Saturday, June 02, 2007

Army adjusts counter-sniper training to reflect urban fighting

Above: Soldiers attend to a wounded soldier hit by sniper fire in the Al Doura area on April 5.

Enemy sniper tactics in Iraq have changed, so the Army is changing the way it teaches soldiers to react to them.

The Army has for years used a react-to-sniper drill that placed a sniper at hundreds of meters away and sometimes more than a thousand...

“Right now the snipers that are in Iraq are shooting sometimes at distances of 50 meters, but because the impact of acoustics in a city degrades your ability to react, we have to change how we perform that drill in an urban environment,” Shwedo said...

The training, which soldiers begin receiving in basic training, will address initial protection of standing soldiers, identification of the sniper’s location, and treating a wounded soldier in a way that avoids sustaining more casualties in the process.

Read the rest at Army Times

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