you and willing to fight. No reason to risk casualties when you can break contact and fight them another day - preferably when they're in the middle of a kill-zone and you're set up on a ridge-line 300 meters away with good cover.

Now depending on what your actual mission is, you don't always have that luxury - if you've got HIGHSPEEDLOWDRAGOPERATORS fighting some shit-tier hurkadurkas and your objective is a compound almost right behind them, dicking about just lets them call in reinforcements. But if you've got all the time in the world, I wouldn't play fair either.

Keep in mind who we've been fighting this last decade. Not exactly the cream of the fuckin crop 24/7, you know? Same reason Simo Haya racked up such an incredible kill count - it wasn't *just* that he was that good, but also that he was that good and going up against an army that was *mondo bad*.

>MARSOC was Marine brass wanting a piece of the JSOC pie

Fuck no. MARSOC was forced onto the Marines.

They already had a fucking set of companies that did that shit, it was called Force Recon but JSOC, being the complete faggots they are, basically demanded that the USMC have a representative DA team that answered to JSOC, because in the past when JSOC wanted Force to go on missions they basically got told to fuck off because the Marines didn't want to have a large group of their own extremely expensive to train operators exist solely under JSOC command.

The stipulation originally was that the Marines would front recon Marines from the Force companies to MARSOC but not receive any additional back pay funding for permanently giving up guys that cost over a million dollars to train and those same Marines under permanent non-Marine command with no senior Marine officer, which is a huge fuck you within joint operations.

>ou're set up on a ridge-line 300 meters away with good cover
Not ideal. 5.56 NATO is best used under 250 meters.

>Now depending on what your actual mission is, you don't always have that luxury
Actually you always have that luxury. No CO would consider retreating in the face of apparent danger the wrong move for a subordinate leader to make. If they did, and they attempted to put it in paper, they'd cease to be a CO very quickly.

The safety of personnel is the paramount concern. Remember, wars are fought in the media now, and casualties are bad for morale.

Also, you never assume how good or bad your opponents are. Underestimating "hurkadurkas" is how people get dead.

>I have a couple of severe institutional problems with SEALs

Might have something to do with the severe institutional problems in the SEALs themselves, I reckon. I've heard of similar issues - in mainstream media reporting, even - about units like the 101st Airborne which also have an elitist, HOO-RAH complex that really fucks with the new recruits - and for some reason, the older ones are not passing along institutional knowledge. The lessons of war from WWII, Korea, and especially Vietnam (which is easily within living memory) is, for some reason, not being impressed on these guys. Or, those lessons ARE taught, but they're ignoring their tactical doctrine and/or common motherfucking sense because of this SNAAAKE EATAH god-complex shit.

I can see how it happens - you *need* aggressive people who like to fight and are confident in their abilities for that kind of job - but all young men think they're immortal, and overcoming that tendency is supposed to be a major goal of military training.

And the other fucking thing is that MARSOC was supposed to just be an extension of what Force Recon was supposed to do, which was surveillance and observation, and deep ground and amphibious recon, and small scale raids in support of larger elements if absolutely necessary. Using them as DA teams is a fucking waste because the entire point of recon, Force, and MARSOC was that you had guys who could get in, recon and get intel, and get out without anybody knowing they were there, and if shit went south that six man team could fight their way back to an extraction point.

I did.

In a oWoD campaing, then i learned in the worst way that guns are worthless compared to punching people with 6 dots in Potence and another 5 in Celerity.

>They already had a fucking set of companies that did that shit, it was called Force Recon but JSOC, being the complete faggots they are, basically demanded that the USMC have a representative DA team that answered to JSOC
Actually JSOC said that Force Recon wouldn't be considered SOF unless they went through JSOC for training. That would have cost the Corps potentially hundreds of millions in funding (because Congress was funding SOF and was going to cut the Corps budget and the Corps was maneuvering for a piece of the SOF budget to cover the difference). But JSOC didn't want the Marines; there was a fight for a while. MARSOC was the compromise; if JSOC was going to carry Marine training on its budget, SOCOM wanted Marine operators to deploy in cycle.

Mostly we considered MARSOC a good distraction while other teams went about the real business.

>Actually you always have that luxury.

Not if you're Special Forces. Which is why they're supposed to be Special in the first place.

>Also, you never assume how good or bad your opponents are. Underestimating "hurkadurkas" is how people get dead.

You always plan for the worst and bring as much firepower to bear as possible, because, again, "fair" has nothing to do with waging war.

But if you let yourself get run off by every six-man pack of hajis with rusted AKs, you're not going to get very far. That's fine for the line infantry, esp. for the reasons you gave, but Special Forces are typically tasked with shit where the objective outweighs possible casualties. They're expected to push through if possible. Bear in mind, of course, that they are:

* The cream of the fucking crop, skimmed by an exhaustive selection process,
* Receive a fuckton of expensive training,
* Have almost no limit on the fancy toys they can bring, granted permission to just go buy shit off the shelf and lug it around, unlike normal infantry who take what uncle Sam gives, and had best like it,
* Are typically backed up by more support assets on a per-soldier basis than regular infantry, again owing to the fact that they usually deploy against Important Objectives.

Context is significant, too. WWII was "total war" where the media wasn't going into hysterics over every single casualty, and actually taking ground and holding it was the fucking war-winning objective. With that said, however, it was noted that on Iwo Jima Marines would hunker down after only a few rifle shots whistled past their ear, and call in the artillery. It'd be inexcusable in any other context, but they had approximately half the fucking Pacific Fleet surrounding the island with naval guns from 5 inch to 16 inch on-call and they had shitfucktons of ammo - it would've been retarded *not* to just plaster the island foot by foot. So, yeah.

