Are ‘Ukrainian Army Cats’ Trained To Spot Sniper Lasers?

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In February 2022, a photograph begun circulating on social media that supposedly confirmed a “Ukrainian military cat” named Mikael who experienced been dubbed the “panther of Kharkiv” right after it was qualified to detect the lasers of enemy snipers:
This rumor seems to have been designed out of whole fabric.
Movie Snipers vs. Real Snipers
While it may possibly be widespread in Hollywood movies and online video games to see the pink dot of a sniper’s laser pop up on the body of a focus on, authentic environment snipers don’t commonly use mounted laser sights. Why? Very well, mainly because it would inform the focus on (and quite possibly the target’s cat) to the sniper’s spot. Moreover, at very long vary, a laser and a bullet are not going to fly the actual identical route. Snipers have to acquire bullet drop, wind, temperature, and humidity into account when aiming, although a laser simply initiatives one particular continuous, straight stream of light-weight.
Nicholas Irving, a previous Exclusive Functions sniper, dealt with a collection of sniper motion picture scenes in 2020. When speaking about the use of a laser pointer in the film “Smoking Aces,” Irving mentioned: “Where she uses that small laser finder, almost certainly not gonna transpire, ever.”
A sniper could consumer a laser for other functions, these kinds of as judging length. In 2002, the United States Department of Defense’s Protection Technical Details Heart released a paper pertaining to “Russian Snipers In the Mountains and Metropolitan areas of Chechnya.” Whilst that paper outlined “laser variety finders,” it created no mention of snipers using lasers to actively goal at targets.
An Previous Image
It’s also worthy of noting that the higher than-exhibited picture was not taken in February 2022. If this photograph truly showed the “panther of Kharkiv,” it would be odd to contain a several years-previous photo.
Though we’re not specific of this photo’s exact origins, it has been on the web given that at the very least 2018 when it was posted by a Twitter account identified as “UkrARMY cats & canines.”
Given that this photograph is quite a few decades aged, and because laser sights aren’t usually utilised by military snipers to actively goal enemies, and considering the fact that, frankly, it reads far more like a joke than a description of just about anything true, we’re marking this claim as miscaptioned.
Resources:
Defense Technical Details Middle. DTIC ADA572085: Russian Snipers In the Mountains and Cities of Chechnya. 2002. World-wide-web Archive, http://archive.org/specifics/DTIC_ADA572085.
“Laser Sight.” Tv Tropes, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Major/LaserSight. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.
Shardlow, David Ibekwe, Ju. “Legendary Sniper ‘The Reaper’ Charges 11 Sniper Scenes in Movies.” Insider, https://www.insider.com/particular-operations-sniper-prices-11-scenes-in-movies-2020-7. Accessed 1 Mar. 2022.