Modern American Snipers (33 page)

The Reaper's half-mile kills were certainly no chips shots, especially considering the circumstances.

However, they were barely one-third the distance of the longest recorded sniper kill by an American serviceman.

Sgt. Brian Kremer of the 75th Ranger Regiment's 2nd Battalion Sniper Platoon struck down an insurgent like Zeus from a range of 2,515 yards in 2004 with his Barrett M82A1 .50-caliber rifle.

As previously noted, while generally similar, in terms of specifics, the battalion's sniper platoons exist independently of one another and have their own peculiarities. Each tends to favor different climbing tools and techniques and prefers different weapons systems.

And, as a former 3/75 Ranger sniper said, “They look way cooler than us. 2nd Batt has long hair and 1st Batt look like surfers. We just look like average guys.”

Kremer's shot ranks among the five longest sniper kills ever recorded and pushes the boundaries of equipment, physics, and good fortune.

The sheer number of variables that can impact accuracy at that range is simply staggering. And it's not merely the wide range of factors that must be accounted for that makes things problematic, it's that they exert their influence simultaneously, each one varying and evolving based on location and/or time.

“A bullet and a weapon system inherently have limitations, driven by cost and a few other things,” explained former Navy SEAL sniper Eric Davis. “You can spend $100 on a bullet that will shoot better than a minute of angle (MOA) and you can spend $5000 on a gun that will shoot better than a minute of angle. You put the two together and now the two have the capability of shooting within a one-minute angle of variance. That means that at five hundred yards, the gun and bullet have a five-inch spotlight that it's going to move within during flight. A human being is only like, what, nineteen inches wide? For the gun and the bullet itself, at two thousand yards, it's going to have a twenty-inch span. That means even if the shooter does everything perfect, the gun and the bullet itself may not be accurate enough to guarantee he hits the target.”

A sniper attempts to understand his individual weapon as precisely as possible under a variety of conditions by logging and tracking the variables of each shot—a system called DOPE (data on previous engagement).

Both internal and external ballistics must be known. Muzzle velocity and ballistic coefficients (mass, diameter, and drag coefficient) are vitally important factors, and thus the design and consistency of the (match-grade) ammunition. These are further complicated by the fact that the round travels in an arch rather than a straight line, making aerodynamic compromises a necessity.

Of course, the shooter is part of the equation as well due to their body mechanics and recoil management.

And those are the easy, “controllable” factors. Mother Nature is more difficult to read and tame.

Something as simple as the temperature can make a significant difference. Irving said, “If it's really, really hot outside, I know I can shoot really, really far because the air is not as thick as it is when it's cold. Plus my powder is going to burn faster when it's hotter out, so I get way more pressure in my cartridge. If I set a bullet out in 120-degree temp for two days, and the factory box says it shoots twenty-five hundred feet per second, I'm going to tack on another forty to sixty feet per second because it burns so fast at that point.”

It gets more and more complicated when you start to factor in distance, gravity, altitude, humidity, density altitude, barometric pressure, wind (both the velocity and the angle—at each and every point between the rifle and the target), and more esoteric concerns such as the Coriolis effect and the Magnus effect.

Irving talked through his thought process when approaching an extreme distance shot: “Anything under a thousand yards, I'm not too worried about all those variables like you are when you're shooting a mile. You have, of course, distance to the target as your first variable. If I dial my scope in to one hundred and I want to shoot someone at a thousand, that bullet is going to start dropping really fucking fast. It's going to hit the ground at three hundred yards. You have to counter the gravity. With a two-thousand-yard shot, I'm aiming forty feet plus in the air.

“Then you have your wind and there's different types of wind. The wind at your barrel, wind halfway, wind at the target, and then wind you can't see, which is where the bullet lives most of its life before it hits the target. So let's say on a one-thousand-yard shot, I'm going to have an elevation of sixteen feet above the bore of my rifle set on my scope. I have no idea what that wind's doing. The only thing I can account for is what I see and feel on the ground. At that point, I'm like, ‘If it's five miles per hour on the ground, it's probably somewhere around seven miles per hour at sixteen feet.'

“Then on a really long shot you have the Coriolis effect, which is the spin of the Earth. I'm accounting for the earth moving and deflecting the bullet, which is impacting the latitude and direction. When I pull the trigger on a one-thousand-yard shot with a .308, my flight time is going to be 1.2 seconds. Where is that target going to be with the rotation of the Earth 1.2 seconds from now? I'm adding on a little bit of a lead—tenth of a mil—plus the wind and all that shit.

“You also have the Magnus effect and spin drift but nobody gives too much of a shit about that. It's the torque of the bullet—like when a pitcher throws a curve ball. He puts a lot of spin on the ball. Same thing with a bullet—it spins to the right and when it starts to slow down and gets into its transonic state, that torque starts to tweak the bullet and make it want to pull to the right. You have to account for that at really extreme distances.”

And while, as Accuracy 1st's Todd Hodnett likes to say, the bullet does not have a vote, the target certainly does. Even if the target is moving in a predictable, consistent fashion, the direction and speed must be taken into account. But over distances where the bullet must fly for seconds, there's plenty of time for those variables to change midflight.

Ballistic computers have automated many of the approximate equations and revolutionized accuracy in many respects.

The promise of even greater technological impact is on the horizon with weapons systems that themselves automate the process to a large degree.

With TrackingPoint, a user essentially “tags” a target, and the system then adjusts for multiple variables—humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, density altitude, and so on. Developed by John McHale following a frustrating safari hunt, the user simply pulls the trigger and the weapon fires once the adjusted crosshairs meet the tag.

