Snipers of The Soviet Union - Doctrine

Doctrine

Soviet and Soviet-derived military doctrines include squad-level snipers, which may be called "sharpshooters" or "designated marksmen" in other doctrines (see the "Sniper" article). They do so because the long-range engagement ability was lost to ordinary troops when submachine guns (which are optimized for close-range, rapid-fire combat) were adopted.

Soviet military doctrine used snipers for providing long-distance suppressive fire and for eliminating targets of opportunity, especially leaders, because during World War II, Soviet military leaders and combat theorists (Vassili Zaitsev contributed greatly to Soviet sniper doctrine, although he was officially neither of these) found that military organisations have difficulty replacing experienced non-commissioned officers and field officers during times of war. They also found that the more expensive and less rugged sniper rifles could match the cost-effectiveness of a cheaper assault rifle given good personnel selection, training, and adherence to doctrine. The Soviet Union also used women for sniping duties extensively, including Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Nina Lobkovskaya. The most successful Soviet use of snipers during the second world war were during their defensive stages of the war (1941–1943), after which the advantage of defense shifted to the German side and German snipers became a real danger to the advancing Soviets.

After the introduction of the SVD, the Soviet army deployed snipers at platoon level. Those snipers were often chosen from personnel who did well in terms of rifle marksmanship while members of DOSAAF. Such snipers were estimated to have a 50% probability of hitting a standing, man-sized target at 800 m (1/2 mile), and an 80% probability of hitting a standing, man-sized target at 500 m. For distances not exceeding 200 m the probability was estimated to be well above 90%. To attain this level of accuracy the sniper could not engage more than two such targets per minute.