Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror

by Milo S. Afong

  When the mission was complete, the group headed back to base. They had completed two months of ship takedowns and four months of ground warfare in Afghanistan, and now it was time to head home.

  PSD/Direct Action

  SF soldiers are perfect for PSD, or Personal Security Detail. Specialized training makes ODA teams exceptional at protecting high-profile dignitaries; however, most SF soldiers will tell you that these missions are not preferred, and for two reasons. One, the soldiers are almost always on the defense, and two, usually there is not much action. On his second tour to Afghanistan, Bobby’s team was tasked with training the men who would be protecting the newly elected Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai.

  Bobby had graduated SOTIC months before and could now put the tactics to use. In Kabul, he and civilian snipers from DynCorp International, a security contracting company, trained indigenous troops on the role of marksmen during personal security. Their focus concentrated heavily on counter-sniper roles, specifically for protection.

  Most times, when the president traveled, Bobby and his group moved into the intended area days in advance. He taught the indigenous troops to set up landing zones for the president and how to scout the area where he would be staying. Normally, the snipers would observe the area from rooftops for days, and then secure the area before the president arrived. There is much to consider during counter-sniper operations, especially for PSD. Searching for possible enemy shooting positions, ambush sites, routes and routines, and suspicious activity is what counter-snipings is about. Spending hours behind a scope, meticulously combing buildings and roads exhausted Bobby. Fortunately, he enjoyed the company of his teammates, and they passed the time talking about family or home.

  No matter where he was, Bobby always missed his family. That emotion was kept in the back of his mind so he could concentrate on the task at hand. The sacrifice made by the wives and girlfriends of Special Operations soldiers was hard to evaluate. Considering that the typical Green Beret undergoes years of intense specialized training all over the world, demanding total concentration, Bobby felt lucky to have a wife who would allow him to do his job.

  When Hamid Karzai arrived, Bobby’s element kept security. The snipers were always on high alert during the president’s events and until he departed. Fortunately, no attempts on the president’s life happened while Bobby’s team guarded him, and in three quick months, Bobby’s team returned to Fort Bragg. Their tour was up.

  Bobby enjoyed his third tour the most. In January of 2004, his team arrived in Afghanistan once again, but this time for direct action. For four months they would be actively hunting terrorists and high-value targets in their home environment. Their new commander was just what SF soldiers want in a leader, a go-getter more concerned about war fighting than politics. Commanders make quite a difference for SF soldiers; some are concerned about their careers more than fighting and are timid about letting A-teams loose. Luckily for Bobby his new commander wasn’t that type of soldier.

  In no time, the team was kicking down doors. They started a cycle of operations beginning with direct action, where they hunted high-value targets for two weeks. From there, their commander sent them on probing missions into areas considered Taliban strongholds. For the sniper operations, Bobby carried an SR-25 mounted with a universal night scope, the PVS-22. The SR-25 gave him the ability of semiautomatic fire, which he definitely needed during raids.

  Speed is a key element for direct action. A-teams raid targets hard and fast, leaving no time for the enemy to prepare or react. When Bobby’s team hit houses, as the sniper it was his job to provide over-watch. Since the team used helicopters to move in, Bobby used a quick method to get into position. As soon as the ramp was lowered from his helicopter, he sped off the bird on an ATV to the nearest high ground. There, he set up a tripod and observed the back of the target houses for anyone trying to flee. Sometimes, when the birds landed, everyone in the house stumbled outside to see the commotion. In that environment—nighttime, with crowds of men, women, and children, and having to quickly identify actual targets—Bobby was thankful for all his training. More than once he had put his crosshairs on people who looked to be hostile, but turned out actually to be noncombatants.

