Modern American Snipers (28 page)

“At other times, one guy in the [two F-16C] flight would track the target and the other would track the U.S. guys. There was a code and a relay so the Delta guys—or whoever they were—could sit and watch what we were seeing. They'd take their helicopters and just put them down in the desert and wait until the guy got to where they wanted to roll up on him. We'd just provide security and make sure nobody was sneaking up on them out in the middle of nowhere.”

Watts was taken aback by the level of detail JSOC's recce assets were able to provide in advance of an operation, providing an almost prescient degree of intelligence.

When working in support of conventional troops, the F-16C pilots of the 421st Fighter Squadron (call sign “Ninja”) would take on the role of subject matter expert, providing in-depth descriptions of their aircraft, munitions, and time-on-station during their check-in. They'd also lend suggestions as to what types of weapons would be of most use and when.

When supporting Rangers, the check-in was of a generally similar sort, although considerably condensed.

However, when tasked with a Delta operation, the fighter pilots simply did as they were told. “It was pretty much check in and just shut up,” Watts admitted. “Give them your call sign; tell them you're on station. They'd acknowledged and they knew the drill. They know what's going on. They probably knew what that guy they were targeting was eating for breakfast.

“They would literally say, ‘This car is going to go here, and then two guys are going to come up, and then they are going to go there,' and so on. And you'd just sit there and watch it unfold exactly as they said it would. There was obviously a lot of intelligence that was going on. It was just nuts.”

The pilot appreciated the opportunity to work amid such refined competence: “You know when you are being utilized properly and when you are not—when a guy knows exactly how to use your asset to help them—and these guys were, as expected, all over it. It was fun to sit back and have a front-row ticket to a lot of the stuff.”

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While U.S. Army Special Forces primarily concentrate on unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense missions, each SF Group boasts its own specialized direct-action-centric component in the form of a CIF Company. This relatively under-the-radar capability skirts the line between “black” and “white” and “Tier 1” and “Tier 3.”

These CIF (Combatant Commanders In-extremis Force) Companies grant each geographic area of responsibility (AOR) of the Unified Combatant Command structure with a dedicated, specially trained unit that is prepositioned and able to immediately respond to highly sensitive operations.

Not surprising considering their SF lineage, combined with their advanced direct action, counterterrorism, and hostage rescue training, these (approximately) forty-man CIF Companies are also utilized to raise and train the Tier 1 CT units of other nations.

These capabilities led to JSOC calling upon them in a time of need: a CIF Company was made part of the larger JSOC equation operating out of Baghdad, allowing the industrial CT campaign to continue unabated even after Delta Force had been hit especially hard.

In 2006, the 7th Special Forces Group's CIF Company (C/3/7), which included a troop led by former Delta recce legend John “Shrek” McPhee, took up shop at MSS Fernandez alongside JSOC's band of U.S. and coalition black SOF and operated as an extension of the Unit.

The following year, SF CIF was given its own quarry and set off the leash in another direction. While the Delta-spearheaded Task Force 16 would continue to hunt down Zarqawi and dismantle AQI, the Special Forces DA specialists would take the lead on the new Counter Iranian Influence (CII) mission with the newly created Task Force 17.

Prior to that, U.S. intelligence had estimated that upward of 150 members of Quds Force—a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard tasked with “extraterritorial operations”—were operating inside Iraq. Quds Force was there training, directing, and arming Shia militias, known as “Special Groups.”

Unwilling to ignore this growing issue any longer, even while the White House deliberated the next step, Delta Force took the initiative and mounted a shock raid on the Iranian Liaison Office in Irbil in northern Iraq in January of '07, storming in from the roof and the ground simultaneously. Five Iranian operatives were captured while attempting to destroy documents, signifying the official commencement of a second major CT campaign in Iraq.

While Delta and JSOC returned their focus to al-Qaeda in Iraq, CIF, along with their newest creation, ICTF (Iraqi Counterterrorism Task Force)—owned the CII mission while still being fueled by JSOC's massive intelligence collection and processing capabilities.

