Chris Kyle was the most wanted man in Iraq a few short years ago and carried a bounty on his head--only to die today at a Dallas shooting range.

WFAA Dallas reports Kyle was at the range with a neighbor. The news is still unfolding, but apparently Kyle was shot point blank and his neighbor suffered wounds that also proved fatal.

Jessica Stanton at The Daily Caller dug this up:

The Empire Tribune in Stephenville, Texas reports that the suspect, Eddie Ray Routh, was captured in the town of Lancaster around 9:00 p.m. Law enforcement officials believe Routh is a “highly trained individual with military experience.”

Jack Murphy at the Special Operations Forces Situation Report (SOFREP) published a post regarding the tragic murders on Saturday night, reading in part: “Chris had been volunteering his time to help Marine Corps veterans suffering from PTSD and mentoring them.  Part of this process involved taking these veterans to the range where one of them snapped and killed Chris and his neighbor for reasons that remain unknown at this time.  The perpetrator then stole Chris’ vehicle in an attempt to escape but we have received word that the police have arrested him.”

During his 10-year stint as a Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle was in every major battle of the Iraq war and was so effective at killing Iraqis that they called him "The Devil Of Ramadi" while placing an $80,000 bounty on his head.

Kyle spoke last year to Gary Buiso at the NY Post about his book "American Sniper," and offered a few details about what life was like as his sniper skills grew.

With up to 225 kills, his fellow SEAL Team 3 members called him "The Legend" and picked the comic book character The Punisher as their platoon's mascot.

His first kill was a woman about to throw a hand-grenade at a group of Marines. His most distant kill was from 2,100 yards away outside Sadr City in 2008.

He saw a man leveling a rocket launcher at an Army convoy and fired a single round from his .338 Lapua Magnum rifle with its Nightforce power scope.

From that distance, Kyle had to factor in terrain, wind, elevation, vibration from the shot, and even the Coriolis effect where the rotation of the earth affects where the bullet arrives.

On that day each of these factors conspired together and Kyle hit the man before he attacked the convoy. “God blew that bullet and hit him,” he told The Post.

Most recently, Kyle was the president of Craft International, a veteran operated company offering special operations training. Like many servicemembers, he left the military to preserve his marriage.

Ed. Note: RIP Chris

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These pictures surfaced just hours after Lucas Oil Stadium hosted last year's Super Bowl XLVI.

Unknown to fans watching the biggest sporting event of the year, there was also at least one well-equipped sniper in attendance.

The rifle is mounted on a tripod manufactured by Alamo Four Star, and they posted the pictures online never imagining they'd become as popular as they did.

We talked to Alamo and confirmed that's an Indianapolis SWAT team member manning a custom built Remington M700 in a XLR Industries chassis, sitting atop an Alamo Four Star DCLW shooting tripod.

Alamo received the photos from a ranking member of the SWAT team and said their tripod has a locking mechanism that grabs the rail of the rifle without scratching or damaging the surface.

No reason to think there's not another one just like it set up in New Orleans right now.

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Dakota Meyer is as famous in the Marine Corps for disobeying orders as he is for wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck. 

So it comes as no surprise that he would respond when Ron Paul fired out this tweet about legendary SEAL sniper Chris Kyle:

Chris Kyle's death seems to confirm that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn't make sense

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) February 4, 2013

From Meyer:

Implicit in his statement on Twitter, it seems, is the point that it's literally OK now to murder our nation's vets. It would be deserved, just deserts for American combat veterans. What?!

I suppose this logic would also apply to law-enforcement officers, as well, since they take on similar roles within our shores of trying to defend and protect our citizens. With the recent spate of gun violence, Paul can certainly now be accused of inspiring other mentally unstable people to attack war heroes.

Meyer personally knew Kyle, and neither of the men were renowned for keeping tight lipped about when they perceive an injustice. Kyle had recently spoke about the nation's brewing obsession over new gun laws, and Meyer alleges he was fired from his job because he called out his employer, BAE, a British defense contracting firm, for selling restricted weapons to Pakistan.