  After months of direct action, the A-team was re-tasked. They were to move into Shinkay near the Qalat Valley in the Zabul Province. This southeastern province troubled Coalition Forces. Its vast landscape, spanning the Afghanistan and Pakistan border, left many routes open to Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents moving into Afghanistan. OGA (Other Government Agency) signal intelligence intercepted cell phone traffic indicating the nearby mountain ranges as safe havens for fighters crossing the border. Meals, beds, arms, and ammunition were distributed there, and from the valleys of those mountains, fighters moved into other regions of the country depending on the need for personnel. Finding these routes proved difficult, simply because there were not enough men on the ground. To counter, Bobby’s team was to establish a firebase in the region. Accompanied by Afghan troops, they would begin finding and fighting the insurgents.

  On their way in, Bobby’s unit immediately suffered casualities, and he was lucky to still be alive. The unimproved roads were filled with rocks, sand, and dirt, making it impossible to tell if anything was buried there. The conditions also wore on the vehicles, but the SF soldiers’ GMVs worked better than the Afghans’ light 4x4 pickup trucks. They were more powerful and had a wider wheelbase.

  As they drove along the rough road, an explosion ripped through the vehicle behind Bobby’s, and shrapnel tore into two of the Afghan soldiers, killing them. The device that they had triggered was a pressure-detonated IED. The only reason it had not detonated underneath Bobby’s vehicle was because the GMVs’ wider wheelbase, which distributed weight better than the light pickup trucks. The loss was hard on everyone; Bobby’s team had trained and worked with the Afghans for months and had built a good relationship with them.

  Forming strong ties with the locals brings success for SF teams. Regular Army soldiers do not often train, work, and live side by side with indigenous troops, but for A-teams, establishing these bonds helps them to win over local support. When Bobby’s team reached the valley, they immediately set up a firebase. Normally they hired locals from nearby villages to cook for them, but since their outpost was so far from any population, an Afghan soldier took over the duty. He was well paid, but also was warned that if the team were to get sick, he would be held responsible.

  Trusting all of the Afghans was not easy. The SF soldiers had a habit of sleeping with a pistol under their pillows and their M4s within reach. In some units, they caught Afghan soldiers with ties to the Taliban, and statistically speaking, there were more.

  After weeks in the valley, the soldiers and the insurgents were destined to meet. The SF commander sped up the process and formed a plan. Since they were unable to pinpoint the enemy’s exact location, even though they knew they were there, the plan was to trap them. The commander directed Bobby’s team, along with the Afghan troops, to fly deep into the valley and hold a blocking position on a ridgeline. Another SF team started at the valley entrance and pushed forward, forcing the insurgents to fight or run.

  On the night of the mission, as usual, the helicopters took fire on their way in. Bobby had remembered to test fire his sniper rifle before leaving. He always carried it, and was able to employ it, but had yet to fire it. This time would be different though. When they reached their dropoff point, it was actually a steep ridgeline. The birds were forced to put them down just above the area they were supposed to be watching, but as they did, RPGs began to fire on them.

  Insurgents used tactics to try downing the helicopters. They would not use small arms or machine guns, because they wanted to keep their positions concealed. Instead, they learned to recognize the flashes of static from the main rotors above the birds and shot RPGs toward it. Only when they hit a helicopter and caused it to crash did they send in foot patrols to finish off survivors. The pilot
s, though, were unfazed and hovered in midair while dropping just the tail ramp onto a ledge. When the ramp hit the dirt, the soldiers piled off.

  Bobby was the third man off his helicopter. On the way out, the man in front of him went left. That was Bobby’s cue to go right. Outside, he heard the soldier in front of him yell. Only later did he learn that an RPG had missed the man by inches. When everyone was off, they all climbed a nearby ridgeline and began to search for targets. Bobby found a small nook between two rocks and set up a shooting position using a tripod to rest his rifle upon. That night produced heavy fog, hampering Bobby’s vision, and rendered the night sight almost useless. He would have to wait until daybreak to see anything.

