Sniper teams

[Eddie]

What's more important to you? Three two man teams that get killed because they can't secure themselves, or one six-man element that gets spotted every now and then but comes home after the mission is complete?

That's what the brass had to look at. Although, I've not heard of a six man team going out on a regular basis. Normally, it's the three man team, occassionally an entire section will go out (10-men).

It's based more on the security level in the AO and the necessary amount of coverage needed by the element the snipers are supporting.

As to recce team size, every nation is different. Our standard scout team size is six men (and I think the Marines follow that standard as well). LRS units have 6-8 depending on LRSD or LRSC. This excludes SOF, of course. Certain SOF elements go out in as little as one or two men up to whatever is needed.

[HorseSoldier]

six man teams are for a different mission (or at least a different style of sniping) and for operations in urban terrain where you are guaranteed to be detected, at least by civilians (whose loyalties are variable) if not by the bad guys. a lot of sniper work intheater these days is not about sneaing in and shooting one guy and leaving, it's about owning a good position and interdicting any bad guys trying to run theougj the engagement area.

[Adm.Lee]

I once found a RAND study of LRRP operations in Vietnam (it blew my mind that I would just find it sitting on the shelf of my small callege library). It found that 6 was just about the optimum number of a team. I immediately thought that would work out great for RPGs. Of course, that was for jungle reconnaissance, which didn't mean sniping very often. That number allowed them enough manpower to set watches and ambushes, while being able to watch all around them.

The 6-person model works rather well if you swap in a light MG's 2-man crew for the sniper pair, as well.

Now that I think on it, I've almost never had anyone play the spotter in a game. Usually, someone will want the sniper rifle, but they rarely set up to do anything special with it.

[jester]

The size of the team will be dictated by:

Mission
Enviroment
Target
Resources Available

Those are all factors. As was said about urban, the traditional "hide" doesn't exist, so you need folks to secure your six and flanks, as well as relay info of what is going on.

Remember, a mission of a sniper is not just to shoot, but to know when to shoot and when not to shoot. Do you shoot and let them know you are there, disperse them, but hey, you took out 1 guy, or observe and report it to higher HQ who can send in a platoon and nail all of them? And then do it again and again as you have eyes on one of their "routes."

Back in the day, we also used the man portable radar as well, and those took a team larger than the sniper team. Same when we introduced the .50 cal sniper rifle, the team increased to three or four men as well.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by jester

The size of the team will be dictated by:

Mission
Enviroment
Target
Resources Available

Those are all factors. As was said about urban, the traditional "hide" doesn't exist, so you need folks to secure your six and flanks, as well as relay info of what is going on.

Or doctrinally, METT-TC and ASCOPE which sums up all of those factors and a couple more. Another factor to consider is, if your teams start growing in size, the commander should wargame putting out multiple teams and cutting up the battlespace. So many variables come under the purview of commander's choice though that it's really not something that can be easily codified. That's more where we get into the art of war vice the science of it.

You have your doctrine of how you want to fight, you have your mission analysis of what and where you're going to fight, and you have your plan of how you're going to make those meet and execute the fight.

And then you hope things look somewhat like what you pictured. :\

[Webstral]

Bloat certainly happens. I think the place to worry about it, though, is in the staff and services areas. Company, battalion, and brigade staffs are like gas giants—drawing in troops who would be better used somewhere else. Freeing soldiers from the gravity well of staffs requires some real effort. The US Army has slimmed down the support tail vis-Ã*-vis the combat teeth a bit with the modular reorganization, which is a step in the right direction.

As for the sniper teams, the six-man team makes me think of a guy who went to Iraq with me. He had just come from a LRS unit with the 101st. He may have been with us for four months before we were mobilized for OIF3. When I was active duty in the 90’s, LRS was strictly surveillance—at least according to doctrine. My new compatriot told that at least in the 101st the role was changing. LRS was supposed to attack targets of opportunity and perform other non-surveillance actions. The thinking for this goes to flexibility, I believe. Six men striking from the shadows can do some things that might not otherwise be possible so economically. Of course, there are counterarguments for keeping LRS confined to surveillance missions. A six-man sniper team has a bigger footprint but more options, it seems to me.


