A combined Royal Marines and Royal Navy team of expert marksmen has won the UK Armed Forces’ top prize for shooting for only the fourth time in 117 years, the Royal Navy stated.
The Senior Service shooters triumphed at the InterServices Operational Shooting Contest, held on the range at Hythe in Kent, finishing ahead of their Army and RAF counterparts. The nine-strong team comprised Royal Marines from 30 Commando and the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines at Lympstone, under their captain, Petty Officer Chris McIntyre.
The team used the new KS1 rifle, which according to the Royal Navy showed marked improvements over the SA80 A2 that has served as the UK military’s standard-issue weapon. The RN and RM shooters had earlier proven themselves at Bisley during the Royal Navy Operational Shooting Contest, hosted at the National Shooting Centre in Surrey, where thirty competitors worked through 22 live-firing serials over a fortnight. Those serials involved shooting standing, prone, sitting and kneeling, while stationary or running, with pistol and rifle at ranges from 500 metres down to just ten.
The Royal Navy stresses that the event is a military training exercise rather than a sporting competition, using contest conditions to drive participants toward the highest possible standards. The focus, according to the service, is on developing instinctive combat marksmanship: firing a better shot, faster and under pressure, so that delivering a well-aimed shot calmly becomes second nature, a skill it describes as still vital in an age of drones and missiles.
This year’s winner of the King’s Medal for Champion Shot of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, the United Kingdom’s highest award for military marksmanship, was Sergeant ‘Robbo’ Robinson from Yorkshire, who was carried around in a sedan chair in keeping with military tradition. He received a provisional presentation from the Royal Navy’s Commander Operations, Major General Rich Cantrill, on behalf of the Fleet Commander, before receiving the medal itself from King Charles, who also decorated the top shots in the Army and RAF. It was Robinson’s second attempt at the prize, having placed seventh on his first attempt in 2023.
A further nine shooters earned the Service Marksman badge, which they will wear on parade uniforms for the remainder of their careers. In the Senior Officer’s Pistol Competition, which drew ten firers, Commodore Matt Flegg from Navy Headquarters in Portsmouth won the trophy by a single point.
The KS1 has been entering British service as part of a wider small arms replacement effort, with the rifle selected to succeed elements of the ageing SA80 family that has equipped UK forces since the 1980s, and its appearance in the hands of the Royal Navy’s top shooters marks one of the more visible outings for the weapon since its introduction.
