Sniper competition reveals gains, deficits - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Sniper competition reveals gains, deficits

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Thirty snipers showed up for a competition and a training exercise broke out.

During a three-day contest, 15 two-man teams fought for first place in day and night events that involved shooting with their non-dominant hand, firing at a target through a 1-inch hole, running and shooting on a 1,000-meter range and creeping up to within 100 meters of a target undetected.

They also climbed walls, crawled through windows, slid down ropes and sloshed through mud and rain. In the process, many realized they had some work to do to brush up on their sniping and observation skills.

“The competition brought to light a lot of training deficiencies and a lot of new stuff that’s out there,” said Staff Sgt. David, a member of 7th Special Forces Group, who declined to be identified by his full name.

He and his teammate, Sgt. 1st Class Cody, scored 446 points out of a possible 1,100 and came in eighth place. Even the winning team, a pair of snipers from Special Forces Operational Detachment-D, reached a score of only 636 points.

All the competitors, except for one team from the Army Sniper School at Fort Benning, Ga., were from Special Forces units, and each one has logged multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the art of sniping and observation is a perishable skill, and the cadre of instructors at the Special Forces Sniper Course designed the events to push the soldiers beyond what they have learned to emphasize the need for constant and regular training.

Newer is better

“There was a changing of the guard between the old guard tactics, techniques and procedures and the new modern TTPs, which is a lot of advanced skills,” said Maj. Pete Kranenburg, commander of Range 37, D Company, 2nd Battalion, the advanced skills battalion in the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.

Almost 80 percent of the guys who scored the most points were recent graduates of the school, he said, “which confirms to me the validity of the things we’re teaching here.

“This was a wake-up call for the old guard who thinks sniping is laying on your belly.”

As planned, the competition evolved into a professional meet and training exercise in which new techniques and procedures learned in recent combat were shared.

“Every event was based on a real combat scenario experienced by a member of the cadre,” said Master Sgt. Sean Kirkwood, noncommissioned officer in charge of SFSC and a former member of 5th Special Forces Group. “It’s new ways of looking at stuff that’s not traditional. Anybody can lie on the ground ... and shoot a target. This is more extreme, more dynamic.”

Fostering a community

Though SF snipers have for years held meetings to review the program of instruction at the school and share ideas, the competition was a way of putting some additional value into those meetings and to bring more SF snipers together as a community with a skill to continually hone.

“SF looks at sniping as one skill … but we need a community where everybody’s talking to everybody all the time so they can expand, learn and grow. I didn’t come out of this course knowing how to do it. I learned a lot of lessons in Iraq, and it was luck of the draw that I didn’t get killed,” Kirkwood said.

During the competition, many of the instructors running the events could be heard chastising the competitors for a lackluster performance and later praising them for a job well done on a different event.

“It’s everything I can do to keep the guys on the events from giving them pointers because they want to,” Kirkwood said, explaining that when he took the job 18 months ago he came in “with a bunch of guys who had just come back from combat, so we fixed some things, added stuff and different techniques that we’ve all learned over the years.”

Opening to all services

The school, which used to be known as the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course, or SOTIC, is planning to host an annual competition and hopes to attract the participation of special operations troops from all the services by the time next year’s event rolls around.

“The various sniper communities are very insular, their techniques may not translate, and there’s no real forum to push sniper lessons learned out to the field,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Bill Gunter, who manages the special Operations Sniper course at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. “This competition is a chance for the experts to talk and share techniques.”

The standard of excellence, he noted, has always been winning the Army or Marine Corps competitions. Special operations troops have always competed in those events, but the USASOC event will allow them to compete among themselves for top billing and compare notes on the unique challenges special operations troops face in battle.

But winning any of the competitions for special ops troops, Gunter said, is not easy because their operational tempo leaves them less time to train than soldiers in the regular Army.

“Even a trained sniper to compete at this level needs months of practice. You have to show up at this competition at the top of your game,” Gunter said.

The school has incorporated a lot more night shooting because of the reality downrange. “It’s all based on the needs of the operator. They use operators to validate all the tasks,” Kranenburg said.

Staff Sgt. David, who is based at Fort Bragg, N.C., predicted that after his middle-of-the-road showing at the USASOC meet, he will likely work on his skills more often.

“I’ll probably work on starting and ending the day with some scenario-based training,” he said.

His partner, Sgt. 1st Class Cody, said being trained as a Special Forces sniper doesn’t mean you automatically get the opportunity to train as often as you’d like. But the competition, he said, helped highlight what needs attention.

“A competition brings out your deficiencies and what you need to work on,” he said.

The competitors were eligible for more than $80,000 in prizes sponsored by weapons, optics and gear manufacturers.