by Brandon Webb
We also have laser rangefinders, of course, which give us these measurements directly, but in the sniper course we had to learn how to make these calculations the hard way. To tell the truth, even with all the new technology, it’s still smart to know how to do this by hand. You don’t want to count on always having a laser rangefinder handy—as I would find out firsthand in the midst of split-second, life-or-death circumstances in the mountains of northern Afghanistan.
We practiced ranging these targets, and once we ranged them we shot to verify that we had ranged correctly. Then we’d make slight modifications, if necessary, and shot again. We had ample opportunity to perfect the process in practice tests, but when the final test day came, our shit had to be seriously dialed in, because then it was game on and no second chances.
After we spent weeks practicing and testing with the .308, they put us on the .300 Win Mag, which packs more power than the .308 and can therefore shoot to ranges up to 1,000 yards and beyond. Each of these has its own character and idiosyncrasies, and by the time the shooting phase was over we had come to know them both like old friends.
We also started doing some longer-distance shooting with the .50 cal sniper rifle. The .50 cal bullet is a monster, about twice the size of the .308, and it can shoot way out past 1,000 yards to 1,500 or even 1,800 yards. It’s also a more stable bullet with a little more powder and oomph behind it, and it serves more as what we call an area weapon, meaning that we would typically use it for things like shooting out an engine block in a vehicle or the propeller system in a Scud missile.
And here something strange happened. When we started getting out to a certain distances with the .50 cal, we started seeing effects we just didn’t understand. We were shooting out to 1,500 yards, shooting at tanks and other big targets, and I wondered, How come I’m holding for a 10 mph wind that’s coming in from the right, but the bullet’s still not on target—and I can see the trace doing something weird. What the hell is going on?
What was going on, I eventually learned, was the Coriolis effect, which refers to the influence of the earth’s rotation on bodies in motion. Yes, incredibly enough, on top of all the other environmental and ballistic information a sniper keeps in his head, the earth’s frigging rotation is yet one more factor to bear in mind. Here’s why:
While my .50 cal bullet was in the air, the earth’s rotation would cause the planet’s surface and everything on it—including my target—to slip slightly eastward, so that by the time the bullet landed, nothing was exactly where it had been when that bullet’s flight began. Because the earth is so large and the local impact of its rotation so subtle, it’s practically impossible to detect this without scientific instruments, until you start looking at motion over large distances—like 1,500 yards.
Shooting out to 200 yards, 500 yards, even 800 or 1,000 yards, the impact of the Coriolis effect is so negligible that you can get away with ignoring it. Once you’re shooting out to some serious distances, though, it can move your bullet’s trajectory by as much as several inches, enough to cause you to completely miss your target.
It was all such a massive amount of information to synthesize, and I soon learned to use my brain as a lens to bring that entire universe of variables to bear on the tiny circle of focus inside my scope. This also meant blocking out any distractions, such as when the instructors intentionally messed with us to get us flustered and throw us off our game, or our own fears about not passing the course, and pouring every atom of concentration into that focal point.
We had learned to use the PEQ laser sight that projects a visible red dot on the target. (Another version of this scope projected an infrared red dot visible only through night-vision technology, allowing us to sight targets without giving our position away. Today these two functions are combined into one model.) That red dot came to represent everything I was learning, compressed into a pinpoint of brilliant light.
It was as if I were standing inside a minuscule red circle, hurling the bullet to its destination by an act of sheer mental concentration. In those moments on the range, everything else disappeared and my world shrank, like the near-infinite compression of matter in a black hole, into that red circle.
* * *
At the same time we were learning the various weapons and going through snaps and movers and unknown distance testing, we continued with those cold bore tests—which our instructors somehow managed to make more stressful every day. They had a truly devious genius at doing this, as they ably demonstrated on one of our classmates, Bill.
Bill had a brother going through BUD/S training while we were in sniper school. Although none of us knew this at the time, it turned out that Bill’s brother had thrown in the towel and rung that brass bell, which meant his class helmet had been put out there on the ground along with all the other quitters’ helmets, their names facing out for all to see.
One of our instructors managed to get this guy’s helmet and affixed it to Bill’s cold bore target. The poor guy had no idea his brother had quit BUD/S until the moment when, out of breath and under the extreme pressure of the morning’s cold bore shot, he zeroed in on his target as it popped up—and saw his brother’s name on that helmet. To his credit, he scored a clean head shot, dead center. I heard later that his brother wasn’t too happy about it, but we were all quite impressed with the shot, and we proceeded to give Bill plenty of credit for it, along with an equal amount of shit about his brother quitting BUD/S.
As tense as our tests were, our instructors did not leave it to circumstances to apply the pressure. They found all kinds of creative and diabolical ways to tighten the screws. For example, you think you’re going to take your test eight hours from now, in the cool of the evening—and suddenly the instructors inform you that you’re taking it in fifteen minutes, right here at the blindingly hottest point of midday. Or you’re on the range, testing on movers and snaps—and you suddenly realize your moving target is tilted because it wasn’t put up all the way.
Tough. Deal with it. Adapt and overcome.