Paul has himself been outspoken about the war and America's habit of arming various rebel groups. Although, using the murder of a SEAL at a gun range might not have been the best piece of leverage to illustrate his distaste for American military adventurism.

For Meyer, Paul's excuses for why he denigrated the death of an American hero just don't cut the Mustard:

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For more than four centuries firearm manufacturers have done everything they could to make their products deadlier and more accurate. Given metallurgical advancements and chemical work in composites, the styles and weight of rifles has changed dramatically, but they've remained only as effective as  the person firing them. Until now.

Normally, producing a sniper level rifleman in the U.S. military requires 21 weeks minimum. Nearly half a year, to complete 14 weeks of Basic Training, and another seven weeks at Sniper School. 

Achieving that level of skill remained the privilege of a few, but not anymore.

Tracking Point has released its Precision Guided Firearms with jet fighter "lock and launch" technology allowing "anyone regardless of skill level to hit moving targets at extended range."

The rifle claims to magnify human ability using precision ammunition, a network tracking scope, a guided trigger and a heads up display. It allows an average shooter to bring down targets at over 1,200 yards. More than half a mile in the distance.

The fighter jet technology eliminates mis-aiming, trigger jerk, and general miscalculations. It's even wireless and has voice, data, and video connectivity to digital displays.

The rifles range from $17,5000 to $25,500 and can be seen in the Tracking Point Video below that does have an HD setting.

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SEE ALSO: The face of salvation when you're outgunned in the US Army

SEE ALSO: How Israel's Security Iron Dome System Works

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Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle had a procession Feb. 12 fit for a head of state.

The procession stretched along the heart of Texas, 200 miles, traveling from Midlothian to Austin, and included police escort, biker escort, and a giant American flag, compliments of area firefighters.

He was buried next to fellow Texas Navy SEALs at the Texas State Cemetery.

Kyle also had a truly epic memorial service at Cowboy Stadium, Monday. There were approximately 7,000 attendees, to include several active and former servicemembers. Kyle's wife, Taya, gave an emotional speech, crediting Chad Littlefield, the other victim of the grisly shooting, for getting Kyle back into shape after leaving the service, and being an "anchor" following tours of duty.

Kyle's company, Craft, is in the process of offering security services to local school districts, among other projects.

SEE ALSO: 16 fascinating details about from guy who shot Bin Laden >

SEE ALSO: 18 things SEALs never leave home without >

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Iranian sniper teams are now hunting "genetically mutated" rats in Tehran's streets, according to Umberto Bacchi of The International Business Times.

The capital's residents kill about one million rats annually, but the rats continue to become larger and more prevalent.

SEE ALSO: Watch Iran's $40-Million Oil Rig Collapse Into The Sea

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The Daily Mail has faced fierce criticism from readers after publishing the photograph of a British Army sniper who killed two Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan - in a report blasting the MoD for revealing his identity.

The article was published the day before a British soldier in Woolwich was brutally killed in an apparent extreme Islamist attack.

The article referred to "bungling" MoD officials who revealed the soldier's identity, before going on to reveal his name, photograph, home town and family details, as well as more information about his time in Afghanistan.

The soldier was paid £100,000 in compensation by the MoD after his identity was revealed.

Readers made their views known on the comment section of the piece in apparent disbelief at the Mail's irresponsibility.

