Chapter 16
SCHOOLED
I gave up part of my vacation and came back from leave a week early to go to sniper school. I would have given up much more than that for the chance.
Marine snipers have justifiably gotten a lot of attention over the years, and their training program is still regarded as one of the world's best. In fact, SEAL snipers used to be trained there. But we've gone ahead and started our own school, adapting a lot of what the Marines do but adding a number of things to prepare SEAL snipers for our mission. The SEAL school takes a little more than twice as long to complete because of that.
Next to BUD/S, sniper training was the hardest school I ever went through. They were constantly messing with our heads. We had late nights and early mornings. We were always running or being stressed in some way.
That was a key part of the instruction. Since they can't shoot at you, they put as much pressure on you as they can manage in every other way. From what I've heard, only 50 percent of the SEALs who take the school make it through. I can believe it.
The first cla.s.ses teach SEALs how to use the computers and cameras that are part of our job. SEAL snipers aren't just shooters. In fact, shooting is only a small part of the job. It's an important, vital part, but it's far from everything.
A SEAL sniper is trained to observe. It's a foundation skill. He may find himself out ahead of a main force, tasked to discover everything he can about the enemy. Even if he's a.s.signed to get into position to take out a high-value target, the first thing he has to be able to do is observe the area. He needs to be able to use modern navigational skills and tools like GPS, and at the same time present the information he's gathered. So that's where we start.
The next part of the course, and in a lot of ways the hardest, is stalking. That's the part where most guys fall out. Stalking means sneaking into a position without being seen: easier said than done. It's moving slowly and carefully to the exact right spot for the mission. It's not patience, or at least that's not all it is. It's professional discipline.
I'm not a patient person, but I learned that to succeed as a stalker I need to take my time. If I know I'm going to kill someone, I will wait a day, a week, two weeks.
Make that, I have waited.
I will do whatever it takes. And let's just say there are no bathroom breaks, either.
For one of the exercises, we had to sneak through a hay field. I took hours arranging the gra.s.s and hay in my ghillie suit. The ghillie suit is made of burlap and is a kind of camouflage base for a sniper on a stalking mission. The suit allows you to add hay or gra.s.s or whatever, so you can blend in with your surroundings. The burlap adds depth, so it doesn't look like a guy with hay sticking out of your b.u.t.t as you cross a field. You look like a bush.
But the suits are hot and sweaty. And they don't make you invisible. When you come to another piece of terrain, you have to stop and rearrange your camouflage. You have to look like whatever it is you're crossing.
I remember one time I was making my way s-l-o-w-l-y across a field when I heard the distinct rattle of a snake nearby. A rattler had taken a particular liking to the piece of real estate I had to cross. Willing it away didn't work. Not wanting to give away my position to the instructor grading me, I crept slowly to the side, altering my course. Some enemies aren't worth fighting.
During the stalking portion of our training, you're not graded on your first shot. You're graded on your second. In other words, once you've fired, can you be seen?
Hopefully, no. Because not only is there a good possibility you'll have to take more shots, but you have to get out of there, too. And it would be nice to do that alive.
It's important to remember that perfect circles do not exist in nature, and that means you have to do what you can to camouflage your scope and rifle barrel. I would
For me, stalking was the hardest part of the course. I nearly failed because of a lack of patience.
It was only after we mastered stalking that we moved on to shooting.
GUNS
People ask a lot about weapons, what I used as a sniper, what I learned on, what I prefer. In the field, I matched the weapon to the job and the situation. At sniper school, I learned the basics of a range of weapons, so I was prepared not only to use them all, but also to choose the right one for the job.
I used four basic weapons at sniper school. Two were magazine-fed semiautomatics: the Mk-12, a 5.56 sniper rifle; and the Mk-11, a 7.62 sniper rifle. (When I talk about a gun, I often just mention the caliber, so the Mk-12 is the 5.56. Oh, and there's no "point" in front of the numbers; it's understood.)
Then there was my.300 Win Mag. That was magazine-fed, but it was bolt-action. Like the other two, it was suppressed. Which means that it has a device on the end of the barrel that suppresses muzzle flash and reduces the sound of bullet as it leaves the gun, much like a m.u.f.fler on a car. (It's not actually a silencer, though some think of it that way. Without getting too technical, the suppressor works by letting gas out of the barrel as the bullet discharges. Generally speaking, there are two types, one that attaches to the barrel of the weapon and another that's integrated with the barrel itself. Among the practical effects of the suppressor on a sniper rifle is that it tends to reduce the amount of "kick" the shooter experiences. This helps make it more accurate.)
I also had a.50 caliber, which was not suppressed.
Let's talk about each weapon individually.
