Maybe - but this Israeli alpine soldier looks like he's about to hit his target.
(Hat tip to Daniel Aronstein for finding the picture.)
New olympic sport? Anyone? Anyone?
I think I had that action figure when I was a kid.
I'd guess that means you still do.
Damn, skiing and shooting. I miss 'em both.
Their fashion coordinator should be sacked. Why on earth aren't the boots white?
Old Olympic sport, actually. Probably the one that is the best test of physical conditioning of all of them. (Cross Country ski, then get your heart rate slow enough to shoot accurately, then ski again.) I don't believe they use a tripod, though.
http://www.biathlon.net/intro.html
Are you sure that's not a picture of a Snow Serpent from Cobra?
Clever shooting-stix! My GiJoe didn't have all that modern armament stuff, he had an 03A3 Springfield...
Am I the only person here wondering WTF the Israelis have Alpine troops?
ps: that's not a tripod, it's his ski poles. Clever improvisation, that.
No, rosignol, I asked the same questions when I saw it too. Didn't know there was much need for Alpine troops in Palestine.
Then again considering how the international media thinks Israel is landgrabbing maybe it's true and they're really planning on taking over Switzerland.
Well, if the photo caption is correct, he's on Mount Hermon http://www.bibleplaces.com/mthermon.htm which apparently gets enough snow to allow skiing...
Rosignol:
"Am I the only person here wondering WTF the Israelis have Alpine troops?"
Doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. Mt. Hermon is actually the highpoint of Syria too--I read that if you try off-piste skiing from the ski area on the Israeli side, you have to be careful not to accidentally ski into Lebanon or Syria, whose authorities might not be too good-natured about such incursions.
The Lebanese Alps go up to 10,000'; Jordan has some moderate (6,000') peaks, and there are peaks over 8,000' in the Sinai and the nearest reaches of Saudi Arabia.
And these are just the nearby portions of countries they've fought in recent decades. Much of western Iran is quite mountainous--not that I could imagine Israeli ground units ever needing to cross the Iranian backcountry.
