Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror Read Online Free Page A

how the situation in sniper school mirrored actual combat.
    Snipers also need patience because not every mission undertaken will produce a kill. The chance to kill can take anywhere from weeks to months, or it may never be presented. In the same way, patience is required for a sniper to make the best decision on how to kill the enemy. Very rarely does the enemy travel alone, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. For snipers this means using the perfect weapon to strike in order to increase the maximum body count. Often, snipers make the difficult decision to deny themselves the use of the sniper rifle and to rely on supporting arms. This may sound logical to most, but for a trained sniper it is a heavy sacrifice not to engage with the sniper rifle.
    These skills and qualities produce men who become force multipliers for their units. They also give the snipers the tools they need to carry out their primary function—to kill the enemy.

Killing
    For military snipers, killing is their purpose, and it is crucial to their survival. Militaries have recognized the need for a sniper’s precision, and there is no other time more crucial for accuracy than the Global War on Terror. Snipers have proven to be the perfect solution in environments where civilians are present and collateral damage needs to be minimized.
    The act of actually sniping someone in combat is thought to have something mystical about it. Any combat sniper, however, will tell you that there is no aura during the kill; it is just a squeeze of the trigger, and nothing else. It is common for snipers to experience the nervous feeling—buck fever—during their first kill, stemming from the fact that they are actually about to fulfill the goal of all of their training.
    By and large, the will to kill is ingrained in most snipers before they reach sniper training. Since sniper communities are made from the infantry or Special Operations units, the men have learned to kill from the start of their training. By the time sniper training is completed, taking the life of an enemy is simply the job they’ve been assigned to do.
    One U.S. Army sniper instructor says:
    Sniping is first and foremost about killing people. If one does not think that this is something they can handle, then sniping is not for them. Many people say that killing a man is the worst thing they have ever had to do. This may be true for them, but for me and most snipers I know, it is only a job. Killing the enemy is a task given, and snipers execute this task because it must be done. For most that I know, it ends there. There are images and things that will stick with me for the rest of my life, but pulling the trigger on an armed enemy trying to harm friendly troops is not something that will bother me now, or ever.
    I, and all the snipers I know, agree with this mentality. I’ve been asked, “How do you deal with killing people?” My reply is that I know that everyone I’ve killed was an enemy combatant, and was intending to harm friendly troops or myself, and I can live with that. I believe that some snipers may have a hard time dealing with killing if there are uncertainties involved.

Tools of the Trade
    The equipment and weapons used by snipers in the military differ between services and units. The common factor among all, though, is the primary use of a 7.62mm NATO round. Each unit also uses heavier sniper rifles for farther distances and armor penetration. Night vision, thermal imaging, radios, global positioning devices, high-powered optics, periscopes, tripods, night sights for the sniper rifle, laptops, cameras, and suppressors are the typical equipment available for sniper teams.
    In the conventional Army, scout/snipers have three weapons available for use. The first is the M24 Sniper Weapon System or SWS. Many snipers consider this their bread-and-butter weapon for its proven reliability in combat. This is a bolt-action, 7.62mm rifle made by Remington and is very similar to the M40 series that