TOP SHOT was first of five events at the 14th Annual Warrior Competition (14AWC) for Special Operations Forces at KASOTC in held Jordan, reports Bob Morrison.
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§ When I published my Initial Report on the 14AWC TOP SHOT event, in the early hours of the following morning, there had only been time to select a few images of the medal winners and pen a very brief article. This was because, following a two-hour late evening Team Briefing for Day Two and just a handful of hours of kip, it was time to be out on the KASOTC ranges for the second event; ‘TRAIL OF VICTORY’. Now that I have backed-up, sorted, renumbered and catalogued a shedload of images and then cleared the backlog of work which built up at J-F HQ during my ten day trip to the Hashemite Kingdom, here is a more detailed look at that first event.
TOP SHOT, which traditionally takes place on the Sunday afternoon following the Annual Warrior Competition Opening Ceremony and Special Operations Demo, is the only event which involves just a single team member rather than two or five members of the squad. It does not contribute to the overall team results, though it does earn a personal medal for the three top competitors. Essentially a warm-up event for the main competition, it gives both the Events Staff a final chance to work together as a group and familiarise themselves with representatives from all competing teams (38 this year) and the Teams a chance to observe and mingle with the opposition before the five-man squads start competing.
For this Event each Team, usually comprising a pool of up to eight personnel (including Team Manager) with five, or in one case two, operators being selected to participate in each of the other Events, designates its best individual shooter to represent it. Based on a random draw, each of the 38 Team Shooters competes head-to-head and against the clock over a mirrored course to test their ability “to perform combat marksmanship with the rifle and pistol while engaging a series of targets at varying distances”.
Undertaken in daylight conditions in full event uniform and with a two-minute time limit, TOP SHOT consisted of three stages of engagement: Stage One, for Rifle, consisting of Substages 1A and 1B; Stage Two, for Rifle; and Stage Three, for Pistol. On the command of “Standby, Standby – Go!” from the Senior Event Coordinator time started for both Shooters, who moved first to the Stage 1A engagement zone and occupied the assigned shooting positions on either the left or right side behind a car’s rear bumper / boot (i.e. rear fender / trunk in ‘Chewing Gum English’).
Once the Shooter was behind the car he (there were no female participants this year though there have been in the past) locked and loaded his rifle with a 5-round magazine then engaged a steel target with a 2-round ‘double tap’ from the Engagement Zone – in this case marked by one of KASOTC’s ubiquitous traffic cones*. When the Stage 1A engagement was completed the Shooter commenced Stage 1B (Shoot and Move) during which three targets were engaged with a single round each while on the move towards Stage Two.
On reaching Stage Two, with the 5-round rifle magazine now empty, the Shooter had to load a second (2-round) magazine, make ready, and engage two steel popper targets to his front with single shots from the kneeling position; one target to be engaged round the right side and the other round the left side of the engagement zone ‘wall’. On completion the Shooter had to show ‘Clear!’ to the accompanying Official and then move hastily to the Stage Three pistol position.
At the Stage Three engagement zone the Shooter had to secure the 9mm pistol located at the firing position, load it with one 6-round magazine, make ready, and then engage the six steel falling plate targets on the plate rack with one round apiece. On completion, or if the Shooter ran dry before dropping all six plates, he needed to show ‘Clear!’ and, once cleared by the Lane Safety Official, return the pistol to the table and sprint back to the Finish Line at which point the stopwatch would be frozen.
Any Shooter engaged targets from outside the specific firing position received a 30-second Time Penalty, and if he engaged targets without moving during stage 1B a 30-second Time Penalty was also applied. A failure to meet the required time limit of two minutes for the event resulted in Disqualification from the event. As is almost always the case during an Annual Warrior Competition, failure to comprehend and accurately follow the precise instructions given in the Event Brief (handed to and discussed with Team Leaders at the KASOTC Auditorium the night before each Event) could lead to Disqualification from an Event.
Now one does not need to have earned a Doctorate in Applied Mathematics to work out that 38 is an unwieldy number for a one-on-one knockout tournament, and the way the Event Organisers got around this was to pair off the first twelve Shooters, as randomly drawn, to participate in prequel Heats. Once these had been decided the six winners joined Shooters [1] to [26] to now give a pool of 32 contestants for Round One proper. From here onwards pairs of Shooters took each other on head-to-head, leaving 16 winners to progress to Round Two, eight to move forward to Round Three, and the final four to compete in Round Four, with Round Five settling who would become the TOP SHOT Winner and Runner-Up. The two losing Shooters from Round Four then went head to head to decide who would take the Third Place medal.
At each Stage at least two Officials, one moving with the Shooter throughout, watched him at all times and had eyes on every target plus Scorers and the Event Coordinator also oversaw proceedings. The Officials during AWC are mostly bilingual retired Special Forces personnel, with Arabic or English as their mother tongue, and throughout each Event there was always an Official on hand to answer queries in either language; Team Translators could also be present at both the Start and Finish of any Event, plus at major Stages if deemed necessary, but each team I worked with (35 out of 38) had several fluent English speakers in their ranks.
This year’s TOP SHOT was the fifth such event I have watched over the last eleven years and knowing that Round One and Round Two are always pretty frenetic as 32 Teams plus their supporters cram the boundary behind the range to cheer on their Shooters until knocked out, I stayed away and cleared some website work until near the end of Round Two. By then the roughly 300-strong crowd of international SpecOps personnel on the boundary had thinned out a lot, plus the number of Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) photographers and cameramen trying to record all participants in the event for official print and screen use had reduced in direct correlation with the number of remaining Shooters. From Round Three onwards there was therefore less chance on me (working inside the safety cordon) blocking the view of Teams supporting their Shooters, and the possibility of one of the JAF media team getting into my frame was much reduced.
Although I started shooting just before the end of Round Two to both work out the tempo of the contest and plan best camera angles, as well as letting the Event Officials become used to my presence, my primary goal was to photograph as many of the final eight Shooters in action as the finale approached. I also wanted to try to cover each Stage from different angles without blocking the view of Officials monitoring or scoring the competition. As the accompanying photos hopefully evidence, this was one plan that mostly survived first contact with the enemy.
For the record, in Round Five the Jordanian Royal Guard Shooter narrowly beat the Royal Oman Police SOF Shooter to claim the TOP SHOT Trophy and the Rwanda SOF Team 1 Shooter beat the Romanian SR1 CTB Shooter to take Third Place.
[© Bob Morrison]
To be continued – next time TRAIL OF VICTORY and a list of all Teams…..
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*Ubiquitous Traffic Cones: There is a persistent rumour that the elite of the world’s traffic cones are pensioned off to KASOTC to live out the rest of their days in the sunshine. Being serious, although every SpecOps competitor is well able to read a map and comprehend instructions without resorting to following markers on the ground, with so many live fire ranges and overlapping safety areas throughout the site every course, start line, firing point and finish line was clearly marked with cones. With several hundred operators and and event staff working in live ammunition zones across the site, plus firearms company exhibitors and their visitors also using some live-fire ranges during the event, safety naturally had to take first priority. Bright red traffic cones might be the bane of my life, but it is much better that they pop up in the frame than somebody inadvertently strays into someone else’s line of fire.
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[images © Bob Morrison 2025 unless noted]