The more we learned, the more we practiced, the more we tested, the more grueling it got. All the while, our class size shrank as our classmates dropped away, one by one. Finally six weeks had gone by and it was time for our final test.
Before the test itself, the instructors sat each of us down for a brief conference, telling us what our grade was so far, where we were strong, and where we needed to focus to improve. I appreciated the fact that they did this. Unfortunately, that moral support stopped there. Once we got to the test itself, we found we had Dick Slattery as the test instructor. Slattery was a genuine asshole. Some of our instructors were harsh and strict, but we always knew they really wanted us to do well. For example, when Jordan, the outgoing master chief, was hard on us, it was clear that he was being hard on us for our benefit. Not Slattery. He treated us like dirt—especially the new guys, which included Glen and me. With Slattery, we never got the sense that he was tough on us for our sake. He just didn’t give a shit.
The test was again a combination of snaps and movers and unknown distance. Again, as a sniper team, we not only took every test together, we also combined our individual grades so that we were graded as a team, not as individuals. It’s a good thing, too: If not for that, one of us would have left the range and gone back home.
On the .300 Win Mag snaps and movers, we did well, both shooting into the 90s. Then we moved to the unknown distance.
I went first. We ranged the targets; then it was time for me to shoot. We had a time limit of twenty minutes for this part of the test, so we had to keep it moving along—but we started having some trouble. Glen was experiencing a little bit of difficulty reading the wind and putting me on the target. As the shooter, my job was to focus on making a good shot. As the spotter, it was up to Glen to control me with his instructions. “Okay, dial in X for your elevation,” he would say, “and hold X for wind,” and then I would take the shot while Glen watched closely to see the bullet’s vapor trail so
he could make any necessary adjustments for the next shot. In this case, the spotter was also responsible for keeping track of time, since we were on the clock.
We were on our third lane, with two more lanes to go, when I got an uneasy sense that we were running out of time. “Hey,” I said to Glen, “how much time do we have?”
“We’re okay,” he assured me. “Plenty of time.”
I let it go and put all my focus on the next target. Glen continued on, methodically evaluating the conditions so he could put me on the next shot—and suddenly Slattery called out, “Time!”
I stared at Glen. “What the hell?” I had eight bullets and two lanes’ worth of targets left. We were out of time.
Glen stared at his watch, devastated. “Dude, I don’t know what happened.”
Slattery just stood there grinning and laughing at us.
I was furious—not at Glen, because I knew there was no way he would have intentionally messed this up, but I was stunned. What the hell happened here? To this day, I don’t know what went wrong. Glen was keeping track on a bezel watch rather than a stopwatch and maybe put his bezel to the wrong number. Whatever it was, it had happened, and we were screwed. I had scored something like a 60.
Fortunately for us, we had hit every target we’d shot at, so we hadn’t dropped any rounds, and because we were combining our grades, we still had a chance. Now it was Glen’s turn to shoot and my turn to spot, which meant we were both about to play to our strengths.
“Okay, listen,” I said, “we have to get you a score of 95 or higher.”
That would net us a combined score that would squeak us by this test. It meant Glen could miss one shot, and only one shot. The rest would have to be perfect 100s. This was our last test before leaving the range and moving on to the stalking phase—if we did move on. If we didn’t score a 95 or higher on Glen’s shoot, then at least one of us would not be going on to the stalking phase. Glen might or might not be out, but I definitely would be history.
Meanwhile, Glen was still beating himself up.
“Dude,” I said, “we need to let this go. We need to clean this test. Let’s just do this thing.”
So we did. Ignoring Slattery’s jackass chuckling, we switched places and slid over to the next lane. I was like a machine, calling that wind. I put him on every shot, and he took every shot. We both put everything else out of our minds, climbed into that red circle, and put ourselves on the top of our game. Glen shot a 95. When they did the scoring, Glen had tied another guy, Mike Bearden, for the highest score of the day.
* * *
Just before we left Coalinga to move on to the stalking phase, we held a shoot-off to see who would win a brand-new shotgun that a manufacturer had donated. It came down to those two, Glen Doherty and Mike Bearden.
Mike, whom we called the Bear, was not only a crack shot, he was also a great guy, someone that everyone just naturally loved to be around. The Bear was paired up with a guy named Sam who had been in my BUD/S class, and who earned the nickname Happy. (Sam and I are good friends to this day, like two of Snow White’s seven dwarves: Happy and Dirty.)
It was a great contest. They used the .300 Win Mag, which shoots almost 1,000 feet per second faster than the .308 and has a much flatter trajectory. Glen and the Bear matched each other, shot for shot, right out to 1,000 yards. Finally, at the 1,000-yard mark, Glen missed the shot—and Mike hit it, edging out my partner by a hair and winning the shotgun. The Bear had triumphed. Of course, I was rooting for Glen, but I didn’t begrudge the Bear his win; he was just too damn likable not to feel good about it.
The way things turned out, I would always be especially glad that the Bear left Coalinga with that victory under his belt—but I’m getting ahead of myself.
