Modern American Snipers (14 page)

While SEALs have formally existed since the '60s, the internal sniper program wasn't developed for some time after that. A former SEAL sniper instructor with an expansive knowledge of the program explained, “It wasn't until '86 or so that the SEALs developed their own course. Before that, most of the guys were sent to the Marine Scout Sniper Course, and a few were sent to the Army's.”

Even after the introduction of the SEAL program, the esteemed USMC Scout Sniper Basic Course (SSBC) remained the preferred destination for most. As aspiring SEAL Team Six snipers in the early '90s, Howard Wasdin and Homer Nearpass were given their choices of three schools: the SEAL sniper school, USMC Scout Sniper Course, or the Army's SOTIC (Special Operations Target Interdiction Course).

Due to its long history, tradition, and prestige, they both elected to train at the USMC program, a near-unanimous choice among new DEVGRU snipers at the time. In fact, the Red Squadron's sniper team room sports an autographed poster of Carlos Hathcock to this day.

Wasdin vividly recalled his time at the Marine Corps Scout Sniper Course nearly a quarter of a century after the fact. He said, “When I went through, the SEAL sniper program was still considered … well, let's say when I talked to my SEAL buddies who had been to sniper school, every single one of them had chosen to go to Marine Corps sniper school. Back then they were saying, ‘Hey, you can go through [SOTIC or the SEAL training], or you can
chance
it and go to Quantico.'

“At that time, the reason it was so vaunted was because of the just nut-dragging stalks you had to do there. Quantico in the summertime is like hell on earth. It's hot, you've got to do those stalks in full ghillie suits, and you have a minimum number you've got to pass. I had a buddy who went to Quantico and he'd write us a letter every week: ‘Hey man, don't know if I chose the right school or not, but I haven't busted my ass like this since BUD/S.'”

The U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course received a much-needed overhaul beginning in 2003. After returning from a combat deployment as a SEAL sniper for Team Three under Task Force K-Bar in Afghanistan, Brandon Webb joined NSWG-1 Training Detachment (TRADET) as an instructor at the West Coast TRADET Sniper Cell.

There he already started rethinking the approach to sniper training when he and fellow TRADET instructor and SEAL sniper Eric Davis were invited to join a pair of decorated DEVGRU snipers in a total redesign of the basic SEAL Sniper Course. A short while later, both men were recruited to join full-time and Webb would eventually be promoted to Course Manager.

The refreshed U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course was exacting and extensive. At thirteen weeks, it was almost twice as long as the U.S. Army Sniper School and weeks longer than either SOTIC or USMC SSBC.

While based very much on the template laid out by the Scout Sniper Basic Course, the SEAL program was also designed to be more intuitive, applicable, and modernized. Historical holdovers were rethought or discarded and a major emphasis was made to incorporate any and all relevant emerging technologies that might provide its students a critical edge on the battlefield.

The use of advanced photographic and ballistic software was dissected and perfected, new weapons systems and attachments were integrated, and the students were now expected to master the science that determines how a bullet gets from point A to point B when traveling hundreds, if not thousands, of yards.

And the Marine course wasn't the only model that inspired its design. Leading foreign programs also served as inspiration, as did the training methods of world-class athletes, leading to the development of progressive mental heuristic and observation methodologies.

USMC Scout Sniper Basic Course graduate Wasdin is a believer. “People like Brandon brought it to the next level. The way the SEAL sniper program is now—their program with different weapons and different targets—that's cutting edge.”

*   *   *

One of the key developments that differentiates modern SEAL sniper training from other top schools is the emphasis on learning to effectively operate as an independent smart shooter. That is, they are no longer reliant on working as part of a traditional two-man shooter/spotter pair. This not only doubles up the number of guns in the field at any given moment—allowing the small SEAL community to get the most out of their limited number of snipers—it also makes for a more capable, more well-rounded marksman.

“We do this because we started looking at real-world case studies and the way we were employing our snipers,” Webb said. “We went, ‘Wait a minute—if our guys are being employed in a helicopter as a sniper overwatch, or they're a single sniper overwatch on an assault element that's going into a village, why aren't we focusing more on making sure we're training them to that standard?'”

The snipers are taught to understand the fundamentals of ballistics, allowing them to quickly self-evaluate and zero in on the target in short order.

Webb said, “Without a spotter, that's what you need—you need somebody who can do it themselves. You don't have the luxury of having some guy on a spotting scope saying, ‘Oh man, you're ten minutes high,' and give them those corrections. Let's say we're in Iraq and you're shooting someone at close range. You shot and you missed. If you didn't see it impact on the scope, you know you're high. And if the wind isn't a factor, you know you have an elevation problem. Now you need to dial down the correct amount of minutes and you need to do it really quickly and get on target.”

This addition also prevented a strong spotter from dragging along a weaker student with whom he was paired. In the Marine and Army courses, shooter/spotters share a grade. This was formerly true with the SEALs as well.

“If you can make a good shot, great, but being a sniper is such a big responsibility and so much more than being able to break a clean shot,” Webb said, “If shit goes wrong, you need someone who can figure it out real quick.”

*   *   *

Another major change to the U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course was the inclusion of its mentor program. It's not that the old sniper course wasn't difficult—in fact, its attrition rates were painfully high. However, the redesigned course was made even more challenging, and yet a much higher percentage of students successfully passed due to a modification in the way they were instructed.

Davis, one of the key architects behind the modernization of the course, explained, “A lot of guys who were already SEALs were failing out. One of the core things we did to address that was instead of just having them go through the course as students, we assigned them individual mentors. At any given sniper course, I would have three or four who were my students. I would watch their test scores, talk with them individually, and debrief them. It was my responsibility for them to succeed.”

