The SAS were to cover a large area of Western Iraq, between Highway 10 and the Saudi Arabian border, known as “Scud Alley.” The Delta teams were to cover an area northwest of Highway 10, known as “Scud Boulevard.” The Delta teams carried with them long-range 12.7mm (0.5in) Barrett anti-materiel sniper rifles, which could be used either to disable or destroy the “Scuds.”
After the Iraqi forces had been sent packing back towards Baghdad, suffering a disastrous “Falaise Gap” experience as Coalition aircrafts tore into their retreating columns, an uneasy peace settled over the region–Allied forces set up a watch and carried out aerial patrols. The stone in the shoe for the Allies was not just the incipient threat that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed in the region but also the unresolved issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
Iraq continued to suffer economic sanctions and UN weapons inspectors made several visits to corroborate the destruction of Iraqi WMDs. As there was no certainty that this was indeed the case, the United States and Britain became more inclined to intervene militarily.
BARRETT M82A1 RIFLE
Country of Origin United States
Caliber .50 cal (12.7mm/0.5in)
Overall length 1450mm (57in)
Barrel length 737mm (29in)
Weight 14kg (30.9lbs)
CHECHNYA, 1995
The Russians had learned some painful lessons in Afghanistan in the 1980s and went about reorganizing both their sniper-training program as well as developing their sniping rifle. Although the Dragunov was an excellent rifle in many ways, it was also somewhat cumbersome and a more compact version with a folding stock was produced for airborne troops, designated the SVDS. The Russian sniper course was extended to a year, including both infantry and specialist training in marksmanship and fieldcraft. The new regime was not before time because, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was to face another significant challenge in the shape of the Chechen uprisings.
In December 1991 the head of the All-National Congress of the Chechen People, Dzhokhar Dudayev, staged a coup and declared Chechnya to be independent. After a period of aggressively anti-Russian policies, Russian troops invaded Chechnya on December 11, 1994 and took over the capital of Grozny in 1995. There followed a battle of attrition involving snipers on both sides. The Chechen rebels were equipped with Dragunov SVD rifles and went out in search of Russian snipers. One of the means they used to get around was the Grozny drainage system, which sometimes enabled them to get behind the Russians.
Martin Pegler relates the story of what happened when the Russian sniper team, believing they had searched the drains, invited a local general to come forward and inspect the area. The general approached the entrance and, as he did so, a Chechen sniper somewhere in the depths of the drain network, shot him through the neck.
This incident underlined the fact that the Chechens knew their own territory and had the patience to wait for targets of opportunity while the Russians were still working on the principle of snipers as part and parcel of maneuver warfare. In open ground, the Chechens would often use a sniper along with a support team. Should the sniper draw fire, the support team would then open up and engage the opposition.
A Russian Special Forces sniper observes the area near the military commandant’s office in the Leninsky district of Grozny after an attack by unidentified gunmen on March 14, 2005. The presence of snipers could be a powerful deterrent.
Russian sniper rifles
In the operation by the Russian Federal Government to besiege Grozny in the Second Chechen War (1999–2000), a selection of sniper rifles were carried in assault detachments that carried a wide range of weapons, including Shmel infantry rocket flamethrowers and AGS-17 Kalashnikov assault rifles with GP-25 under-barrel grenade launchers. The snipers were armed with either Degtyaryov sniping rifles or Vintorez low-noise sniper rifles. The Russians encountered problems, however, in an urban environment at night due to the scarcity of night-vision optics and of night-vision telescopic sights for sniper rifles. There was also a lack of infra-red (IR) imagers. The Russians had some success with their 12.7mm (0.5in) V-94 semi-automatic sniper and anti-materiel rifle. Designed by the KBP instrument design bureau in Tula, this is a gas-operated, rotating-bolt semi-automatic rifle with a free-floating barrel. It is fitted with integral bipods and has both iron and telescopic sights. The later version of this rifle was known as the OSV-96. The advantage of the V-94 was that it could be used effectively as an anti-sniper weapon as its range was greater than that of the rebel sniper rifles. It was also quite effective against soft-skinned vehicles.
Vintorez special forces weapon
The Vintorez silenced sniper rifle was developed in the 1980s specifically for special operations personnel, including Spetsnaz units. The Vintorez was designed to penetrate most types of issue body armor and uses for this purpose a specially designed subsonic cartridge with a 9mm (0.35in) bullet in a 7.62mm (0.3in) case.
For a sniper rifle the Vintorez has a comparatively limited range at 300–400m (328–437 yards) but this is counter-balanced by its lethality. The range is not such an issue in an urban environment for which it was designed. The Vintorez is characterized by an integral silencer built around the barrel. The rifle carries a PSO-1 telescopic sight with 4x magnification but can also carry other sights, such as the PKS-07 collimated sight or PKN-03 night sight.
It is fitted with iron sights as a backup. It has a removable butt stock and can be easily transported in a briefcase. Part of the reason for the popularity of the Vintorez is that it can be used for either one-shot or automatic firing. It can be fitted with a twenty-round magazine for automatic roles. This means that a sniper using a Vintorez has a rapid-fire weapon incorporated within his sniper weapon for emergencies.
