Webb Brandon - The 21st-century sniper: a complete practical guide

THE

21st-century

Sniper

THE

21st-century

Sniper

A COMPLETE PRACTICAL GUIDE

Brandon Webb
Glen Doherty

Copyright 2010 by Brandon Webb and Glen Doherty

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file. ISBN:978-1-61608-001-3

Printed in the United States of America

13 The Future of Special Operations: Sniping into the 21st Century

A s a former Navy SEAL and U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper course manager, I am fortunate enough to have known and trained with some of the finest military snipers in the history of Special Operations. As the course manager, I have been responsible for the training and production of hundreds of SEAL snipers that have gone on to inflict massive precision casualties around the globe. A select few are among the most accomplished snipers in the 21st century. While I have been deployed as a sniper in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, what is truly significant to me are the sniper students I taught that have gone on to rack up thousands of enemy kills. I consider it the greatest accomplishment of my SEAL career to have contributed to the development of the modern-day SEAL Sniper Course and its graduates. There is no greater experience for a teacher than to see his students apply their learned craft as experts and produce accomplishments greater than his own. That is the best compliment a student can give a teacher.

There are many books on the subject of snipers, but very few were written by the actual experts themselves. As a voracious reader, I frequent many bookstores, and it was frustrating to see the massive amount of books written on the topic of sniping by people who have no experience on the subject. This led me to write The 21st-century Sniper. After all, would you take medical advice from someone who has never practiced the art of medicine? I am very fortunate to have a great friend and former SEAL sniper classmate, Glen Doherty, as co-author and contributor on this project. This book would not have been finished if it were not for Glen's diligence and the occasional sharp kick in the ass he gave me. Glen and I were not only classmates, but we were paired together as a shooter/spotter team throughout our initial SEAL sniper training. Glen is a gifted shooter and a natural on the trigger and down the sights.

Co-author Brandon Webb on the gun. This is a great example of a 21st-century shooter/spotter pair on display. This is a long-distance and applied-technology configuration.

This book is written by actual snipers who have seen combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. We hope to shed light on the unique and often misunderstood community of these highly intelligent, patient, and skilled marksmen. The sniper's role on the battlefield is a very personal one, but it is also very effective. Snipers are highly skilled operators on call to instill terror into the hearts and minds of the enemy. They are employed in a very specific way to ensure no collateral damage associated with the kill. This fact alone makes snipers one of the most effective tools in a military commander's arsenal.

Our goal with this book is to represent the sniper community in a positive way and take the reader on a rare personal journey behind the scenes from an actual sniper's perspective. We take you back in time to reflect on the world's first snipers. We discuss in detail the attributes and life experiences that make a great sniper. Then we journey forward and provide a rare look at some of the best weapons and tools of the trade in use today. Technology and advanced training methodology are a game changer in the new century.

While taking special care not to give away secrets of the trade, we discuss the latest in training methodology, weapons, optics, lasers, and kit. Then we provide a look at what's to come in the next decade. We also give actual stories from our personal archives as well as stories from some of the most accomplished snipers of the 21st century. While the names and specific locations remain nondescript, these are in fact true modern-day stories from actual snipers employed in the current complex environment of asymmetrical warfare.

The lone sniper's ability to inflict death and terror with precision similar to the uncaught serial killer can cause immense devastation on the battlefield, defeating both the body and mind of the enemy.

A book like this has never been written before. Enjoy!

Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.

Earnest Hemingway from On the Blue Water, Esquire, April 1936

H ow can you truly prepare for the future without knowing the past?

Bring up the topic of snipers at your next dinner party and see where the conversation goes. It is a topic full of controversy and mystery, conjuring a range of attitudes and images depending on the individual. Hollywood has done its share to contribute to this fascination: An entire generation of modern youths will grow up having played realistic games on computers simulating combat sniper operations. Ask a middle-aged mother from New England and you might get a recap of an old Cheers episode where Sam Malone and his friends lure Dr. Crane out to the woods for an old-fashioned snipe hunt, an old-school practical joke, which leaves the mark deep in the woods with a sack, making clucking noises and hoping the elusive snipe will come jumping into the bag. The darker connections to the term will remind some of the Beltway Snipers: John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized the D.C. area in 2002, shooting innocent victims and later getting caught after one of the largest manhunts in modern history. Veterans of the armed forces might remember quiet men who kept mostly to themselves and carried scoped weapons and disappeared into the night, sometimes not returning for days on end. Whatever the term sniper brings to mind, it has a long history. In the following chapter we'll trace its roots back to the early days of marksmen, riflemen, sharpshooters, and hunters that knew the power and potential that one well-aimed shot could have.

Without going all the way back to prehistoric times, there are some significant historical events that have changed the modern world and weapons as we know them. The projectile played an important role in warfare since the beginning of time. Slings, spears, bows and arrows, crossbows, then later muskets and rifles, are all tools with specific applications, relevant for their particular time periods. The bow begat the crossbow, which dominated the battlefield during the Middle Ages and was so effective that Pope Innocent II decreed the weapon unfit for combat amongst Christians. This edict didn't apply to combat with Muslims, however, so when King Richard the Lionheart took his army toward Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, he was well equipped with crossbowmen. His smaller force held off many attacks from Saladin's larger forces, thanks to the ability of King Richard's bowmen to maintain an accurate and rapid rate of fire. Ironically, it was when Richard was returning to his homeland from his failed crusade that he was struck down by the very weapon his Pope had sought to ban. In 1199, King Richard was hit by a crossbow bolt from the ramparts of a castle he had under siege in Limousin, France, and later died of the wound. His death was the result of a medieval sniper conducting what would later become common practice on the battlefield: directly targeting leadership to affect command and control and demoralize those still alive.