  Both the insurgents and soldiers were aware of each other’s presence, but could not see each other. A firefight was brewing, and the upper hand would go to whoever spotted the other side first. In the darkness, the soldiers prepared for an attack. They spread out on the ridgeline so that more than one of them would not be injured by an RPG or mortar fire. On the opposite ridgeline and the valley floor, insurgents prepared as well. They carried AKs and RPGs to several different positions on the mountainside. That allowed them to shoot and move without staying in place for too long.

  As the sky lit up, Bobby packed away his night vision. His group was hunkered down when someone noticed smoke from a small fire on the valley floor below. Two SF soldiers decided to take a force of ten Afghans to scout it out, but just as they left, an enemy machine gun opened up from the other side.

  “Cover us,” said one of the soldiers.

  “I got you,” said Bobby.

  Soon Bobby found his first target. It was still dawn, but on an opposing ridge, a man lay on his stomach behind a rock, aiming toward the soldiers moving below. Bobby quickly used his Leica Viper laser range finder and discovered the man at 635 meters (2,000 feet). He made sure that the tripod under his rifle was sturdy and settled in for the shot. After a breath, his aim rested center on the man’s body, and before squeezing the trigger, Bobby asked the Lord to steady his hand. His recoil put him back on target in time to see that he had hit the man. The insurgent’s hip was shattered by the bullet. He rolled off the back of the rock and out of sight.

  “I just took out a target, three hundred degrees, at six hundred and thirty meters,” Bobby reported.

  The team commander wanted to be directed onto targets, but Bobby saw more men.

  “There are more targets all over the opposite ridgeline,” he said.

  Bobby was behind the gun, about to scan for more targets, when he noticed that the man he had shot was looking from behind the rock. Bobby aimed for his head, but missed. He fired a few more times to keep the man from returning fire.

  In the valley below, the SF soldiers with the ten Afghans were in a fight as well. Bobby scanned the ridgeline again and caught another target; a man with an AK was shooting at the team below. Bobby lasered him at 850 meters. After unloading his AK, the man dropped it and ran to another cache to pick up another weapon. The caches were scattered up and down the ridgeline. Some of the enemy combatants had AKs, while others held RPGs.

  In his scope, Bobby had a side view of the man. The enemy climbed up the mountainside. It was so steep that he had to use his hands to crawl up. Bobby’s scope could not be adjusted any higher. It was maxed out, so he decided to use a holdover, meaning that he would have to aim high above his target. After estimating the wind speed once more, he held high and to the left into the wind. His crosshairs were above the man’s head when he fired, and the bullet landed just high and to the left. The man knew that he was being targeted, and crawled faster. Bobby made a heavier wind adjustment, but his next shot hit low and to the left. Between the two shots, he figured the necessary holdover and wind adjustment and fired once more. The third shot was a killing blow; it hit the man and caused him to tumble two hundred meters (650 feet) down the hill.

  Bobby watched the man’s lifeless body slide down the hill before he moved on. As he searched again, however, the enemy fighters began to break contact and run into caves. His teammates called for close air support, and they sat on the ridgeline for hours before the mission was finished. In the end, after all the bombing runs by support aircraft and the soldiers’ small arms fire, twenty insurgents lay dead. Unbeknownst to the A-teams, the insurgents had been tipped off to their coming. A total of eighty Taliban were in the valley to begin with, but the leaders and others slipped away, leaving a twenty-man force behind to keep the soldiers busy. The team was able to inspect the dead, and the man that Bobby had ranged at 850 meters had been hit under the armpit, sending the bullet through his body and out his rib cage.

  For Bobby, the mission marked the end of his third tour, but it wasn’t his last. In six years operating in his A-team, he has been to Afghanistan four times, conducting a variety of missions most of which cannot be talked about—on the record that is. Bobby’s role as a sniper helped him to gain the experience needed to become a sniper instructor.

  FIVE

  DUAL DEPLOYMENTS I

  THE Global War on Terror presents many unique aspects in the realm of war fighting, the most evident being that it sustains combat simultaneously in more than one country. Afghanistan and Iraq are at the forefront, and some snipers can brag about the differences after having fought in both.