RUSSIAN SNIPER TACTICS
By the time of the Second Chechen War (1999–2000), the Russians had done more work in training and reorganizing their sniper teams. They returned with only two or three-man units, which included a sniper armed with a Dragunov SVD, a machinegunner and an RPG-gunner or a rifleman.
The Russians also deployed elite snipers in pairs who would take up positions in hours of darkness and set up ambushes. They would be accompanied by a support group who were at least 200m (219 yards) to the rear and 500m (547 yards) to the side. If the sniper got into trouble, the support group could normally be depended upon to provide enough covering fire for him to withdraw. If this should not be the case, the sniper could resort to calling in artillery on his position or using grenades. The priority was to evade capture at all costs. The Russian sniper carried a range of extra equipment with him, apart from his sniper rifle with telescopic sight, possibly including a machine pistol, a knife, entrenching tool, binoculars, radio, laser rangefinder and periscope.
A Georgian Army two-man sniper team take a break somewhere in South Ossetia, 2008. PSO-1 optical sight.
DRAGUNOV SVD
The Dragunov SVD is a semi-automatic sniper rifle designed by Evgeny Dragunov, which was accepted into Soviet service in 1963. For sniping duties, the rifle is supplied with special sniper cartridges. The rifle is also fitted with a detachable PSO-1 optical sight with 4x magnification. It has an effective range of 800m (875 yards). The Dragunov has proved to be an adaptable rifle that can be used by marksmen who do not have the specialist training of fully fledged snipers. The rifle can be used in automatic mode for shorter-range engagements when necessary.
Country of Origin Soviet Union
Caliber 7.62mm (0.3in)
Overall length 1225mm (48.5in)
Barrel length 547mm (21.5in)
Weight 4.39kg (9.67lbs)
The Russians also employed the 7.62mm (0.3in) SV-98 sniper rifle, developed by IZHMASH from a sporting rifle, the Record 300. It is a bolt-action rifle with a rotating bolt and a cold-hammer forged receiver and free-floating barrel. The rifle has both iron sights and a free-floating rail for a variety of telescopic sights, including the Russian PKS-07 7x magnification telescopic sight. It h
as an integral folding bipod. There was some criticism among military circles of the Russian-made telescopic sights as they had a tendency to become decalibrated when the rifle was carried about. On some occasions, foreign telescopic sights were used in preference, manufactured by Zeiss, Schmidt & Bender and others.
Apart from equipment shortages and failings, including a lack of night-vision optics, the Russians encountered a number of tactical difficulties due to the command structures and lack of interoperability and coordination between different units. This resulted in a number of friendly fire incidents during the operations in the Caucasus. Having learned from their mistakes, by the end of the operations in the Caucasus the Russians had acquired a wide range of expertise and were sought after as advisers to sniping units in other countries.
U.S. Army personnel of 10th Special Forces Group conduct training on the M24 7.62mm (0.3in) sniper rifle for a Georgian soldier (left) at a firing range on the Advance Operational Base (ABO) in support of Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP).
A sniper’s eye view of Sarajevo. As the city was ringed by hills, it provided the perfect context for the sniper to work. Snipers had clear fields of view down the long roads, such as the infamous “Sniper Alley,” or could pick civilians and soldiers off when crossing intersections.
THE BALKANS, 1992–95
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 brought back to Europe a nightmare that many had thought had been left behind in World War II. The complexity of the conflict was such that no one could really agree whether it was a war of aggression, with one state invading another, or a civil war. Whatever it was, it was thoroughly unpleasant, involving ethnic cleansing, internal displacement of populations, open warfare, and all of this was carried out often under the noses of impotent United Nations forces who were often humiliated or severely constrained by their rules of engagement. Once Bosnia had declared its independence in 1991, the Serbian population called upon the support of forces from neighboring Serbia, which had retained most of the military hardware of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. The Serbs besieged the city of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996 and it became the scene of many atrocities, not least the terror tactics practiced by Serb snipers who intimidated both the military and civilian population by firing on them from the hills around the city or from apartment blocks.
Snipers in Sarajevo
General Sir Michael Rose was in command of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia in 1994. He had commanded the SAS in the Falklands War and had also commanded the successful SAS hostage rescue at the Iranian Embassy in London. He now found himself in charge of one of the most challenging military missions of his life, for whereas the SAS had a characteristically decisive way of sorting out problems, in Bosnia his men had to keep their safety catches on and travel about in white-painted vehicles.
As he arrived in Sarajevo he was shocked by how a city of culture had been degraded into a place where death threatened at every moment. From the start of the war to his arrival about ten thousand people had been killed in the city, three thousand of them children. He talked to people hiding in bunkers to try to find out what was going on and suddenly understood what had happened to this place when he came across a sniper:
It was to be many weeks before I fully understood what they were saying. It happened when I saw a sniper carrying a Simonov rifle leave his position in a ruined block of flats. He was a good-looking boy, blond with blue eyes, in his late teens. But when he looked at me, his eyes were as dead as the small child he had almost certainly killed that day in a sniping attack on a Sarajevo street. It was not my war, but as a human being I was involved. I came to understand that this sniper represented as great a threat to civilization itself as he did to the citizens of Sarajevo. It took too long for the world outside to understand this simple fact, but at long last peacekeepers did come to the aid of the people of Sarajevo and Bosnia.
