The stage “Tir de Haut Precision” (THP) with the RAID

             Earlier in June this year (2004), I had the rare honour of being selected to do a stage (course) in high precision shooting with the snipers of the élite Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion (RAID) force. To give some background on the RAID, they form a branch of the Groupe d’Intervention de Police Nationale (GIPN), the police equivalent of the gendarmerie’s well-known GIGN intervention force. Being specially trained and equipped to handle hostage situations, armed hold-ups and other terrorist/criminal actions in France, the RAID represent a crucial component of France’s intervention force.

            The 4^th Company of the 2^nd REP, with a long-standing history of sniping as its speciality, has close links with the snipers of the RAID. Each year, the RAID runs a stage on high-precision shooting to form their own snipers as well as snipers from the GIPN and other international intervention forces. A two-man “binôme” sniper team from the 4^th Company of the 2^nd REP is also invited along to do the stage and in return, the REP invites the snipers of the RAID to Corsica to undertake training in the Corsican terrain. I was lucky enough to be selected to do the stage TPH with the RAID, together with a Sergeant (also a sniper) from my company. The week-long stage took place in Montpellier, at the Ecole d’Application d’Infanterie, a extensive French military academy where practically every French soldier spends some time at during his or her military career. With us we brought along our own FRF-2 rifles with their J8 scopes, OB-50 night-vision scopes, laser rangefinders and other equipement essential to high precision shooting.

            The entire stage consisted of four two-man teams: aside from our binôme there was one team from the Swiss GIGN and two teams from the French GIPN, thus eight “stageurs” altogether. Immediately evident was the gaping difference in the quality of equipement between us and the other teams. Whilst we used the aforementioned ubiquitous FRF-2s that have already fired tens of thousands of ordinary 7.62mm armor-piercing rounds each, the others used the PGM Ultima Ratio rifle in the case of the Swiss team and the Austrian SSG69 in the case of the GIPN teams, each having their own supply of match-grade Winchester .308 ammunition matched to the rifle. During our first shoot, at 100m the Swiss and the GIPN teams easily managed 20mm groups with 5 rounds, whilst we struggled to maintain our groups below 60mm.

            The program of the stage was highly interesting, as the nature of the shooting was very much unlike what us army shooters are used to. Our methodology concentrates on long-distance shooting (ideally 500-600m, but ranges of up to 800m are possible), without a great emphasis on precision – if one hits the target (silhouette of a kneeling man), it is considered as a successful shoot. The RAID, inversely to us, practise extreme high precision shooting at distances that we would classify as extremely close range – a maximum of 100m. Of course, this is due to the nature of their work, as most of the actions take place in an urban environment, where the distances involved are generally from one city building to another, in another words across a street. However, there is a massive emphasis on precision, as in any hostage situation there must be a 100% certainty that no hostage will be harmed and that it is only the terrorist that will be hit by any intervening sniper action.

            We thus concentrated on close distance shooting from different positions, learning how to compensate for short distances with our scopes, simultaneous shooting to a countdown, shooting at moving targets and dusk/night shooting. Every day was spent at either an outdoor or an indoor shooting range, placing rounds into paper targets or polystyrene “heads”. Me and my sergeant gave instruction on camouflage and outdoor sniping, showing the amazing effectiveness of the sniper gillie-suits, and its ability to protect a sniper and allow him to approach a target unseen. We fired an extremely diverse range of armaments, supplied by the RAID, to gain familiarity with some exotic firearms we would not usually encounter. This included the Belgian 5.7mm P90 submachine gun, the Heckler & Koch MP5SD silenced submachine gun and the HK53 short assault rifle and G36 assault rifle from the same manufacturer. The true “icing on the cake” though was the German MG3 machine gun, a 7.62mm version of the classic MG42 weapon from the second world war. We had an abundant supply of ammunition, and each of us made our own belts (the weapon used non-disintegrating link belts) to get a taste of this weapon. I found the MG3 amazingly versatile and effective, being much easier to handle than our own French ANF-1 machine guns.

            In addition, we had the rare opportunity to be visited by a team from the CREL research labs. The RAID has its own cutting-edge armament research labs, where ballistics and gunsmith experts work to improve the characteristics of rifles and ammunition. On their visit, they brought with them a sample of their “research” weapons, including a customised 12.7mm PGM rifle and a highly modified PGM Ultima Ratio in .284 Lapua calibre, with special ammunition designed to have the same ballistic characteristics as the 12.7mm PGM round. Using this weapon, I was able to shoot a 50mm group at 500m with 5 rounds, a feat practically impossible with my FRF-2. The custom 12.7mm PGM was also tested with specialised CREL ammunition; we tested its penetrating power at 500m against an armored glass window pane from the windscreen of a TGV high-speed train. The 5cm thick glass was completely perforated by the deadly round.

            We even had a helicopter at our disposal for a few hours, the idea being that we get a taste of shooting from a helicopter using a G36 assault rifle with a plastic cartridge-case collector. However, being a civilian helicopter, we were not granted permission to actually shoot from it, and instead we used its power winch to do exhilirating aerial drops and assaults.

            During the entire week, I think that I saw and learnt more than during an entire month back at base. Just working with the highly professional RAID team was an incredible experience, and being able to take so much from it was a rare opportunity.

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