  Go Army

  Stan was a sniper with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. On the morning of September 11, 2001, his sniper section from the Second Battalion, 187th Infantry were shooting their rifles on a range. In the pits, Stan pulled targets for the snipers shooting, and just as he’d finished patching a hole, the range control radio went off.

  “Hey, guys, go ahead and put the targets in the shack and lock it up. We’re going home,” said the platoon sergeant.

  “Why?” questioned Stan. Shooting was his passion, and he didn’t want to miss out on his turn.

  “We’ve been attacked.”

  As a senior sniper, Stan was serious about training. He thought the radio transmission was a joke and made his way up top to straighten out his teammates. On the trail, however, he noticed Military Police storming the roads and the range, shutting everything down.

  Back in their team room the snipers watched a small black-and-white television to learn more about the incident. The video footage caught everyone off guard; the two World Trade Center towers were ablaze, and the image of the planes diving into them was on replay. It took a few hours for all of the information to trickle down, but soon the men knew the details.

  Immediately after 9/11 Stan and his platoon, like many from the infantry battalions, were tasked with a security role. The snipers guarded a weapons deposit for some time before reverting to normal training. From then on, the brigade’s training was intense, heading into “black cycle.” Black cycle meant that if a unit from the 101st were to be called upon for war, Stan’s would be the first to answer.

  By this time, Stan was a specialist, on his first enlistment. He had come a long way from high school to the Army infantry, and from being a regular Joe to being a team leader in the sniper section. His first unit was in South Korea, the First Battalion, 506th Infantry, based in the demilitarized zone. Though Stan had wanted to be a sniper since before he joined, it was there in Korea that he learned what it took to become one.

  He befriended soldiers from the sniper section, and after a few discussions, they gave him insight about the selection process for sniper school and how to prepare for it. He did not try out for it there, however, because he wanted to better his chances by waiting to return stateside. Getting into sniper school is hard for soldiers overseas; it is a privilege that most units cannot afford to extend.

  Over a year later, Stan was at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as part of the Second Battalion, 187th Infantry, under the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. He was a Rakkasan, translated in Japanese as falling down umbrella man. The name was given to men in the 187th by the Japanese after World War II, to signify the u
nit’s airborne ability. They are capable of deploying anywhere in the world within thirty-six hours, which excited Stan. He was also satisfied to be carrying on a family tradition of serving in the 101st Airborne Division, as many of his relatives had done before him. There, he seized the opportunity to become a sniper when he learned that a selection was coming up.

  Physically, Stan was short and stocky. Lifting weights was a passion he had carried over from high school, and his muscular build helped with the heavy packs. Mentally, he was always focused, always serious, and willing to study when others would not. These attributes helped him to pass selection and to be chosen as a part of the Reconnaissance/Surveillance and Target Acquisition platoon, or R/STA platoon. That first year in the platoon, he faced his first real test in the Army.

  Stan’s unit and SOTIC, the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course, were located on the same base, and the course had an extra slot, allowing him to walk on. At first, Stan felt overwhelmed; it is not very often that a young infantry soldier is given a chance to attend such a prestigious class. His peers were mostly seasoned Special Forces veterans with badges and patches that Stan could only dream about, but still he was there and he knew that he had to make the best of the opportunity.

  Soon young Stan was rubbing elbows with the best of them at SOTIC. He first noticed the professionalism of everyone, particularly the instructors. They were helpful in every aspect and were adamant about guiding Stan toward success, which was different from a regular Army course. Regular Army courses seemed to make everything hard for the students, as if they wanted them to fail, but not the SOTIC instructors.

  Instructors humbly explained their real world experiences and sincerely wanted the students to learn the art of sniping. Stan noticed that whenever he needed advice, the instructors were there. They helped him understand the concepts without his having to worry about being disciplined. It made for less stress during his especially favorite portion of training, the marksmanship phase.