George M James
Military Author
About Snipers and Counter Snipers | History and Use in Covert Operations
Code Name Butterfly main focus is sniping, something that is frequently in the media these days.
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There is, however, a bizarre misconception in the US that police snipers are less trained, less deadly and shoot at much shorter distances. That may be true with Sheriff Departments where SWAT is seen as the ultimate but here in South Africa we don’t rate the US Police SWAT highly. The reason being, there is not one US-based SWAT Team that is rated by us as true Special Forces, they are rather seen as low percentage units and are barely able to deal with violent criminals.
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In South Africa, and in many other countries, snipers are all true Special Forces rated. They had to make a Selection that is rated above that of the US Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, as well as, the British Special Air Service, in failure rates (never less than 90% failure – in 40 years, namely, 481 men made Special Forces out of the 100,000 that tried out).
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South African snipers will be every bit as good as those from the better-known units, which is the whole point of the GMJ Series; we strive to educate in what is not generally known in order to help readers understand that we must get away from the “OMG it is Patton or Montgomery Syndrome” and realise that your enemy must be respected. Overconfidence is a killer of the innocent in war.
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In this book, I explain how counter snipers are used to protect a president. Along with revealing a method utterly unique to South African Special Forces, namely, to backtrack a laser range finder by using maths and computers and doing so in seconds, thereby giving the counter snipers a fair chance of obtaining a first kill and destroying the threat. No other Special Forces Unit in the world has this capability.
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We likewise look at the technical details in shooting at long ranges, introducing you to the Truvelo Armouries sniper rifles which are rated above what NATO has in stock.
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Lastly, we explain why the US Secret Service’s counter-attack method, known as “Rush” or “Close with and Destroy,” will not work in this theatre, they will die if they use this against anyone but a lone wolf idiot.
Description:
Spymaster extraordinaire, Angelique Dawson and her team intercept a death threat against the South African President. He is being threatened to be shot dead by an enemy Special Forces sniper team during a forthcoming conference in Cape Town. As the local head of counter-terrorism, she must counter the assassination attempt, saving the President, if possible, since he is not about to cancel conferences because of a threat, even if it is a serious one. She turns to her ground commander and later husband, former Police Special Forces Company Commander, Geoffrey Foxtrot and his best friend, Geelslang Peter Ndebele, for assistance.
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They soon realise that the real target may well be Angelique Dawson herself. They suspect that the satellite intercept may be part of a larger deception scheme to get her at a certain place at a certain time, a classic ambush scenario. Yet, Angelique is not going to walk away from a challenge but face it and the enemy snipers head on. She has her own ideas on what to do, wanting to prove her point that she can outshoot and outwit any man.
Thus, the counter-sniper teams surround her, watching and waiting for her to be pinged by an enemy laser rangefinder. Once that happens, she has mere seconds to get to safety and or her counter-snipers to shoot first, killing their opposites before they can kill Angelique or the President or both.
A highly technical story on how enemy snipers go about their business and how they are countered by the intelligence community backed up by Special Forces counter-sniper teams.
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If you wish to read about Covert and Special Forces Operations in sub-Saharan Africa, the GMJ Books are the place to start. You will learn about Special Forces techniques and military history not known outside the select few.
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Code Name Butterfly is the twenty-third book of the GMJ Series.