Is a Designated Marksman a Sniper?

The Difference between a Rifleman, Sniper and Advanced Marksmen

Dec 29, 2008

Since 2000, when the US borrowed Warsaw pact combat doctrine for squad level marksmen, the line between these men and snipers has blurred.

Rifleman

By the early 1990s all US Army soldiers received 12-days of Basic Rifle Marksmanship instruction with the standard M-16/M-4 weapons system. This included engaging targets with open sights at ranges of 300m and closer. The M-16 had a maximum effective range of some 600m, especially with match ammunition although regular soldiers were not trained to fire to the longer distances. However the individual rifle squad in the field was often lacking the support of a long range sniper team, which handicapped them engaging targets with rifle fire more than 300m away.

Sniper

The United States Army has had a long tradition of sniping and snipers. Entire units of sharpshooters were founded in the American War of Independence (Rogers Rangers) and the US Civil War (Berdan’s Sharpshooters). By the time of the Vietnamese war dedicated sniper schools trained picked and specially equipped men to become detached snipers. These snipers were held at the battalion level and higher and trained to stalk and engage high-value targets on the battlefield with optically scoped precision weapons. These men still exist in three-man dedicated teams assigned to a sniper platoon and are trained to engage targets out to 1000m with bolt action rifles and beyond 2000m with specialized 12.7mm (50 caliber) weapons.

Designated Advanced Marksman

What was needed was a squad level designated advanced marksman who would act in the "marksmanship gap" zone from the 300m top out of the standard rifleman up to the lower operational envelope of the dedicated sniper teams who would take care of long range sniping out past 600m. These men were not true 'snipers' in the meaning of they did not freely roam detached from their unit stalking targets but instead were embedded inside a regular rifle squad and supported that unit exclusively. These squad level marksmen would engage targets of opportunity, particularly those at distances that the regular solider with iron sights and the standard weapon would have difficulty with.

Long standing Warsaw Pact doctrine dating from as far back as the 1950s has held that platoon-level and in some cases even squadron level marksmen are a tenant of battlefield control. Original Warsaw Pact platoon marksmen were issued the famous Mosin 91/30 that in the hands of Red Army snipers took thousands of Nazi lives on the Eastern Front in WWII. The Mosin was phased out by the SVD Dragunov rifle. These weapons allowed Warsaw Pact troops an engagement envelope from the standard 300m that the AK-47/AK-74 was effective to a maximum of 800-1000m that the Mosin's and SVD could reach out to. The Chinese PRC military also produced the SVD as the NDM-86/Type 79 rifle and used it in the same way in its military. The Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi Army and paramilitary Bath militia followed Warsaw Pact battle doctrine used platoon and squad level marksmen armed with an indigenously produced 7.62x39mm version of the SVD known as the Tabuk rifle. The Tabuk was often equipped with a Romanian PSL 4 power scope and it has been encountered often with insurgent forces in that region. Israeli Defense Forces fielded marksmen attached to squads in the late 1990s termed kaala saar (squad snipers) armed with a scoped M16A2E3 rifle.

The United States Army began its Squad Designated Marksman (SDM) program in 2000 after combat experience in Somalia and in peacekeeping efforts in the former Yugoslavia. With the subsequent GWOT and operations in Iraq, Kuwait and the Horn of Africa US efforts to field effective squad-level marksmen in both the Army and later in the Marine Corps in its Squad Advanced Marksman (SAM) program increased.

Sources

Johnson, Tyson Andrew Major US Army, The USAMU Squad Designated Marksman's Course Training Notes July-August 2008 issue of Infantry magazine (pgs 47-51).

Civilian Instructors to Support Army Marksmanship Training May 2005 issue of The First Shot Journal of the CMP

Halberstadt, Hans, Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper McMillian 2008

The copyright of the article Is a Designated Marksman a Sniper? in Modern War is owned by Christopher Eger. Permission to republish Is a Designated Marksman a Sniper? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.