Just curious...How do snipers carry their ruck AND a drag bag?

I know the perfered method for transporting a rifle while stalking is a drag bag, but drag bags are normally the size of a ruck themselves! How do they carry a drag bag for stalking and a ruck for sustainment?

I don't remember even seeing a drag bag in the field in 3 different SS platoons, the Sniper Section in 2/75 on deployment, or with 1st Group.

I saw some home made drag bags before Eagle came out with theirs, but they were left in the backs of wall lockers of guys who had them from school.

Every company and their brother knocked off the Eagle Industries drag bag:

Makes sense... I couldn't picture carrying a ruck over one of those bags.

If you don't use a drag bag in the field how would you carry your gun if you were stalking? Did you just sling your gun on your back?

The traditional drag bags used for a school house stalk are not very useful for real life scenarios. Most sniper school training doesn't translate to modern combat that well, its old fashioned stuff based off 1950s lessons taken from the British sniper school. For the stalk, the idea is that you drop your rucksack at the ORP, camo up, and then move out in ghillie suit. But moving many hundreds of meters on hands and knees, or high or low crawl, with a rifle in your arms sucks, so guys started making drag bags. The parachute rifle case is actually one of the best, with a few pouches sewn on for binos, tripod, and the like.

In modern combat, other than a few specific units, anyone carrying a bolt action rifle also has to hump an M4, as  well as a pistol. This includes a lot more equipment than school, PPE, commo equipment, laser ranger finders, night vision equipment, claymores for security, etc. The loads carried and the methods used in sniper school are nothing like real life.

In Iraq, we used to use the big Eagle drag bags, like the one pictured above, while moving into positions for Small Kill Team (SKT) ambushes, to carry our M24s with PVS-10 optics, while the shooters would hand carry M4s. That bag had enough pouches to not only hold the rifle, but most other things associated with shooting. Other guys would carry assault packs with the extra stuff. Later, Eberlestock packs became popular, because you could fit a rifle and everything else. We'd have a full urban hide kit, the rifle, ammo, observation tools, extra radios, etc., all in one. With the availability of SDM AR rifles, M14 EBRs, and M110s, we often chose not to bring the M24s, we didn't need the range and didn't want the extra weight.

That second picture looks punishing:)

Yeah, that's one way to hump the M107, Another is to break it into two pieces with team member carrying the upper assembly, another the lower, and the third guy carries ammo (10 round mags are quite heavy).

The way a traditional sniper school stalk is set up, with drag bags, the large loads typical of a modern western sniper, weapons, commo, observation, security equipment, aren't factored in. The FTX are more realistic, and there isn't really a stalk in those, just a night infiltration, when the hide site, final firing position, is set up. That's when a team has to move in and set up, shoot, and exfil, but with everything they'd use in real life. Its nothing at all like the school house stalk.

Eberlestock bags are the way to go.  Not too many people humping drag bags these days.  Everything is in one with an Eberlrstock.  Great gear!

Nevermind...reread an above post and answered my question.

I was in back in the 90's. You didn't see drag bags used much even back then. (at least in the Marines) We also didn't usually carry nearly as much gear as the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan do these days. We hardly ever carried a second rifle. We carried our primary weapon and a pistol. Spotter generally had an M16A2. Drag bags ended up in wall locker most of the time.

I use a drag bag now, but it's just a range bag that will carry all of guns for 3gun competitions.

Another vote for its a range bag more than real world use.

School Stalking vs. Real World
Stalking like you would in Sniper School just isn't done in the real world.  The closest you come to working autonomously is when doing stay-behind, or running a Squad-sized element so you have plenty of security.

The way we trained in the 1990's sending out guys as a 2-man team is suicidal if you make contact. One of you carried a 203, and the other an M24 and M9, both with 85lb+ monster rucks.  You could get away with it in the green if you were really stealthy, stayed on really obscure routes, and had fixed targets or kill zones to harass.  When working as 2-man teams in close proximity to each other, we could ruin an entire Company like it was fun, but out flapping by yourself is just bad news waiting to happen against a half-competent enemy.

Task Organization
The reality is that Sniper Teams are tasked out to the different line companies to support their operations most of the time.  That means looking like everyone else as much as possible, and often being close to the key leaders or Support-By-Fire positions.  The idea of crawling around in a Ghillie suit with a drag bag tethered to your leg may seem cool, but it surely isn't in reality, and was only done in school.

Rifle Changes
Another major evolution in what kind of gear is used has been the re-introduction of a Semi-Automatic Sniper System as the primary 7.62 NATO long gun solution in both the Army and Marines.  Sure, a lot of guys prefer the M40 since they are easier to be accurate with, but when it comes to going outside the wire, not many people want to carry a bolt gun, and for good reason.  I know a few guys who preferred to have that bolt gun option in urban hides when part of a larger team, but then they ended up using the SAW a lot more than any sniper system.

When discussing this with some of my Marine counterparts, they related that they preferred to just take the Mk.11 and leave the M40's in the cases for most of the deployment.  Each community, unit, and culture over the years will have a slight variation on how they prefer to do things, even within the same service, same type of unit, but different parent organization.  Because of the different types of mission profiles some units have, their approach to this is quite different, but recognizable to the others.

Examples:

In some units, Snipers do a lot of overwatch for assaulters, especially at night, using SR25's or M110's suppressed, going as lightly loaded as possible. They also do aerial platform overwatch.  Their perspective will be quite different.