Larry Vickers, a retired Delta Force instructor, Delta marksmanship instructor, and SOTIC grad, admitted, “It works great. I've heard of people hitting steel targets at eight hundred yards. But it doesn't adjust for wind, and that's an issue. But what somebody told me is, while it's very impressive, it works best with neophyte shooters. If you're a skilled shooter, you have trigger control, and the ability to align the reticle and hit the target.”

Meanwhile, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)—the world-altering DoD blue sky research and development agency that spurred the creation of the Internet, GPS, stealth aircraft, speech recognition software, etc.—has successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance)—a self-guided .50-caliber round.

EXACTO rounds adjust and change direction midflight, which has led some to predict that the current long-distance sniper records are about to fall and fall hard.

Vickers said, “There could be areas that a self-guiding round is beneficial for argument's sake. But it's going to be, the lower the skill set that the guy brings to the table, the more beneficial it's going to be, and the higher the skill set the less beneficial it's going to be.”

Irving's knee-jerk reaction to the technological advancements at first comes across a bit like that of an assembly line worker about to lose his job to a manufacturing robot. However, his criticisms have merit, especially considering all that's required from modern spec ops snipers.

“I think it's fucking stupid,” Irving said. “I think they should leave that alone. What DARPA's doing—I get it as far as technology-wise. But I'm a firm believer that technology fails at some point all the time. I've seen that happen. I've had laser range finders and cameras and all that just take a shit on a mission. And those basic mathematical equations you need to make a bullet go where it needs to go … it only takes a couple seconds to do if you're really good at it. But if you're not and the technology fails, what are you going to do?”

Irving contends that while many mistakenly believe the shooting aspect is far and away the largest determining factor for succeeding in the sniper role, that's actually far from the case.

“People think that sniping is shoot, shoot, shoot. Don't get me wrong—you have to be a good shooter. But 90 percent of our job is being able to get put in a situation—in a vehicle or in the woods or in the mountains—and blend in. And then you have to be able to take the shot without being seen or sometimes even heard.

“I've been through schools where you learn how to angle windows or doorways of buildings so when the shot goes off, it sounds like it comes from another room or even another building. You learn a lot about deception. Shooting the bullet—anyone can do that. If I gave a guy an equation and he plugged it into a calculator and applied it to the scope and pulled the trigger, eight times out of ten they're going to hit the target. But if they missed that first shot and didn't have the rest of it mastered, they'd be fucked.”

 

13

Champions

The redirect away from Iraq also brought renewed attention to the parallel black-and-white SOF components in Afghanistan.

While the Joint Special Operations Command (and the collection of entities in its orbit) continued to serve as the primary CT force there and globally, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force–Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A) had also operated continuously throughout the war.

Built on an Army Special Forces framework, and working in conjunction with other ISAF SOF such as Polish GROM and Canada's JTF-2, CJSOTF-A in part grew out of Task Force K-Bar.

While Adm. McRaven had taken control of JSOC, the larger United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) was now under the watch of Adm. Eric Thor Olson—the same SEAL officer who was awarded a Silver Star for his actions alongside the Black Team snipers in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, just prior to his taking command of DEVGRU.

And just as McRaven had become the first SEAL in charge of JSOC in June 2008, Olson became the first SEAL to head SOCOM in July 2007, representing a pivotal shift in the nation's SOF powerbase.

Meanwhile, Army Special Forces directed CJSOTF-A, which had a new player under its watch.

Despite facing institutional obstacles on both sides, the performance of Det One in Iraq made a convincing, and ultimately winning, argument in favor of the addition of a full-time USMC component of SOCOM.

In late 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld formally approved the formation of MARSOC. While it was heavily influenced by Det One, some were disappointed that it was not a direct outgrowth of the pilot program. Since its introduction, MARSOC's exact structure has fluctuated as it has sought to establish a niche among the nation's versatile and semi-redundant special operations forces.

Initially, MARSOC was split into two distinct operational elements. The 1st and 2nd Force Recon Companies were gutted to form the backbone for the new 1st and 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalions (MSOBs), which had a heavy direct action and special reconnaissance emphasis. Meanwhile, Marine infantrymen were tapped to man a foreign internal defense branch, originally called Foreign Military Training Unit (FMTU), and then rebranded Marine Special Operations Advisor Group (MSOAG).

Even though Det One had made its mark in Iraq and that theater was still erupting with volcanic intensity at the time of MARSOC's formation, from the start the MSOBs were tasked with preparing for Afghanistan operations in order to be declared mission ready as quickly as possible, leaving the SEAL Teams to continue supplying the direct action firepower in Iraq.

In early 2007, the Marine Special Operations Company-Fox from the 2nd Battalion was sent to Afghanistan marking the new command's first combat deployment.

It did not go well.

Feeling less than fully embraced or properly supported by CJSOTF-A above, the self-dubbed “Task Force Violence” eschewed the “lowly” reconnaissance missions it was assigned and instead shopped itself as a de facto black ops unit to the CIA, intent on running direct action missions against HVTs near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In doing so, it concealed more than two dozen operations from the Special Forces commanders who controlled the task force. The MARSOC Marines found themselves embroiled in further controversy after a major shootout broke out when their convoy was attacked in Nangarhar Province in March 2007.

The attack became an international incident. The Marines shot their way out of what they termed a coordinated ambush but others alleged they killed nearly twenty civilians in a retreating rampage.

CJSOTF-A kicked them out of country less than a month later.

Despite the inauspicious start, subsequent deployments were more successful and MARSOC continued its evolution as it found its feet.

In 2009, the FID component, MSOAG, was rebranded the 3rd MSOB and all three MSOBs were now under the Marine Special Operations Regiment (MSOR). A shared selection and training pipeline was developed for which to groom its Critical Skills Operators (CSOs), who form the bulk of each fourteen-man Marine Special Operations Team (MSOT)—effectively MARSOC's take on a twelve-man SF-ODA or sixteen-man SEAL platoon.