Interesting question - made more interesting to me as I have just finished reading "One Shot One Kill" - a brief history of American combat sniping. One theme running throughout the book is the steady decline in the level of American marksmanship throughout the last century. Please don't read this as a criticism of our valient men and women in uniform - nothing could be further from the truth, but I found these statistics from the book to be fascinating:
In WWI American soldiers expended 7,000 rounds for each enemy casualty. In WWII that figure rose to 25,000 rounds (enter the semi-automatic Garand). In Korea the number was 50,000 rounds. By the time of Vietnam estimates are that number was between 200,000 and 400,000 rounds. Now every war is different, and Vietnam was a totally different ballgame than, say WWII, but it also saw the widespread use of fully automatic weapons in the hands of most infantry (the M16). As the rate of fire available to the average soldier has increased over the years, it seems the expenditure of ammo has increased along with it, while the efficiency of said expenditure has dropped. Makes sense if you think about it. In contrast to these numbers, consider that trained snipers - using primarily bolt action rifles - throughout this period expended, on average, 1.3 rounds per enemy casualty.
Training doctrine is responsible for some of this decline. In 1956 (and again, I'm quoting from the book - not personal knowlege) the Army introduced the Trainfire system of marksmanship. Basic marksmanship training took a back seat to simulated combat. Trainfire stressed cover and concealment, and students were trained to snap shoot at pop-up targets at various ranges - never having been taught to use aimed fire at known-distance targets. In the 1960's, when the full-auto M16 came into use, the Army adopted the Quick Kill training policy, which essentially was a doctrine of massed volume fire in the direction of the enemy. Kind of sounds like a return to the volley fire doctrine of the 18th century.
These are pretty broad generalizations, I know, and not every infantryman (or woman) has what it takes to become a trained sniper. Nor would it be practical to field an entire army consisting solely of lone-wolf sniper teams. But it does provide food for thought. With a re-emphasis on skill in marksmanship and a shift in training/tactics, would an army armed with accurate bolt-rifles and truly skilled in their use really be at a disadvantage in the types of conflicts we see around the workd today. You gotta wonder
P.S. - my apologies again if I appear to be stepping on any toes here... and for quoting from a book rather than contributing my own original thoughts (which can be few and far between). Just throwing this out for consideration.
Makes me want to head out to the range with my '03A3, M14, and K31 and hone my own slow-fire long distance skills...
