Counter Marksman Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures
With current events being what they are, counter-marksman TTP’s have been on my mind a good deal.
The best way to learn to counter a marksman is to learn to be one yourself and gain experience where you can. By doing the job, you learn what to look for, essentially playing a game of “where would I be, what would I do, how would I do it?”
While this is a helpful way to get a quick idea of how to counter a marksman, it can also lead to mental traps and assumptions, so it is important to also have some doctrinal ways to counter an enemy marksman.
We’ll break this down into two sections:
A marksman's process and how to counter
Marksman denial
Thought process of a marksman, and how to counter
The most efficient way to start countering a marksman is to know the tradecraft of a marksman and use that knowledge to determine where an opposing marksman might be, what he might do, and how he might do it.
If you are like many and don't have the experience or training to acquire this knowledge, I will do my best to summarize it here, but it is a poor substitute for actual training and hands-on experience in a force-on-force scenario.
As a marksman who is looking to impact a target, or target area, you are looking for a few key features when picking a spot to observe and attack from.
Observation and fields of fire: You need to be able to see the objective and have a way to shoot at it.
Actions to counter: Prioritize your counter marksmen efforts on areas that are in line of sight of the area/person to protect
Cover and Concealment: You need your position to be camouflaged, and preferably with cover available that will stop return fire if you should receive it.
Actions to counter: While you should check obvious locations like rooftops and windows, experienced marksmen will likely pick areas with depth, shadow, and obfuscation. (Key note: don’t get sucked into what a “good” marksman would do and ignore what an unskilled one might do. The Trump and Charlie Kirk shootings are prime examples of incompetent marksmen being successful to some degree by employing poor tactics. When conducting counter-marksmen ops, don’t get sucked into one mode of thinking.
Obstacles: an obstacle can be natural or manmade, and functions to limit the movement of an opposing force. This can be something natural like a river or body of water, an open field, or a sharp incline or decline. It can also be man-made, such as a wall, fence, ditch, concertina wire, or booby traps and trip wires. Keep in mind, a marksman will most likely look to use existing obstacles.
Actions to counter: Be aware of obstacles in your vicinity, and think about how they limit your movement. If, for example, you have a river or stream near you, understand that a likely spot for a marksman to use is on the opposite side of that obstacle so that you can’t close in with him easily or quickly.
Key Terrain features: KTF’s are important physical locations, and can vary greatly depending on context. For example, a key terrain feature could be something like a main road, or important building, like a hospital. It could be the enemy’s strongest fighting position, or the garage they store their vehicles in. The marksman's position needs to be able to see and control key terrain features.
Actions to counter: Know your own key terrain features in your area. For example, if you have a guard post or tower in your control, understanding that it may be a target, or will at least be accounted for by a potential enemy marksmen will help you guess where they might be.
Avenues of approach: The marksmen will ideally have a protected avenue of approach to get in and out of position.
Actions to counter: Have awareness of your blind spots, where someone could maneuver into a position unseen. Usually this is in the form of a slope or hill, dense foliage, or building cover.
Timing: Timing an attack as a marksman is key to ensuring a successful engagement and ensuring your escape.
Dusk and Dawn: There is a reason “stand to” is conducted at dusk and dawn each day by units across the world. The shifting lighting and temperature conditions decrease the effectiveness of the human eye, night vision, and thermals, making an attack easier to pull off with surprise.
Actions to counter: increase alertness at dusk and dawn.
Contextually important times: The importance of time is entirely contextual upon the target’s patterns of life and vulnerabilities. As an example, when conducting key leader engagements in Iraq, if an enemy marksman was looking to target us, the key vulnerability would be the time between us parking our highly mobile and armored vehicles and when our key leaders made it indoors. This moment in time was when we were at our most vulnerable to an attack.
Actions to counter: Humans are creatures of habit. It is EXTREMELY hard to not form habits, and it takes conscious effort and planning to avoid patterns, but it is crucial in denying someone the ability to plan when it comes to exploiting your vulnerabilities. Constantly change how, when, and where you are doing things.
Tying it together.
Once you understand all of the factors above, you can start to put a picture together of where an enemy marksman might position themselves to attack you. While picking a location to defend, take these factors into account and minimize them as much as possible. There are likely very few ideal places to attack you from, so those places should be easier to identify and deny access to. If you find that you have many ideal places to attack you from, you would probably be better off finding a different place.
Semper Gumby, Always flexible:
Again, never fall into the mental trap of assuming an enemy marksman will pick the ideal spot to engage you from. The best marksmen will make due with a sub-par spot, and make up the difference with their own skill and experience. In the same breath, an inexperienced marksman will pick a subpar position, and then be ignored as all of the efforts go into countering the most likely positions.
Marksmen denial actions
So now that we have some understanding of what a marksmen is likely to do, and how we can counter those directly, we can talk about some actions that we can take to counter the threat, regardless of our understanding of marksmen tradecraft. Creativity is key throughout all of this. I am going to talk about the principles, and a few examples, but your creativity is your only limit.
Distractions:
Distraction is used to draw attention to something other than your protected area or persons.
Distractions are time-limited in their usefulness, so use them sparingly and only for your most vulnerable windows of time.
Some examples would be decoy convoys, loud and visible commotions, an obvious and heavily armed outpost or guard area that is physically distant from the area we want to protect and will draw attention to itself.
Divert and Deny:
If you can, manipulate your environment to divert a potential marksmen from having a vantage point to attack from, or just deny them completely.
Some examples would be burning down foliage, building walls or barriers to block line of sight, or finding other means to completely deny them access to your protected area or persons.
Patrols:
Sending out patrols on an irregular basis is a very powerful way to keep someone from feeling safe infiltrating your area to take a shot. If you establish a regular patrol schedule, it becomes fairly easy to predict and work around. By keeping them irregular in start time, and duration, you deny the enemy a predictable path of ingress, egress, and positioning
Passive early warning systems:
These can be as complex as a camera and motion sensor system, or as rudimentary as trip flares or bells. The benefit is that they are passive systems that require little maintenance and upkeep. The downside is they can be triggered by animals and natural elements, and will still require a response.
This is by no means an all-inclusive or all-encompassing article on how to counter an opposing marksman. This is just scratching the surface. In my opinion, the best way to increase your ability to learn how to counter a marksman is to learn how to be one yourself, and you will not achieve that by reading on the internet. If you are looking for a course to take, I HIGHLY recommend the Designated Marksmen-TUSC course from Direct Action Resource Center. It is by far the most relevant course to this topic, and is based in the context of a civilian’s use-case
The struggle between Marksmen and Counter-marksmen is a never-ending arms race. Sometimes, no matter what, you will lose that race, but hopefully, this gives you some tools to put in the tool bag that may give you a leg up.
