Gina Cavallaro - Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan

In 2003, in response to the quick rise in the enemys use of improvised explosive devices in the war on terror and the emergence of more deadly complex attacks, we stood up the Improvised Explosive Device Task Force and redirected the efforts of the Rapid Equipping Force to support counter-IED, countermortar, and countersniper operations.

For this new organization, we recruited and hired experienced former Special Forces noncommissioned officers and teamed them up with active-duty soldiers to form the nucleus of the Improvised Explosive Device Task Force.

Then Col. Joe Votel, former commander of the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment, was chosen to lead that effort.

The task forces mission was simple: assess the needs of the troops downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan and find out more about the threats they faced, not only from improvised explosive devices but indirect fires and snipers as well.

It was also tasked with looking beyond the horizon at emerging asymmetrical threats so we could bring the information to the drawing board and developand quickly employcountermeasures, tactics, techniques, and procedures.

The Improvised Explosive Device Task Force members started by interviewing wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to get fresh ideas from the warriors recently back from battle on what they thought was needed in terms of equipment and training.

At the same time, we dispatched members of the task force to Iraq and Afghanistan and embedded them with units on the ground to collect the lessons learned directly from the troops in combat.

All of this information was assimilated and pushed through the Army Center for Lessons Learned, then transmitted to the units getting ready to deploy.

As the work of the Improvised Explosive Device Task Force evolved, so did both the complexity of the operational environment and our understanding of it. In response, we built an organization called the Asymmetric Warfare Group and made the members of the Improvised Explosive Device Task Force a part of it.

The Asymmetric Warfare Group, first commanded by Col. Robert Shaw and Command Sgt. Maj. Greg Birch, though focused on the improvised explosive device threat, was also charged with looking past the current problem set to anticipate the next asymmetrical challenge downrange so we could develop training as well as an effective way to advise brigades, battalions, and below on what to look for.

The task force was looking at the pointy end, but just as importantly, it was digging into the network left of Bang! to get ahead of itthe people who planted the bombs, made the bombs, and paid for the bombs.

Sometime in early 2004, we started seeing snipers arrive on the battlefield. There were reports of sniper activity from the commanders downrange, and the enemy snipers who werent successful, the ones we caught, started to yield intelligence on what types of weapons they had and where they had gotten them.

We also wanted to know if that sniper was an untrained guy who just got lucky or a guy with a pretty nice rifle and a pretty nice scope, whether he was positioned professionally when he took a shot, who trained him, and where he was getting his money.

We learned that quite a few of the improvised explosive devices were coming from Hezbollah and a lot of the training of the snipers was coming from Iranian forces.

But to begin countersniper measures, you have to understand how a sniper team operates, how it sets up, and what tactics it uses.

The best people to talk to about that were our own professional snipers, and we had several former Special Forces snipers on our Improvised Explosive Device Task Force and in the Asymmetric Warfare Group.

Between their expertise and knowledge and the operational needs statements we were getting from the field, some of it from task force members themselves, we were able to get some technological assistance for countersniper operations and additions to their fundamental equipment allowances.

Almost immediately, the units started requesting rifles with more capability than the M16 and the M4. One brigade in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) requested the return of the M14, which was the standard issue U.S. rifle until the mid-1960s, because of its longer range and accuracy with a scope.

So, we took the M14s out of depot, issued them to the unit, and then sent several former snipers to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to train what the brigade commander called his company marksmen to provide over-watch on dangerous roadways and to conduct countersniper operations where possible.

To help these troops on the technical side, the Rapid Equipping Force went out and looked at acoustic and other types of sensor technology that would alert the soldier to the direction of a fired shot. The technology helped them calculate a quick azimuth and distance to where a sniper might be.

Snipers are a very tough problem in urban terrain because of all the different noises and sounds that occur in a city neighborhood, but we were able to allocate money to the Rapid Equipping Force for a device called the Boomerang that can identify the point of origin of gunfire and as these devices continued to develop, we had vehicular-mounted sensing devices and soldier-mounted sensors to help counter the snipers.

The biggest thing that we had going on between 2004 and 2006 was in-country training for soldiers right there in their area of operations by the task force and Asymmetric Warfare Group guys who were downrange with them. The same training was being done for the next-up soldiers back home. All the soldiers were shown how to use the best countermeasures available and how to avoid being vulnerable to snipers.

The former and active-duty snipers they deployed with down-range were the subject matter experts who trained small unit commanders on the employment of their own snipers and how to think like a sniper so they could help their troops stay out of the enemys crosshairs.

Without going too far into everything we taught our officers and enlisted soldiers, we trained them in some simple countersniper tactics like what to be aware of in their surroundings, how to recognize where a sniper might be on the battlefield, and what they could do to counter the invisible threat.

To give our troops an even greater advantage, we looked at alternative sniper weapons, sniper scopes, and night vision systems, and we started training special or designated marksmen who could be sent ahead as a reconnaissance team to counter any threats before an operation. By getting there in advance of a larger element, they could pick out likely danger areas and scan for potential enemy snipers, much like Special Operations forces were already doing.