Webstral

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Bloat certainly happens. I think the place to worry about it, though, is in the staff and services areas.

Joe Haldeman has a good example of this in the Forever War. Mandella was meeting some of his new troops in an auditorium:

Officer: "My name is Lieutenant Hilleboe and I am your Second Field Officer."

Mandella, thinking: That used to be "Field First Sergeant." A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Bloat certainly happens. I think the place to worry about it, though, is in the staff and services areas. Company, battalion, and brigade staffs are like gas giants—drawing in troops who would be better used somewhere else. Freeing soldiers from the gravity well of staffs requires some real effort. The US Army has slimmed down the support tail vis-Ã*-vis the combat teeth a bit with the modular reorganization, which is a step in the right direction.

Agreed. Thankfully, units are deploying frequently enough that guys are stepping on their peckers upon redeployment and keeping the BN and BDE coffers with a ready supply for the staffs.

As for the sniper teams, the six-man team makes me think of a guy who went to Iraq with me. He had just come from a LRS unit with the 101st. He may have been with us for four months before we were mobilized for OIF3. When I was active duty in the 90’s, LRS was strictly surveillance—at least according to doctrine. My new compatriot told that at least in the 101st the role was changing. LRS was supposed to attack targets of opportunity and perform other non-surveillance actions. The thinking for this goes to flexibility, I believe. Six men striking from the shadows can do some things that might not otherwise be possible so economically. Of course, there are counterarguments for keeping LRS confined to surveillance missions. A six-man sniper team has a bigger footprint but more options, it seems to me.

I don't think it's widespread throughout LRS units but it's definitely not unbelievable, especially with all the emphasis that the Career Course put on doctrinal use of them. RRD has been executing that since their first few weeks in A-stan and I'm pretty sure that's the precedent to argue for that.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

I once found a RAND study of LRRP operations in Vietnam (it blew my mind that I would just find it sitting on the shelf of my small callege library). It found that 6 was just about the optimum number of a team. I immediately thought that would work out great for RPGs. Of course, that was for jungle reconnaissance, which didn't mean sniping very often. That number allowed them enough manpower to set watches and ambushes, while being able to watch all around them.

When it comes to recon, six seems to be the magic number. Vietnam LRRP teams usually went out into the bush in 6-man elements, SOG recon teams 4-6, and SEAL teams around 7. Rhodesian Selous scouts also usually went out in in teams of 5-6 but frequently operated in pairs.

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Now that I think on it, I've almost never had anyone play the spotter in a game. Usually, someone will want the sniper rifle, but they rarely set up to do anything special with it.

The Hollywood of it is snipers are cool, but in reality the spotter needs to be at least as skilled a shooter, since besides target detection he's also the one making wind calls and the other real technical aspects of sniping. (Or as one SOTIC instructor in my old unit put it, you can teach ani chimp to pull the trigger in a week, competent spotters are much, much harder to train.)

In game terms for long range work, the shot should really be based on a blend of shooter and spotter's skill levels, probably weighted 2/3 spotter 1/3 shooter.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

The Hollywood of it is snipers are cool, but in reality the spotter needs to be at least as skilled a shooter, since besides target detection he's also the one making wind calls and the other real technical aspects of sniping. (Or as one SOTIC instructor in my old unit put it, you can teach ani chimp to pull the trigger in a week, competent spotters are much, much harder to train.)

This is it exactly. The Spotter is the more senior and experienced member of the team.

[waiting4something]

Originally Posted by Eddie

This is it exactly. The Spotter is the more senior and experienced member of the team.