A sniper of the Serbian Volunteer Guard armed with a Kalashnikov AK47 rifle positioned behind a wall adjacent to the bridge across the river Drina prepares to fire at citizens of the town of Zvornik in Bosnia-Herzegovina, April 9, 1992. At least ten people were killed in Zvornik on this day.
A French United Nations soldier and a woman give first aid to a Bosnian soldier shot by a sniper on “Sniper Alley” in Sarajevo. The Bosnian soldier died seconds later. The French soldier wears body armor that would provide some protection from the Serb tactic of shooting rescuers.
Violent and unpleasant as war is, it is governed by certain laws. It is one thing for two opposing armies to use snipers in pursuit of their military aims; it is quite another for a combatant to target innocent civilians. If snipers are going to kill women and children on the street, there is probably only one way to deal with them–deploy military snipers to take them on.
URBAN COUNTER-SNIPING IN BOSNIA
The problem for counter-sniper operations in Bosnia was that it was difficult to locate the enemy snipers in the mix of urban and mountainous terrain and it was also difficult to avoid retaliation, which could make life even more uncomfortable for the unfortunate civilians.
Due to the covert nature of sniper movements, it is almost impossible to identify the presence of a sniper until he has fired and killed or wounded someone, at which point an experienced sniper will change location. He will also usually fire from within a room, if in an urban environment, thus providing no visible evidence of his presence and no visible trace such as a muzzle flash.
Experts have scratched their heads in an effort to resolve the problems posed by the skilled urban sniper and some technical advances have been made in creating equipment that can either detect the muzzle flash or the noise of a sniper rifle. Another technological development is equipment that can scan the trajectory of the bullet through heat imaging. The problem with these solutions is that they depend on the sniper acting first which means that the “solution” will not help the first victim. Another highly sophisticated system can detect the laser optics in the sniper’s telescopic sight. This is an ingenious solution that would enable the sniper to be intercepted before firing, but unfortunately it can easily be countered by placing a filter at the end of the telescopic sight
A French soldier armed with a McMillan Tac 50 sniper rifle on top of an armored vehicle, 24 June 1994. This was in response to three people being wounded and one killed at this Sarajevo intersection. The soldier is a potential target of a sniper hidden in buildings such as the ones behind him.
Among the various regiments that toured Bosnia, whether under UNPROFOR or NATO mandate, was the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. This regiment incorporated a sniper company. The 2nd Company of the 2e REP were specialized in mountain training and extreme weather conditions. The unit was equipped with a 12.7mm (0.5in) sniper rifle. The company was deployed in Bosnia and carried out ski patrols on Mount Igman.
Once NATO had intervened in Bosnia in an overtly fighting role, the snipers who thought they could continue firing in Sarajevo with impunity got a nasty shock. On January 9, 1996, a Bosnian Serb sniper shot a woman in Sarajevo and a French counter-sniper team immediately fired back at him. On February 1, 1996, a French counter-sniper team shot one sniper and captured another.
Security Council Resolution 1674 “On the protection of civilians in armed conflict” followed the Rwanda and Srebrenica disasters. Now “most multi-dimensional United Nations peacekeeping operations are … mandated by the Security Council to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” Chapter VII UN missions are authorized to use “all necessary means” to fulfill a particular mandate. “The use of force by a United Nations peacekeeping operation should always be calibrated in a precise, proportional and appropriate manner, within the principle of the minimum force necessary to achieve the desired effect.”
Sarajevo is situated in a long, narrow valley on the banks of the Miljack River. The river valley rises up to steep mountains and ridges that provide excellent cover for bo
th snipers and enemy artillery. This was the position occupied by the Bosnian Serb Army, while the Bosniacs occupied the city itself. The peoples of the former Yugoslavia, not unlike the Afghans, knew how to maximize their rugged local landscape to maintain defensive positions against invading armies. Yugoslav partisans under Marshal Tito had kept two German divisions busy during World War II.
Not only did the Bosnia Serb Army (BSA) use sniper rifles, it also used anti-aircraft artillery in an anti-personnel role, firing down into the city, often at unarmed civilians. Another weapon of choice for the BSA snipers was the medium-to-heavy machine gun. One of their favorite techniques was to bring down a civilian victim at random. They would then wait for rescuers to arrive, including ambulances and UN vehicles. They would then fire on the rescuers.
This may have been an armed conflict but this sort of behavior broke just about every law of armed conflict, including the Hague and Geneva conventions and rules of customary law. “Military commanders are required to direct their operations against military objectives exclusively and, to the extent practicable, to avoid causing casualties or damage to civilian persons or objects.” [Official UN report on the battle of Sarajevo.] The official UN report on the legality of the war in Sarajevo makes a particular point about snipers in the context of a discussion over collateral damage and casualties suffered by civilians:
Sniper in Action Page 15