The ICTF had only recently been activated. Recruits were trained by SF in conjunction with Jordanian SOF at the Jordanian Counterterrorism Training Academy in Amman, and then returned to Iraq to operate alongside their American mentors in the field.

This fork of the industrial CT campaign proved as torrid as the one that raged versus AQI. In late 2007, Task Force 17 killed almost fifty Shia militiamen during the course of a daylight raid in Sadr City while suffering no casualties—and causing no known friendly civilian casualties.

The team narrowly escaped a potential
Black Hawk Down
redux as the assault force battled their way through the streets to avoid being surrounded by a gathering swarm of enemy reinforcements.

*   *   *

While some soldiers received specialized marksmanship training, Army Special Forces did not have a formalized sniper program until the creation of the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course (SOTIC) in 1983 (which was rebranded as the Special Forces Sniper Course, SFSC, in March 2007).

SFSC is conducted at Range 37, a 130-acre training facility near Mott Lake at Fort Bragg, and serves as the primary basic training course for prospective SF and Delta snipers, along with a small handful of fortunate snipers from other units.

“That's the one everyone wants to go to but there are not very many slots coming down,” former Ranger sniper Jack Murphy said.

As with most 3rd Battalion Ranger snipers, Isaiah Burkhart received his basic qualification through the U.S. Army Sniper School at Fort Benning. However, after serving as a 3/75 sniper for more than two years, he was finally granted the opportunity to attend SOTIC.

“The general rule was, because the battalions don't get that many slots for SOTIC, it was the more senior guys who would go,” Burkhart explained.

The slots are so rare, in fact, that Burkhart was the only sniper from the entire regiment in his class. He found the course to be worth the wait. Compared to the U.S. Army Sniper School, he said, “SOTIC was definitely a higher level. The technicality of it is higher. You get a lot more into actually doing more equation stuff, fine-tuning things. The Army one is more of a ‘Big Army,' big house, ‘You're a dumbass until I tell you otherwise and you do exactly what I tell you' kind of thing.”

Burkhart's SOTIC class was loaded up with Sergeants First Class and Master Sergeants (as an E-6, he was the least senior man in attendance) and the students were treated accordingly. “It's definitely more of a gentleman's type course. You're in big boy land.”

Students were provided with the training but then expected to follow through on their own, no babysitting or hand-holding included.

As its name suggested, Burkhart also found that SOTIC geared itself more toward teaching spec ops skills. He explained, “I would say that the U.S. Army School was a little more intensive in the stalking department. They were definitely more of an old-school, conventional warfare approach in the sense of stalking and fieldcraft-type stuff. Whereas with SOTIC, we had an entire week of doing low-vis stuff: following people, sneaking into somewhere to take photographs, and going back to Photoshop to do an overlay over a photo and map out entrance points, cameras, and things like that. They even had a Subaru that was all set up like a low-vis tracking vehicle.

“It was a really good course—the best sniper school that I've ever been to.”

A Special Forces soldier who successfully completes the Special Forces Sniper Course is considered a “Level I” sniper. That not only suggests an HR-ready skill set, but also qualifies him to return to his Group and train other Green Berets—generally mimicking the SFSC curriculum, albeit in an abbreviated manner.

Those trained in this fashion are deemed “Level II” and can operate as an ODA sniper as long as they are teamed with a Level I sniper. They are also considered qualified to train partner nation snipers.

Each ODA strives to have at least two Green Berets with sniper training—and sometimes in practice has several more—but generally that's only considered a secondary role, if that. As a former Unit and SF sniper said, “In an A-Team, sniper is a detail not a position, and one guys don't really want.… ‘Why did I get stuck on the roof for this op?'”

That's not the case with the CIF Companies, which are broken down into assaulter and sniper cells similar to Delta Force or DEVGRU. The CIF snipers are dedicated, full-time sharpshooters in the same way that Ranger snipers are; however, they also have hostage rescue training similar to that of Delta snipers (although they are not tasked with the same advanced reconnaissance role, at least not nearly to that degree).

