Book Review
The Killing school
by Brandon Webb w/John David Mann
Brandon Webb is a former US Navy SEAL with multiple deployments during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and one of the men to modernize the Navy SEAL’s sniper program. In the pages of The Killing School Webb teams up with long time collaborator John David Mann and carves out he and the SEALs of Naval Special Warfare modernized a sniper program from the days of Vietnam to the dusty roads and thick mountains of Afghanistan, making it one of the most premiere programs in the world. Webb has also authored books like The Red Circle, Mastering Fear, Among Heroes, and The Finn Thrillers (Steel Fear, Blind Fear, and Cold Fear). You can find them on his author page on Amazon.com.
Steel Fear was one of my TOP books in 2021. If you like murder mystery combined with the confines of a Navy aircraft carrier, go check it out.
John David Mann, his partner in crafting this story of not just tactics, but historical documentation of how well the program spit out elite marksmen, is no stranger to painting stories. He’s done the Go-Giver series with Bob Burg, The Latte Factor with David Bach, and several books with Webb before and after The Killing School. And that’s just a few of the books he’s been a part of. The list itself, is much, much longer.
modernizing long-range warfare
In the first half, Webb describes his journey to become a Navy SEAL, and then how he managed to find his way not just into the sniper program, but right back in the US Navy Special Warfare unit at the helm of the sniper program suggesting a massive overhaul. What Webb spins is a tactic of positive coaching that focuses not on mistakes, but moving forward with every move, utilizing a style of progress that doesn’t correct, but allows for guidance in the right direction.
Sound soft for a Navy SEAL? It’s not, trust me. It’s in fact brilliant in the way he suggests instructing his shooters to not focus on mistakes, but focus on immediately considering corrective measures to become better. Almost immediately the shooters he describes become better shooters without even a spoken word from an instructor because of the adopted method. But what I found the most interesting was that by forgoing the typical yelling, hazing, and overall horrible time that is most military training courses and programs, the Navy allowed the SEALs to take a completely different approach, and because of that, they produced some of the best shooters the world has ever seen.
We are talking legendary figures like Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell.
Proof is in the pudding
The second half of the book is essentially a fiction-like recount of stories, missions, and examples of what the revamped SEAL sniper program produced, detail by detail, kill by kill. It reads like fiction at a blistering pace with tons of details, laughs, jaw-dropping moments, and shocking revelations about how marksman from all walks of life (Canadian military, US Army, SEALs, and OGAs) survived in Iraq and Afghanistan only to return home and pump their experiences right back into the SEAL marksman program that had other services calling asking for a piece of the action.
In a military where service rivalry is a big deal (trust me, I served, it absolutely is a big deal), when another service calls and asks for your cheat codes, it’s essentially a massive compliment. And a sign that you are not just doing something right, but others want follow suit.
Webb describes shot after shot, mission after mission, of how these shooters all made history time and time again in the mountains of Afghanistan and the desolate plains and close quarters of Iraq.
But the book isn’t just about shooting. It’s about what a sniper really is charged with doing: seeing.
Webb explains how a sniper’s first mission is to collect intel by observation. What a marksman must see is movement unlike any other. He describes legendary military marksmen of our past that could see the smallest movement out to not just hundreds of yards, but thousands. With the naked eye. It was about finding repetition and taking mental notes. It was about ranging distance without a measurement tool, trusting your gut, and seeing the suspicious when it was blinded by the ordinary.
Surpassed my expectations
What I expected was a book on marksmanship and how they specifically trained the US Navy SEALs to be absolute killers behind a long gun. This book isn’t that. Sure, it has plenty of info on subjects like windage, range, breathing, ballistics, and other important factors in sending a bullet 1,000 yards down range to a target, but what Webb gets into is much more than that. He presents the facts, importance of a shooter, and then shows how it was applied in the field. Unlike other military programs where bureaucracy and politics step in the way of progress, this program changed on the fly as snipers rotated back stateside after deployments and shared their knowledge. Every shooter from the program graduated with more knowledge than the previous class.
All because Webb and his team knew how to do it right. And understood why they had to do things differently. It worked. The program delivered some of the most lethal snipers in global military history.
I highly recommend this book not just for long-range junkies, but for military history buffs and fans of a good story. Webb and Mann paint the picture like a fiction story, blistering and with plenty of action. It doesn’t read like a non-fiction book. You will be hooked from page one, I guarantee it.
Get your copy of THE KILLING SCHOOL here.
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