Why in war footage, the soldiers always seem to be firing at nothing? I have been watcing combat footage and I don’t see what the soldiers are shooting at
Why in war footage, the soldiers always seem to be firing at nothing? I have been watcing combat footage and I don’t see what the soldiers are shooting at
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alot of modern firefights take place at ranges of hundreds of meters
The closer you get, the deader you are. This applies both to soldiers and to cameramen. Soldiers want to be as far away as possible. Cameramen want to be even further than that, and also, obviously, not to expose their heads to enemy sightlines.
When the camera is aimed at the shooter’s face, the target isn’t in the picture.
It’s the same exact reason nudity is taboo like violence. Video games has nothing to do with it. It has to do with the fact that people actually do like ideas more than the real thing. It’s like a god for them, but only because they grasp some obstruse metaphor of god.
The normal engagement range is very far away—and shooting at the enemy is not necessarily to hit them, but also to suppress them and force them to withdraw, which is still a success. It’s typical to fire hundreds of rounds per enemy killed.
A lot of it is suppressive fire so that the enemy has to keep their heads down behind cover, so that your guys can advance from cover to cover in the face of their suppressive fire. If you can see the guy they’re shooting at, that guy is probably already dead.
Very hard to get a good camera angle of the target when the target is most likely shooting back at you. Unless the filmed subject is a sniper and the camera has an insane zoom then most combat takes place at medium to far ranges with less than accurate fire coming from both sides. Suppression is the name of the game unless it’s close quarters fighting such as pushes in trench warfare and no one is focusing on filming in that scenario
They did the math and it takes on avg 5k-10k bullets to kill a soldier.
Thats why they make millions of them and why the west still can’t match Russia in the production.
If the camera guy is able to see the target then the target is able to see the camera guy.
Most of the time they are shooting in the direction of them enemy. You don’t want them to be able to line up a shoot on you. Plus if you put enough rounds into an area your more likely to hit them enemy, or at least scare them off
It’s because they keep killing the camera people. The Unions finally got pissy about all the lawsuits and funerals. Not to mention they kept having to retrain a lot of camera persons.
That’s a quick way to get a dead war journalist.
Suppressive fire
Keep firing so they don’t have a chance to shoot back at you
There’s a great Lindybeige YouTube video on this. Very very few soldiers in battle actually shoot at anyone. Like aim at a person and fire. It’s mostly suppressing or blind fire.
That’s how good the camouflage is
Yeah, as others said, a lot of what is happening is suppressive fire. To add to that, think about it, if you are seen by the opposing force, you are likely to die soon. So there is a huge incentive to be not seen.
A lot of people talking about camera guys here, but nowadays soldiers often have a gopro so the camera guy is the soldier doing the firing.
The main answer is suppressive fire which was already explained, the secondary answer is people are afraid. It’s scary keeping your head up long enough to take an aimed shot at someone who is also firing at you.
This is a fluid situation, it’s not a gun range where targets pop up. You shoot blindly where you think the enemy is and hope you hit something. Snipers will have visuals on the target or call in mortar, artillery or air strikes.
If you can see what they’re shooting at, then what they’re shooting at can shoot you.