>the older ones are not passing along institutional knowledge
This seems more common these days in all walks of life: institutions are getting 'dumber' because the knowledge is not being passed on. It is being hoarded.
We are trusting each other less and less, becoming more divided and fearful of each other, it seems. Careerism - looking out for yourself and your interests above all - takes precedence over the needs of the community: career rangers are not passing along ranger know-how to the newbies because, why should they? What's in it for them? Is someone paying them to train newbie Jim so that Jim can steal their job? I don't think so! Then, we lose knowledge....

>Not if you're Special Forces. Which is why they're supposed to be Special in the first place.
I can directly confirm you are incorrect. Several times we called off raids because someone didn't like a shadow or an irregular silhouette.

Retreat is always an option, even if you're embedded with indig forces. Because the indigs are sure as shit going to retreat in the face of real danger.

>But if you let yourself get run off by every six-man pack of hajis with rusted AKs, you're not going to get very far.
Good on you for recognizing that calling someone is a hajji is a sign of respect in Muslim cultures. But I gotta dock points for the rusty AK assumption.

>Context is significant, too. WWII was "total war" where the media wasn't going into hysterics over every single casualty
Media didn't have access to accurate casualty reports anyway, and news took at least a few days to get from wherever it was breaking to the bureaus in London and New York. Real-time communication and accurate information is what has empowered media. The "kind" of war is irrelevant.

>They're expected to push through if possible.
Oh, kid - you read too many shitty books!! bwahahahaaaaa
go back to fucking /k/, dimwit!
>Have almost no limit on the fancy toys they can bring
This, this right here, is where you lose your shit completely, fucknugget! Fucking hilarious!!
> on Iwo Jima Marines would hunker down after only a few rifle shots whistled past their ear, and call in the artillery. It'd be inexcusable in any other context
Keep putting your big dumb boot in your big dumb mouth, eh? That's EXACTLY how modern war is done: call in the artillery. Fuck, boi - stop watchin' the shit flicks and stop reading that navy seal novel bullshit. Marchinko a shit.

>Good on you for recognizing that calling someone is a hajji is a sign of respect in Muslim cultures
Nicely done. Respect.

>Good on you for recognizing that calling someone is a hajji is a sign of respect in Muslim cultures. But I gotta dock points for the rusty AK assumption.

Well you gotta keep in mind who you're fighting. In Iraq(istan and adjacentish) these fuckers all have three AKs apiece and just throw one out and switch if it stops running right. They're also fine with two malfs a mag, compared to an American operator who throws a fit if their M4 jams twice in 60,000 rounds. In Afghaniland they tend to be either 1. Taliban, who are hardcore motherfuckers who've been doing this a long time, or 2. village kids that were paid twenty bux to pop off some caps. If they can actually shoot they might give them an SMLE.

>I can directly confirm you are incorrect. Several times we called off raids because someone didn't like a shadow or an irregular silhouette.

Usually I'd say this is a shitty way to get anything done, but 1. you can always "raid" later, and 2. insurgents goals in current wars are mainly to kill westerners, so denying them their objective is more important than achieving yours.

You *can't* always just "come back later." But if you get that kind of objective often that's indicative of a planning failure, IMO. For the same reason you can't "just retreat" when caught in an ambush - it gives initiative to the enemy, and the point of war is typically to be the one calling the shots.

>Keep putting your big dumb boot in your big dumb mouth, eh? That's EXACTLY how modern war is done: call in the artillery.

Isn't that what I just fucking said, you stupid cuntwaffle? You didn't always have tubes available in WWII. IT wasn't like it is now where you can pick up a fucking radio and have Excalibur coming in two minutes later - there was never enough tubes to serve all the requests for it, and many of them had higher priority than "six guys in a field." I used the example because even in *that* war, they did plaster single spider holes with artillery if they could.

>Retreat is always an option

And to clarify, these "raids" you were on - were you operating in support of larger conventional operations, (i.e. direct counterforce combat) or doing the "True" SF mission, spooky-snoopy? I'm saying that the odds will not always be as perfect as you want them to be in warfare, and if you refuse every single fight where the odds are not perfectly in your favor, you are going to lose. Or at the very least, you will never win, as many long-running insurgencies have demonstrated.

But these HVT snatch/kill operations basically amount to "you have nine dudes and you are in the middle of fucking-hajis-everywhereland, have fun." Even if you can ***teleport behind them*** and kill them with your shadow-ninjitsu techniques, engaging anything but the actual target just 1. alerts the actual objective 2. attracts a lot of motherfuckers towards you. I.e. your mission is already failed at best, and you're about to get hammered at worst. That is indeed a situation where you jump at every shadow and ease on out if things feel funny. If you're operating in open combat/counter-force, you have 1. lots of support, 2. friends, 3. friends, 4. more friends nearby, 5. all those friends have GPGMs, etc. I was thinking more along those lines. It sounds like you're talking about the latter.

>Isn't that what I just fucking said, you stupid cuntwaffle?
No. What you said was:
>it was noted that on Iwo Jima Marines would hunker down after only a few rifle shots whistled past their ear, and call in the artillery. It'd be inexcusable in any other context
>inexcusable in any other context
My assertion is that is in fact NOT inexcusable, but is actually standard op. That's it.