Mk-12
Officially, the United States Navy Mk-12 Special Purpose Rifle, this gun has a sixteen-inch barrel, but is otherwise the same platform as an M-4. It fires a 5.56 45 mm round from a thirty-round magazine. (It can also be fitted with a twenty-round box.)
Derived from what became known as the.223 cartridge and therefore smaller and lighter than most earlier military rounds, the 5.56 is not a preferred bullet to shoot someone with. It can take a few shots to put someone down, especially the drugged-up crazies we were dealing with in Iraq, unless you hit him in the head. And contrary to what you're probably thinking, not all sniper shots, certainly not mine, take the bad guys in the head. Usually I went for center ma.s.s-a nice fat target somewhere in the middle of the body, giving me plenty of room to work with.
The gun was super-easy to handle, and was virtually interchangeable with the M-4, which, though not a sniper weapon, is still a valuable combat tool. As a matter of fact, when I got back to my platoon, I took the lower receiver off my M-4 and put it on the upper receiver of my Mk-12. That gave me a collapsible stock and allowed me to go full-auto. (I see now that some Mk-12s are being equipped with the collapsible stock.)
On patrol, I like to use a shorter stock. It's quicker to get up to my shoulder and get a bead on somebody. It's also better for working inside and in tight quarters.
Another note on my personal configuration: I never used full auto on the rifle. The only time you really want full auto is to keep someone's head down-spewing bullets doesn't make for an accurate course of fire. But since there might be a circ.u.mstance where it would come in handy, I always wanted to have that option in case I needed it.
Mk-11
Officially called the Mk-11 Mod X Special Purpose Rifle and also known as the SR25, this is an extremely versatile weapon. I particularly like the idea of the Mk-11 because I could patrol with it (in place of an M-4) and still use it as a sniper rifle. It didn't have a collapsible stock, but that was its only drawback. I would tie the suppressor onto my kit, leaving it off during the start of a patrol. If I needed to take a sniper shot, I would put it on. But if I was on the street or moving on foot, I could shoot back right away. It was semiautomatic, so I could get a lot of bullets on a target, and it fired 7.62.51 mm bullets from a twenty-round box. Those had more stopping power than the smaller 5.56 NATO rounds. I could shoot a guy once and put him down.
Our rounds were match-grade ammo bought from Black Hills, which makes probably the best sniper ammo around.
The Mk-11 had a bad reputation in the field because it would often jam. We wouldn't have jams that much in training, but overseas was a different story. We eventually figured out that something to do with the dust cover on the rifle was causing a double feed; we solved a lot of the problem by leaving the dustcover down. There were other issues with the weapon, however, and personally it was never one of my favorites.
.300 Win Mag
The.300 is in another cla.s.s entirely.
As I'm sure many readers know,.300 Win Mag (p.r.o.nounced "three hundred win mag") refers to the bullet the rifle fires, the.300 Winchester Magnum round (7.62 67 mm). It's an excellent all-around cartridge, whose performance allows for superb accuracy as well as stopping power.
Other services fire the round from different (or slightly different) guns; arguably, the most famous is the Army's M-24 Sniper Weapon System, which is based on the Remington 700 rifle. (Yes, that is the same rifle civilians can purchase for hunting.) In our case, we started out with MacMillan stocks, customized the barrels, and used 700 action. These were nice rifles.
In my third platoon-the one that went to Ramadi-we got all new.300s. These used Accuracy International stocks, with a brand-new barrel and action. The AI version had a shorter barrel and a folding stock. They were bad-a.s.s.
The.300 is a little heavier gun by design. It shoots like a laser. Anything from a thousand yards and out, you're just plain nailing it. And on closer targets, you don't have to worry about too much correction for your come-ups. You can dial in your five-hundred-yard dope and still hit a target from one hundred to seven hundred yards without worrying too much about making minute adjustments.
I used a.300 Win Mag for most of my kills.
.50 Caliber
The fifty is huge, extremely heavy, and I just don't like it. I never used one in Iraq.
There's a certain amount of hype and even romance for these weapons, which shoot a 12.7 99 mm round. There are a few different specific rifles and variations in service with the U.S. military and other armies around the world. You've probably heard of the Barrett M-82 or the M-107, developed by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing. They have enormous ranges and in the right application are certainly good weapons. I just didn't like them all that much. (The one.50 I do like is the Accuracy International model, which has a more compact, collapsible stock and a little more accuracy; it wasn't available to us at the time.)
Everyone says that the.50 is a perfect anti-vehicle gun. But the truth is that if you shoot the.50 through a vehicle's engine block, you're not actually going to stop the vehicle. Not right away. The fluids will leak out and eventually it will stop moving. But it's not instant by any means. A.338 and even a.300 will do the same thing. No, the best way to stop a vehicle is to shoot the driver. And that you can do with a number of weapons.