One of Eric Davis's very first students—a student who would be among the first SEALs trained to this next-generation sniper standard—was Chris Kyle.

Webb singled out Davis for his teaching prowess—an instructor capable of both transfixing pupils with illuminating lectures and dazzling them with prodigious feats of learned memory.

Davis and Kyle came to the Teams hailing from considerably different backgrounds and were naturally drawn to contrasting aspects of SEAL operations. But as a mentor-prot
é
g
é
pairing, they made a tremendous team.

Davis was as Californian as Kyle was Texan. He grew up in the Bay Area where his father was a sheriff in San Mateo County. His father's father was a special agent for the FBI, and his father's father's father was a lawman, too.

Becoming a SEAL seems like a natural extension of that impressive family tradition. But whatever his bloodlines may have predicted, Eric simply describes himself as the fan who grew up to live out his boyhood dreams. Tales of superheroes, secret agents, and special operators fueled his childhood. And even after experiencing the hardships and dark realities generally scrubbed from the comics and movies, Eric feels he's that same fan to this day, just a few decades older and wiser.

Now Kyle, he just was. He was born to be the guy those stories were stories about.

Davis was immediately impressed with his new student. He also quickly recognized their dialogue could go in both directions. “He didn't hold anything back—he told it how it was. But he was able to do that in a very Texan way where you actually wanted to hear it. When a lot of other people speak their mind, it's generally an idiotic thing to do. Frankly, most people's opinion is crap and you don't want to hear it. But not with Chris—it was more than an opinion. He wouldn't speak it if he didn't believe in it and it wasn't grounded in something. Now that doesn't mean he was perfect. He wasn't. But it meant there was something to it.”

The former SEAL sniper continued, “You know how he had that swagger but was still humble? Well, there's two things—there's arrogance and there's confidence. Arrogance is someone walking around who has all the answers but they have nothing in their experience to back it up. Now someone who is confident, there's a big, big difference. They are going to seem down to earth and still able to tell you how it is, because they are not speaking to produce a peacock effect; they are not posturing. They are speaking because they truly want to help you. They are speaking out of love—not out of some sort of obligation.”

*   *   *

Another former SEAL sniper instructor said, “SEAL snipers do things a bit differently—Nightforce Optics and all that. But the main thing is the training—it's ultrahard. We had some Army guys come over and they said this is just crazy. At one point the hours were so intense that we were doing 97-93-91 for the first three weeks of training.

“With the new curriculum—'05, '06, '07—around then we had the best guys to have ever come through here. We had the money to train them and they had the talent and motivation to take advantage. These guys were so well trained, once they were sent overseas, they just crushed it.”

By all accounts, U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course
is
hard, but it's a different kind of hard than BUD/S. It's more analogous to Green Team, the pressure cooker in which experienced SEALs screen for admission into DEVGRU. It's not simply a matter of pushing your mind and body to the limit and not giving in. You either meet the standard or you don't.

“If you send three guys in a platoon to sniper school, you are only expecting one or two of them to pass,” Davis said. “Guys have said they'd rather do BUD/S again than this. Here's the thing with sniper school: BUD/S you can try your hardest and for most people that will work. Now with sniper school, you can try as hard as you want not to get caught, but if you're not figuring it out, you're going to get caught.

“You can't ‘try' a bullet into a bullseye. There's no way to just really want a bullet to go where it needs to go.”

There's a skill set and a certain set of scientific realities that must be met for a bullet to hit its mark. One needs to either know them academically and be capable of repeating them or somehow embody them as part of his intuition.

Davis explained, “You're working under a certain set of mechanisms that are indifferent to how much you want something.
And that is a son of a bitch
. It's much like life. Life does not care that you need to make $100,000 a year. It does not care if your baby is sick and you can't pay the hospital bills. Life does not care. And that's why sniper training, if understood and applied correctly, is the ultimate formula for success in life.”

*   *   *

The U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course takes approximately three months to complete. It opens with two weeks of training that might catch prospective snipers off guard as they learn to pull the trigger on a different kind of shot.

“Believe it or not, sniper school starts off with a digital photography class,” said Davis. “The first thing we teach them to do is use these twenty-five-thousand-dollar camera kits. I used to take the cameras to the zoo with my family and people thought I worked for National Geographic. It's the absolute best equipment you can get your hands on.”

The primary job for a sniper is recon and surveillance. They are the eyes and ears. In the first phase the prospective snipers learn to camouflage a camera, take pictures through items, touch up the photos, and condense and transmit them via satellite or radio.

Following the comms and digital photo phase, SEAL snipers-in-training transition to the month-long scout phase. Here they do four weeks of stalking under direct observation. The students attempt to crawl eight hundred yards or more unseen on their bellies to the location of two highly trained sniper instructors who have years of experience spotting even the slightest sign of movement.

“There's something called a strategic checklist, which is like what a pilot uses,” Davis said. “And if you don't have the mental fortitude and discipline to be continually going over your checklist and hold all the items in your head, you'll fail. And you know the deal—you start off for an hour, and you tell yourself, ‘Okay, check your camouflage. Before you move make sure you're not getting shadows on your face. Make sure your background matches. Make sure your foreground matches. Make sure you're moving directly at the target instead of laterally.' All of these things. But then you get tired and that stuff starts to go away. ‘Crap, I've just got to move,' and that's when you get busted. So there's an incredible amount of discipline required along with the ability to execute a strategy over and over again that goes into stalking.”

Initially, students must sneak up and take an identifiable picture of the instructors' faces without being caught. Once the picture is taken, a “walker” will point out their exact location. They must be so perfectly blended into the environment as to remain invisible from the instructors' vantage point.