The most dangerous enemy snipers proved to be the insurgents who mimicked the Washington, D.C.-area snipers who terrorized our nation’s capital in 2002 by firing from the concealment of a car. Cruising the streets of Baghdad, Mosul and other towns, these mobile sniper teams sought G.I.s manning roadside checkpoints, fixed security posts and sitting in armored vehicle cupolas. As quickly as they fired, the insurgent riflemen disappeared into urban traffic. Some sniping vehicles carried extra license plates, phony taxi markings and secret compartments for stowing a sniper rifle. Insurgent Web sites boasted that quick reaction forces arrived too late to catch them.
Because al-Qaeda paid the gunmen up to $5,000 per kill, the mobile snipers documented their engagements on videotape, the spotter serving as both observer and videographer.
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This is a fantastic article, and kind of rare. The sniper guru talks about insurgent tactics and how we stopped them. If you would like to further expand your knowledge on how our guys did it, Plaster added a whole new chapter in his book dedicated to the current war. Not only is he famous for his books and lectures on sniping, but he is also a veteran of MACV SOG during the Vietnam War and certainly a living legend.
Why is this significant? To me, SOG was probably the most daring and most innovative unit to come out of the Vietnam War, and I put them right on par with the Selous Scouts. Both units had to be masters of their environment and of their task, because both had to operate behind enemy lines. They also had to operate in other countries, which made the advent of getting caught even more dangerous and extremely embarrassing to their home countries. I look at the Pakistan problem in today’s war as the same dilemma.
Al Qaeda has no problem exploiting the borders of sovereign nations, and that is how they are able to survive and grow. It is an aspect of this war that will most certainly have to be fought by covert warriors for a very long time, and in some very dangerous places.
But back to this article. Mr. Plaster mentioned one thing that caught my eye. Al Qaeda introduced free market warfare into their strategy, and the end result was some pretty dangerous and innovative sniper teams. Please note the quote up top. –Matt
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Winning the Sniper War in Iraq
A war within a war.
By Maj. John L. Plaster, USAR (Ret.)
As an American military convoy rumbled along a dusty street in Habbaniyah, Iraq, 50 miles west of Baghdad, a silver van eased to the curb. Preoccupied with operating their heavy trucks, the U.S. Marine drivers didn’t notice the van and its civilian occupants.
Fortunately the convoy was overwatched by guardian angels: a Marine sniper and his spotter atop a nearby roof. Alerted by his spotter, the Marine marksman shifted his 10X optic to the silver van—and discovered the driver videotaping the convoy while his passenger raised a scoped rifle! As one, the Marine sniper and his spotter fired, shooting dead the cameraman and his sniping partner. By itself this was a dramatic accomplishment, but there was more: Pried from the dead terrorist’s hands was a Marine-issue M40A3 sniper rifle—taken from a Marine sniper killed by insurgents in August 2005. It was now back where it belonged.
The Habbaniyah engagement was a limited but significant milestone in this unnoticed war-within-a-war, a quiet triumph of skill and courage, strategy and technology, which yielded a victory as great as that of British snipers who wrested domination of the World War I trenches from Germany’s snipers in 1915.
