An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir May / June 2023 www.military.ie/magazine C ongratulations to Cpl Colin McQuaid, Cpl Kyle Erasmus and Cpl Mark Fitzpatrick who represented the Defence Forces in the 2023 USISC in Fort Benning recently. Here we speak to Colin & Mark about the competition and being a sniper in the DF. Can you explain what your roles were within the team for this competition? Colin: The team for the Fort Benning competition was made-up of a Team Leader (TL) which was myself, a spotter (Cpl Fitzpatrick) and a sniper (Cpl Erasmus). TL is a fairly recent position developed by the US Army to meet the demands of their overseas deployments. It provides the opportunity for a more senior sniper to bring his/ her experience to the team and spreads the workload and increases effectiveness of a sniper team as a whole and the extra rifle provides a vast increase in survivability for the team. The old saying is two heads are better than one, and in the world of sniping three is better than two. As TL I had several responsibilities, including but not limited to command-and-control, target identification and prioritisation, ensuring that each team member understood the mission and their responsibilities, also team security as I carried the only assault rifle on the team. Mark: My role in the team was Spotter. I was mainly responsible for observation and the actions of the Sniper thus providing him with accurate information from target description to range calls, wind data and atmospherics. I was also responsible for navigation, team administration and other tasks. Colin you were the team leader for this competition - how challenging was this role for you? Colin: This was a very challenging role as I had a lot of different responsibilities, not only was I responsible for my own performance but also the performance of the team as a whole. As TL my team was looking to me to provide direction and motivation to keep the team engaged, luckily this was not an issue at all as my teammates were highly motivated from the beginning and maintained a high level of professionalism throughout. The competition involved a high level of mental and physical stress and as TL I needed the ability to step back and overlook the team's performance and adjust as needed even if I was tired and hurting myself. Not being used to the terrain and borrowed equipment from the US Army we had to think outside of the box to stay competitive. What event did you guys enjoy the most and why? Colin: The event I enjoyed the most was the stalk as my TL skills were truly tested during this tasking. I had to receive the mission brief, maps coordinates, targets, boundaries etc from the US Army cadre staff at approximately 03:00hrs on the Monday morning of the competition. After briefing my team about our mission and ensuring that they knew it inside out, I had to then ensure that we had the correct kit and equipment necessary and that camouflage was appropriate for the terrain, I also designated responsibilities to each team member regarding navigation, security, actions-on for various scenarios and for locating our final firing position. Even though it was my responsibility to locate the final firing position the position itself was actually found by my spotter Cpl Fitzpatrick. A TL needs to be open to receiving information from the team and acting upon it accordingly, not just telling people what to do. Another relevant challenge to the stalk and something that has become more apparent during the war in Ukraine is the ability to remain undetected from aerial surveillance. The US Army was using drones with infrared cameras to locate sniper teams, an aid that maximized the observation posts ability to detect sniper teams. Through teamwork and tenacity we were able to score 90% pass on this stalk where US ARMY INTERNATIONAL SNIPER COMPETITION INTERVIEW BY SGT JOHN ROSSITER PHOTOS BY CPL COLIN MCQUAID L-R Cpl Fitzpatrick, Cpl Erasmus, Cpl McQuaid Cpl McQuaid rehearsing his drills Receiving a briefing from the US cadre staff

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