To gain entrance to a CIF, an SF soldier has to pass more stringent physical requirements and complete the two-month Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance Target Analysis Exploitation Techniques Course (SFARTAETC), which drills its students on surgical direct action and room-clearing techniques necessary for the assignment.

Held four times a year, each SFARTAETC session mirrors an SFSC class. As Murphy explained, “They've been able to combine the final exercise between SFARTAETC and [SFSC]. The assaulters and snipers come together for training operations at the end of the courses, working together the way they would in reality.”

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The shift from Special Operations Target Interdiction Course to Special Forces Sniper Course was more than just a name change.

Following a similar path previously blazed by the overhauled U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course, SFSC was modernized and expanded to reflect the post-9/11 realities of sniper employment in combat.

A glimpse into the effectiveness of the Special Forces Sniper Course was provided by the results of the 2011 International Sniper Competition, which was won by Master Sgt. Kevin Owens and Sgt. 1st Class Terry Gower, snipers from B/2/3—the 3rd Special Forces Group CIF Company.

The year before that, the title was taken by SFSC instructors Sgt. 1st Class Chance Giannelli and Sgt. 1st Class Edward Homeyer, both of Company D, 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group.

Applying the lessons gleaned on the modern battlefield and marrying them with rapidly developing technologies and an enhanced understanding of the hard science of ballistics (the nuances of which are complex enough to push a Cray supercomputer to its breaking point), the updated SEAL and SF courses represent a larger trend in the training of long-distance shooters.

The U.S. Army Sniper School and even the Marine Scout Sniper Course have been similarly augmented in recent years as well, while a whole host of advanced classes—both inside the military and via third parties—exist to further hone snipers' abilities.

Practical and realistic scenarios are emphasized, as is the total comprehension of a multitude of factors that can affect a bullet's trajectory, from the initial pressure on the trigger to its flight across hundreds, if not thousands, of meters. Today's snipers are instructed on the use of ballistic computers—which come in a variety of forms, including smartphone apps—to help streamline the process of calculating these complex firing solutions.

“The days of Kentucky windage and ‘feeling' are over,” said Todd Hodnett, the president of Accuracy 1st.

Hodnett is a leading figure in this increasingly rational and digitized sniper age. He also stands as one of the most sought-after instructors among USMC and SOF snipers.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Texan himself doesn't have a background as a military sniper. He was a farmer and a rancher who grew up shooting prairie dogs. He gradually found his way into competitive pistol and sniper competitions and garnered enough success—national championship victory–level success—that the military came to him rather than the other way around.

Hodnett's ballistic engines have changed the way spec op snipers approach the craft and his reticle designs are already in wide use.

“We have taken a very math-driven scientific problem and removed the myths from the equation,” he explained. “We did this by making the science work for us. No more shooting every one hundred meters for DOPE—that is laughable nowadays. It's not opinion; it's fact. The math is always right. The bullet doesn't lie and doesn't get to vote. Everything I teach is based off where the bullet hit, not just a standard generic ballistic chart. We can be so much better than that.”

And if the results of the 2010 International Sniper Competition served as evidence to the credibility of SFSC, consider that the winning team—SFSC instructors themselves—attributed their victory in large part to receiving instruction from Hodnett prior to the competition.

In fact, the top three teams in both the Open and Service class all trained under Hodnett.

After attending a ten-day session with Accuracy 1st, USMC Scout Sniper Cpl. Ryan Lindner said, “Training with Todd Hodnett has taken our capabilities to a level that I didn't think was possible as a Scout Sniper. Todd has really revolutionary tactics about shooting around, over, and within buildings.”

In other words, he knows his stuff.

Hodnett's methodology is based around streamlining extremely complex ideas into equations that allow shooters to determine solutions and send precise fire downrange in a matter of seconds.