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Video: Fort Benning’s Sniper School
The Army's Sniper School at Fort Benning trains soldiers in the art and science of long-range shooting as well as observational skills.
Occasionally, the mainstream media publishes something worthwhile. In addition to the video above, I thought you'd find the associated story (U.S. military snipers are changing warfare) published in USA Today to be a good read. Here's a snippet:
When Marine Sgt. Jonathan Charles' unit arrived in Afghanistan, the American troops faced an entrenched enemy that picked a fight with the Marines almost every time they stepped off base.
“They couldn't get outside the wire more than 50 meters before it was a barrage of fire,” said Charles, a scout sniper.
The Marine battalion quickly dispersed well-camouflaged scout sniper teams throughout the Musa Qala area in southern Afghanistan, the former Taliban heartland. The teams would hide for days, holed up in crevices, among boulders or in mud-walled homes, and wait for unsuspecting militants to walk into a trap.
The result: Dozens of militants were killed by an enemy they never saw. Word of unseen killers began to spread among the “few who got away,” Charles said. Within weeks, the tide had begun to turn and by the end of the unit's seven-month deployment in March 2011, the battalion's 33-man sniper platoon had 185 enemy kills. Read more
Source: USA Today
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