In 82nd, we had guys tasked down to the line working with SBF much of the time, or providing overwatch for blocking positions and avenues of approach, then stay behind night stuff in urban environment in OIF1.  On the push up to Baghdad before that, one of them blew a guy apart with the M107 at ELR, after walking it in with his spotter.  He had the Barrett broken down in an Eagle soft case on top of his ruck, not a drag bag, just a case to hold the components.  He looked like a pack mule, because he was a little guy.  He went to 7th Group last I heard, really good dude.

The Brits in Southern Iraq had Sniper Platoons basically covering down on site security for their people, keeping the distance between them and mortar teams that were hitting their compound in Basra.  They used Minimi's, GPMG's, and L85A2's more than their Accuracy International green rifles, although one guy made a confirmed head shot on a dude at 900m with one.  That experience for them is what really drove them away from 7.62 NATO bolt guns and into .338 LM, since the enemy quickly learned and adapted to their maximum effective range, by staying outside of it when spotting for their mortar teams, which were placed behind buildings out of line-of-sight.

While we trained to walk through the woods undetected, set up a hide, and punch out in Ghillies to interdict targets in the 1990's, on deployments in CENTCOM, we've seen motorized or airmobile insertions as part of larger units as the norm.  There was one unit I was in that trained like that relentlessly in the 1990's, and that was 1-506th Infantry up out of Camp Greaves in Korea.  We did a lot of rotary wing insertions with Sniper Teams working with the SBF, and Sniper-initiated commence firing for the pigs and .50's, while the assault elements flew in lower than us even in UH-60's. Here's a pic from one of those Support-By-Fire positions once the MG's had lifted and ceased fire.




In 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, we used our Teams to wreak havoc on the line companies walking out in open desert/rolling hills/mountainous terrain in Yakima.  It was too easy to pick off the Co RTO, then the CO, then work onto targets of opportunity in the line Platoons.  The way we used Teams together was such that you would never get indirect fire to work to your advantage if you were trying to call indirect on us, and that's with us not even having suppressors.

Anyway, in all these instances, I can think of no place where a drag bag would have been beneficial to what we were doing, and that goes from sea to shining sea CONUS, Korea, Panama, or the desert.  I personally would prefer to use a Semi Auto so it can function as my fighting rifle as well, and guys have had to do that real world, to include close range shots in urban terrain.  Nick Irving tells about an incident where he had to blast someone with his SR25 at close range in his urban overwatch position on a roof. He rolled over and shot the guy, who was hiding under some cloth right next to them.

Good video discussing Sniper Operations in 3-75

That's a cool picture from Korea. You guys must of really lit up that hillside...I can see the smoke rolling out of the treeline.

I recently read "The Ultimate Sniper" (good book). John Plaster talked about a tactic where 2 or more teams would provide sniper fire for each other and continually displace to hold down a larger force. During your Yakima FTX is that similar to what you guys were doing?

In cases like that, I imagine you still did a "stalk" in and out of your firing positions so the opposition force did not know where to return fire?

Lots of good information in your post. Thanks for taking the time!

Yes, that's the tactic.  We had more than 2 teams, with good planning, communication, rehearsals, and execution.  It's basically a multi-team bloody nose.  The bloody nose dates way back historically, especially with enterprising units who are given leeway and freedom of thought in how they will cause havoc. It's even worse when you are so predictable, thinkers can play you like a puppet, and reduce you quickly, while smashing morale.

We just moved into position using the techniques that kept us out of line-of-site to the approaching units, based on terrain analysis and where we thought they would come in from.  We used above surface hasty hides in some cases, and even let them walk by us before calling in indirect while other teams use the noise from indirect to mask sniper fire on priority targets. As they broke contact back along their original path, they would go right through another kill zone.

A buddy of mine who was in the Royal Marines did similar things in training exercises.  They somehow convinced the leadership to allow them to be OPFOR, and decimated the Company they were targeting with bloody nose technique.  Afterwards, the commanders got really interested in them, and asked, "Can you guys really do that if it were a real threat?"  Something to that effect.  They took the opportunity to explain their capabilities and limitations, and the commanders used that input for future operations, using them as advanced scouts, guards, overwatch, etc.

I know exactly what video you are talking about. I imagine that video made the enemy much less comfortable exchanging weapons after that video got released. Did you notice a sudden drop in the amount of night-time enemy activity after that was released?

I used them in school as well. The ones I have are Blackhawk drag bag/shooting mat type. Today I just use them for rifle cases that I can shoot off of.
One time on a RON exercise, my teammate and I used them as ground barrier sleeping mats in our poncho shelter. It was damned cold that night and the drag bags saved our asses!

Interesting application for that.

The big Eagle design doesn't really do well in school or for stalk lanes since it is so large, so many prefer a very slim bag that will pull through the vegetation without disrupting as much, but the Eagle bag design does do well for a rifle case that has all your stuff for the range.

I remember when they came out.  I think it was the early 1990s.  Then Blackhawk ripped them off, and now Midway sells cheap Chinese ones made from Chidura with urea-based zippers that fail if you look at them, and cheap snaps in the while that pop out upon single use.

Mike Noelle (spelling) stated numerous times that he was going to copy everything Eagle made and put them out of business. I heard him a few times when he was small starting out--when he was off of London Bridge Road and near where LBT has their current shop.