* * *
Having cleared the hurdles of the shooting phase, we headed off to the Niland desert for the second half of the sniper course, the stalking phase. Now that we had all these skills on the gun, it was time to train us in the arts of camouflage and stealth so that we could with 100 percent consistency and reliability place ourselves in the necessary position to use those skills. It doesn’t matter how good a shot you are if you can’t get close enough to take the shot in the first place.
Once we got camped out and settled in, the instruction began, starting with classes on stealth and movement. We learned how to use natural vegetation to our advantage, especially in outfitting our ghillie suits.
The ghillie suit traces back to the Scottish Highlanders who served in the British Army in World War I as Lovat Scouts, forerunners of the modern sniper. Many of these men had been gamekeepers in civilian life, often called ghillies (from the Gaelic term for “youth” as they served as hunt guides for the wealthy); they had cultivated the art of weaving bits and pieces of local flora into their loose-fitting robes to help them blend into their surroundings. Their unique skills were later taught at the British Army sniper schools, which were attended by Americans once the United States entered the war.
For our ghillie suits we started out with a base outfit with a neutral desert pattern, then clipped on scraps of vegetation growing in our immediate environment. We also used scraps of burlap in different shades, which we learned to vary depending on the specific environment in which we’d be stalking. This sounds simple, but it is amazing to see the degree to which this art can be perfected. When you look at a photo of a Navy SEAL sniper in a ghillie suit out in his environment, it’s almost like those “hidden pictures” you may have pored over as a child: You look and look, and all you can see is trees and bushes. The sniper completely disappears.
They taught us how to make a veg fan, clipping branches from manzanita bushes or whatever happened to be around and zip-tying them together. We learned to hide behind this ad hoc camouflage as we would slowly rise up in the middle of the bushes, eyes just peeking over the top of the fan, using either our binos or the naked eye to peer through the veg clippings and get an idea of where our target was, then slowly melting back down again.
They taught us how to use what they called dead space, which proved to be one of our most important lessons. Imagine standing on the street, next to a car at the curb. If someone is looking in your direction from the sidewalk and you crouch down below the back of the car, suddenly you disappear. You’re using the dead space of the car to cover your signature. You can do the same thing with bushes, boulders, even a few feet of rising or sinking elevation, like a dirt mound or shallow ditch—anything you can put between you and your target.
The terrain in Niland didn’t provide much in the way of natural cover. It’s pretty flat, desolate scenery. But even there in that cracked-earth desert, you can find dead space if you look for it. There are tumbleweeds and other desert bushes, slight dips and rises in elevation, rocks here and there, even an occasional scraggly tree. Find even a little gully, and if you can slip down in there, you’ve got dead space.
They also taught us how to camouflage our rifles when setting up in our final firing position (FFP), and how to make sure we had cleared the muzzle by tamping down the firing area or using veg clippers to clip away vegetation surrounding the muzzle, so that when we took that shot, the pressure wave wouldn’t cause any movement in nearby trees or grass. The last thing you want to do is take a shot and have it create a big signature. Even if you are completely hidden and unseen when you take the shot, if someone whips around and looks to see where that sound came from and sees some grasses swaying or branches moving, he might make your position and nail you.
We also practiced building hide sites. We would dig into the ground, sometimes using mesh or chicken wire we’d brought with us, but mostly using whatever natural terrain we might find on-site. It was almost like becoming a burrowing animal. In the desert, especially, it provides not only cover but also a bit of relief from the intense heat. If you build it right, someone can be standing right next to you and never even realize you’re there. You might have four guys living in this thing for days on end, watching the ta
rget, radioing back to base until they give you authority to take the shot.
This skill would prove extremely useful in the mountains of Afghanistan, as I would discover before long.
* * *
Then we started practicing in stalking drills. To give you a sense of the experience, I’ll describe a stalking drill.
They take you out to some location out in the desert and say, “Okay, your target is roughly 2 to 4 kilometers in that direction. You’ve got two hours to get to within 180 to 220 yards of the target, set up, and take your shot.”
Off you go, crawling on your belly, you and your gun and your drag bag, which you’ve hooked to your belt at your crotch and now drag along behind you, inching along in the sweltering heat. A half hour goes by, then an hour. Some guys around you go to the bathroom in their ghillie suits. What else are they going to do? You can’t stand up, that’s for damn sure. You have to get within that range—and you aren’t allowed to use laser rangefinders, so you have to use your scope to measure your target and then figure out exactly what point you have to reach in order to be within about 200 yards.
Two instructors are waiting for you in the command tower, scouring the area with their high-powered binos, looking for you and communicating by radio with three or four walkers on the ground. The walkers are instructors who walk the field; they are not there to hunt you but to act essentially like robots, carrying out commands from the tower. If an instructor detects movement, he’ll radio the walker who is nearest to that spot and say, “Hey, Eric, I’ve got movement, I need you to run 20 meters to the right … Okay, stop, left face, now take three steps forward, stop. Stalker at your feet.” If that walker is standing right next to you, he says, “Roger that,” and you’re busted. You’ve failed the stalk.
