Sniper teams

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by perardua

Our snipers normally operated as a Section when out in Afganistan, and they rotated sniping and spotting duties between themselves to give them all experience. All British snipers should have gone through the relevant course (whether Army, Royal Marines or RAF Regiment) and will generally then act as a spotter or sniper depending on the situation. In the bad old days the spotters weapon was an LSW, for the added range compared to a rifle, but now RAF Regiment sniper Sections go with a balanced range of weapons (four L85s, two L85/UGLs and two LMGs, though our sniper section commander preferred to take GPMGs due to the ranges he expected to work at) plus the four Long Range Rifles, and I imagine that the Army and Royal Marines are similar.

We also used quad bikes to enable our sniper Section to go off and do their own thing, which gave them a lot of autonomy to do OPs without having to be inserted by a patrolling Flight, especially with the addition of a trailer for a few days supplies.

I think in the t2k the sniper teams would perform a variety roles and would go off on their own at times instead of trying to get lost during a patrol. It would take unit to learn fast when enemy patrol goes by they leave an unexpected package. They would learn to attack these patrols regardless if they were delivering a team or not to an area...