Ultimate Sniper author John Plaster speaks out on the daring SEAL sniper rescue on the high seas

By now, everyone knows the dramatic details of the resolution to the piracy episode off the coast of Somalia. Three hostage takers, three rifle shots from U.S. Navy SEAL snipers, one American back in safe hands. (See “How SEALs Carried Out Their Mission” here.)

We asked Major John Plaster, U.S. Army Special Forces (ret) and the author of The Ultimate Sniper, The History of Sniping and Sharpshooting, and the upcoming Sharpshooting in the Civil War (June 2009), for his observations about the episode, and this is his response:

The perfectly executed SEAL sniper rescue of Captain Richard Phillips should come as no surprise to anyone who has observed these superb marksmen shooting. While instructing at Gunsite Training Center, I twice had groups of SEAL snipers attend courses and found them to be extremely well trained (before they got there!) and constantly looking for new shooting techniques and challenges. Their standard rifle—a .300 Winchester Magnum, custom-built Remington 700 bolt action—was extremely accurate. They fired the so-called “Navy load,” a 190-grain match bullet. Firing one student’s rifle, I managed to shoot a one-hole group at 100 yards that was well under 1/2 minute (actually, it measured only slightly more than the bullet diameter).

Some Sunday morning quarterbacks may minimize what it took to make those three shots at “only” 25 meters [just under 30 yards]—but the real challenge was firing simultaneously, from a rocking ship’s deck, and without hitting the hostage. This was as much a challenge of mental focus and confidence as shooting skill. Only people who have had to take a shot in genuinely trying circumstances will fully appreciate how easily something could have gone wrong—but it didn’t because these shooters were mentally and physically ready. I can only salute them as fine shooters who could do it when it really mattered.

This entire episode has reignited the debate over arming merchant ship crews to fend off pirate attacks in such dangerous waters as the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea off East Africa. Providing firepower to vulnerable merchant ships seems like a no-brainer solution to the problem, but this article outlines why such an approach is not as simple as it seems, and the folks at Maritime Security.com have a number of interesting things to say about the matter. 

The photo above, from Major Plaster’s History of Sniping and Sharpshooting, shows Navy SEAL Master Chief Jim Kauber sitting on an OH-58 helicopter, ready for a flight. The photos below (courtesy of the U.S. Navy) are aerial surveillance shots of the USS Bainbridge mirroring the lifeboat containing Captain Phillips and his captors and a close-up of the lifeboat itself.