When I was in military, the sniper was the senior member that had gone though and passed scout sniper school. The spotter was the junior guy that a lot of times had not gone through or completed the school and was just a referred to as a scout or PIG( precision instructed gunman). But this was also before they got big into urban sniping and hanging out in larger teams. Has it really changed that much?

[copeab]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

When I was in military, the sniper was the senior member that had gone though and passed scout sniper school. The spotter was the junior guy that a lot of times had not gone through or completed the school and was just a referred to as a scout or PIG( precision instructed gunman). But this was also before they got big into urban sniping and hanging out in larger teams. Has it really changed that much?

The show I was watching said that the team leader was either the sniper or the spotter, which suggests it varies by team.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

When I was in military, the sniper was the senior member that had gone though and passed scout sniper school. The spotter was the junior guy that a lot of times had not gone through or completed the school and was just a referred to as a scout or PIG( precision instructed gunman). But this was also before they got big into urban sniping and hanging out in larger teams. Has it really changed that much?

You were a Marine though, right? I think that might be one of the differences between us and them. I went to Army Sniper School in '97. My understanding was that was how our teams were set up since their inception, but at least long enough before I went to have been the accepted norm. Our spotters are the team leader because they have more experience to spot the rounds in varying conditions, make the calculations/corrections, and generally have better situational awareness with the shooter's eye glued to his optic.

[Mock26]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

The Hollywood of it is snipers are cool, but in reality the spotter needs to be at least as skilled a shooter, since besides target detection he's also the one making wind calls and the other real technical aspects of sniping. (Or as one SOTIC instructor in my old unit put it, you can teach ani chimp to pull the trigger in a week, competent spotters are much, much harder to train.)

I once saw a program about snipers and they were going over training for (if I remember correctly) British snipers. Part of that training included spotting 20 or so ordinary objects placed at varying distances, things like a spoon or a candy wrapper and such.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Mock26

I once saw a program about snipers and they were going over training for (if I remember correctly) British snipers. Part of that training included spotting 20 or so ordinary objects placed at varying distances, things like a spoon or a candy wrapper and such.

It's KIM training. Keep-In-Memory. You identify objects through binos and then you go do other stuff and 20 minutes, 2 hours, or some other designated timespan, then you report what you saw. Scouts do similar.

[perardua]

We know it as Kim's Game, from the Rudyard Kipling novel Kim where the main character plays it as part of his training. Most soldiers do it during basic training as part of the lessons on judging distances and general observation, but anyone in a job like sniping or recce will do it a lot more.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

I once found a RAND study of LRRP operations in Vietnam (it blew my mind that I would just find it sitting on the shelf of my small callege library). It found that 6 was just about the optimum number of a team. I immediately thought that would work out great for RPGs. Of course, that was for jungle reconnaissance, which didn't mean sniping very often. That number allowed them enough manpower to set watches and ambushes, while being able to watch all around them.

The 6-person model works rather well if you swap in a light MG's 2-man crew for the sniper pair, as well.

Now that I think on it, I've almost never had anyone play the spotter in a game. Usually, someone will want the sniper rifle, but they rarely set up to do anything special with it.

Back to scout teams, you don't really want to integrate a sniper team into your scout team if you have the choice. Or a machinegun team. That's not the purpose of a scout team.

If you make contact as a scout, you don't want to do the Navy SEAL thing and just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot...well, you get the drift. You want to break contact and put terrain between you and the people shooting at you. Call in arty or mortars. Maybe some CCA. That was how we did it back in my enlisted days. Whatever it is, you want to shoot other peoples' bullets first, though.

For team makeup, you want a Team Leader, an Assistant team leader, an RTO, a Senior Observer and then two other observers. In all truthfulness though, the observers could really be renamed security. That's the role they normally fill.

Your heaviest weapons should be grenade launchers. Anything else, and you just weigh yourself down and make it harder to break contact.

Caveat: This is for infantry scouts. Cav Scouts do their own thing and I don't profess to fathom or agree/disagree with it.