R. Gabriel's sources ? He quotes "Metz and Gabriel", but I have no idea who they are (and can't find abbreviations or biblio. Not clear either what he means by "22% chance of hitting individual target within formation". Is this because of stress etc during battle ? He does single out shield and body armour as casualty reducing factors. On lead bullets, he mentions Xenophon, but it is not X. who mentions "horrible wounds", and lead projectiles are not for short range work as the author states

Before weapons became somehow "computerized" and projectiled led by GPS and so on it was sufficient to hit with a reasonable number of shots. During my service about 20 years ago I was told to hit at least with the third shot of the tank gun. Statistically that would be not more than 33%. That does not seem to be the maximum of potential accuracy. But nevertheless it is still a very uncomfortable situation for an enemy who can not get out of range within the few seconds necessary to shot three times at him. I guess the situation for ancient warriors was not basically different to my modern. The advantage of a long range weapon in battle is just that it can hit every thing that can't get out of its range faster than it takes to reload the sling/tank gun (i. e. about 2-4 seconds).
In short words: if 22 % is any thin else than totally theoretical than it shows that mankind gained 11 % improvement of accuracy within 5000 years. Great 

funda iucunda

well in ancient times wouldn't the enemy just have to grit their teeth and hope they don't die? if you break lines then you might as well be dead since deserters where usually beheaded

Thucydides 4.32-6 describes the defeat of the Spartan contingent on the island of Sphakteria. 420 men strong; an outpost was slaughtered by the Athenians when they landed; the main body faced 800 archers, 800 peltasts-- and 8000+ rowers, armed with stones and slings. Outnumbered 25 to one, they held out for a long period of being pelted with stones, javelins and arrows from three sides; they tried to manouever to get to grips with their tormentors, but the latter were so numerous that they were always exposed to flanking fire. When they finally got turned and surrendered, they were 282 men left, so 138 KIA-- a 32% casualty rate. They had shields, but probably not armour (the military practice at the time is to light hoplites), and possibly not helmets (Thucydides speaks of their "piloi", caps, not protecting against arrows).

An extreme case, of course. I suppose some back of the envelope calculations might be interesting. If every one of the troops in the Athenian force threw only 2 projectiles (20,000 arrows, sling-stones, hand-thrown stones)-- absurdly low, of course--, the kill rate is 144 projectiles per KIA. I assume that each one of the Athenians, in the course of a long engagement (say 4 hours ?), threw more than just one, even taking into account the combat factors of stress, excitement, crowding, etc. Thuc. tells us that they were arranged in datchments 200 strong, and manoeuvered to keep up constant fire on the Spartans. If in the course of a 4 hour engagement, every man threw a mere 10 projectiles (averaged across the whole contingent)-- 200,000 projectiles produced 138 KIA-- 1450 projectiles for every KIA. Note that this assumes all the KIA were killed by missiles-- whereas in fact the real figure of killed by projectiles is lower, since the outpost was wiped out in hand to hand combat.

yeah but we're talking about spartans here not ordinary troops.
basically the rock hard ninja of the ancient world.

And with the way they use interlocked shields - it would have been essentially like shooting at a tank.
Only shots that managed to find a gap would have had a chance of damage.

A small well drilled contingent with good shield practice is a totally different situation to shooting into a larger army of charging individuals.

Horses for courses.

Roman slingers against the germanic tribes would give you drastically different figures.

Quote:

ONLY ?????

Have you ever seen the protection interlocked shields give ?
Definitely not an 'only' lol

Don't have the text here, but yes, most Spartans were wounded. And as you say, rowers are not full time fighters like petlasts and archers. Perhaps the latter did most of the shooting, and the rowers got in occasional fire-- so perhaps the full "ammo consumption" is much lower.

So - did the peltasts sling too, or was it only the rowers? If yes, well, I would spontaneously call it not the most glorious day either for peltasts and even less for 800 (!) archers.

I'm not sure if this special battle can be compared to a line-to-line-fight between heavy infantry and "professional" slingers (who, as we all know, could be astonishingly accurate). I can't help but imagining the rowers as some bulk of clumsy tar-loincloths who, by their sheer multitude,  are useful to block possible escape routes of the Spartans, but do not have any great value as slingers or throwers.

Btw: Any figures on Athenian losses?