Eyeing the Sights: Countersnipers prepare for crucial air base defense role

Airman, Nov, 2001 by Jason Tudor

In places like Bosnia, North Korea and Macedonia, hot spots where unconventional warfare rules, they wait. Peering through scopes atop rifles that can hit a target from better than a mile away, these silent hunters stare at you and your aircraft, which look more like ducks on a pond than million-dollar war machines.

As they watch, one of them slips a .50 caliber bullet into the chamber of a long-barreled rifle pointed at the side of the E-3 Sentry aircraft 500 meters away. In jest, the sniper positions his sights just over the shoulder of the 19-year-old baby-faced security policeman standing watch, an M-16 slung over his shoulder.

The sniper's spotter makes the calls for the range and wind, and, when he feels comfortable enough, the shooter slides his finger onto the trigger of the weapon. He leans into his scope to ensure the crosshairs are directly over the area where expensive avionics equipment rests. Satisfied, he exhales a deep breath and squeezes the trigger.

The fire from the muzzle ignites the evening air as the projectile whistles down range. It punches through the side of the aircraft, ripping through delicate components onboard the plane. A second sniper 100 yards away fires, as does a third, launching rounds into the cockpit and the wing fuel tanks. As the white-hot bullets hit, the wing tanks explode, ripping the plane apart, as other rounds tear through the secretive avionics equipment, rendering it useless.

The attack is finished without engaging one human adversary, and a $300 million aircraft is ruined. This sort of attack destroyed 393 U.S. and allied aircraft in Vietnam, and damaged another 1,185, according to the Rand Corp, an organization that advises the U.S. government on matters of policy through research and analysis.

Today, air base flight lines are even more vulnerable, with sensitive aircraft like the E-3, the $270 million E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System and equally costly RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes without hardened bunkers.

Enter Air Force countersnipers, the cat to an enemy sniper's mouse, to a mission that led late Marine GunnerySgt. Carlos Hathcock II, the military's best known sniper - a man with a confirmed kill from a distance greater than 22 football fields -- to say, "The most deadly thing on the battlefield is one well-aimed shot."

More than two-dozen Guard and active duty security forces airmen have graduated from the Air Force Countersniper School at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Arkansas. The 15-day course, taught at the National Guard Marksmanship Center, gives security forces a boot camp on countersniper tactics and procedures. It also introduces them to the life of one of their key adversaries -- the military sniper.

The instructor cadre is diverse. Former Marines, Army snipers and Rangers -- with experience in Vietnam, Panama, the Persian Gulf and other hot spots too clandestine to discuss -- compose this group of motivated, salty Guard veterans.

Each student is issued about 50 pounds of equipment. This includes the $5,000 single-shot, 15-pound M-24 rifle, a variation of the Remington 700, firing a NATO 7.62 mm round. Students also receive a handbook for writing targets and sketching scenery when memorizing target locations, and a bevy of other gear.

While shooting, this rifle is seen as the carrot that will draw potential countersnipers to the course, the instructors emphasized the need to pay attention to the other points of instruction.

"A lot of times they'll come into this school, and they'll think 'well, it's a National Guard School,' and they hang around for a couple of weeks, pass, get their coin and go home. It just ain't that way," said Army 1st Sgt. Jim Green, one of the school's lead instructors. "We're lucky to graduate 75 to 80 percent of the students."

What was that again?

The instruction includes memory tests, where students must recall the locations of objects large and small from great distances. Using binoculars, students pencil sketch objects like coins, cans, rocks and other items. Instructors will later change the setting, and students must figure out what's been altered from what they've drawn.

To keep their brains hungry, students are subjected almost daily to something on a smaller scale called the "keep in memory" game. Instructors gather students in a circle to look at a similar set of objects on the ground. Hours later, they must remember all of the objects as well as other variables instructors throw their way.

There's also target range estimation. Using a complex mathematical formula, binoculars and pencils, students figure the distance to the target. Initially, students are given a 500-meter target to calibrate and test their skills. After that, they're on their own, having to range targets from 300 to 1,000 meters away.

Students like Senior Airman Todd Tomlinson from Huriburt Field, Fla., find this the most difficult part of the course.

"You don't know how far away the target is," he said. "It's tough."

A team effort

Students are also tested in target detection - just what are they seeing in their scope, and should they shoot it? This is a craft for the spotter, usually the most experienced member of the countersniper team, who watches the shots go down range and offers adjustments to the shooter.