"DM says he was under stress before. How will he feel today seeing his picture on this site available to any terrorist reading online news. DM adding to a soldiers [sic] stress just for sake of putting a name and pictures on a news story. They are having a go at MoD for revealing identity yet continue the blunder themselves by continuing to put a man life at risk." - Stephen from Dudley

"Well if they didn't know who he was before, the good old DM has certainly made sure they do now!" - Mark from Sheffield

"Excellent idea, lets protect him by putting his photo on the top page of a newspaper. FAIL." - Mr Finlay

"I'm sure publishing his story and photographs are only going to add to his 'cover' being exposed. Not helpful and just another blunder. Thoughtless article." - lavenderpicker

"Good grief get this man's identity off this article NOW - I can hardly believe this." - rwehuman from Chester

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Vocal 9/11 truther Jesse Ventura is continuing his defamation lawsuit against deceased U.S. sniper Chris Kyle by going after Taya Kyle, the slain soldier’s widow.

“Lawyers for Ventura have asked a federal court to continue his lawsuit against Chris Kyle…by substituting Kyle’s wife, Taya, as the defendant,” the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

Kyle was killed in February when he shot to death by a former U.S. Marine suffering from PTSD.

Ventura, most famously known for being the guy who dies 45 minutes into “The Predator,” claimed last year that the decorated former SEAL’s book, “American Sniper,” wrongly accused him of starting a California bar fight.

“Although Kyle is deceased, his ‘American Sniper’ book continues to sell and it is soon to be made into a movie,” said Ventura’s motion.

The former wrestler’s lawyer added: Because Kyle’s claims survive his death, “it would be unjust to permit the estate to continue to profit from Kyle’s wrongful conduct and to leave Governor Ventura without redress for ongoing damage to his reputation.”

Ventura’s lawsuit stems from a claim Kyle made while promoting his book.

The former SEAL said Ventura bad-mouthed and degraded the U.S. military in front of a group of SEALs. Kyle’s accusation, if true, is all the more egregious considering the fact that the SEALs had converged on that particular to commemorate the loss of a comrade who died throwing himself on a grenade.

“He was bad-mouthing the war, bad-mouthing (former President) Bush, bad-mouthing America,” Kyle told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

“He told us that we were killing innocent people over there, men women children, that we were murders,” Kyle continued, adding that he asked the B list actor to tone down the truther rhetoric just a tad.

“And then he said that we deserved to lose a few guys,” O’Reilly said.

Kyle said he responded by laying out Ventura.

“That happened? You knocked him out?” O’Reilly asked.

“Well, I knocked him down.”

Taya’s attorney on Wednesday responded to the motion, filing an official response and saying that Ventura’s move comes as “a disappointment, but no surprise.”

“Continuing this action will serve no useful purpose,” wrote Kyle’s attorney, “and likely will promote public perception of Jesse Ventura as someone who has little or no regard for the feelings and welfare of surviving family members of deceased war heroes.”

The Star Tribune reports that a hearing is slated for June 17 in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

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The soldier whose new book — "Carnivore" — contains claims he has killed more than 2,700 people is getting eviscerated in the comments section of Amazon.

Dillard Johnson, a former Army sergeant first class, made headlines recently when he said he racked up an incredible enemy body count during his three tours as a Bradley vehicle commander and one tour as a sniper in the early years of Iraq.

We contacted Army headquarters and got Johnson's records, and they check out. He definitely has four purple hearts and a silver star. Those medals are not just given out to anyone, so, that is hero-status for sure.

The biggest problem though seems to be his claim to kills, which come in at 500 more than what the official website of the unit claims to have gotten in total. 

Commenters, many claiming to have served in his unit, pounced immediately:

Brad Spaid: All I can say is please do not buy this book. It is a disgrace to all 3-7 CAV soldiers. As someone that was there in that unit during both times I can say that the vast majority of the this book is lies.

Mike: I just hope the Army stands up and does the right thing and outs this guy for being the liar he is. Mr. Johnson is an absolute disgrace to the military and every man/woman who's gone overseas and served in combat. Nothing but a glory hound.

Sgt Rusch: For a short time Dillard "dirty J" Johnson was my platoon sergeant. He is the example of what an NCO should NOT be. He demoralized soldiers and micromanaged NCO's. Later he was removed from A Troop and sent to C Troop, for being demoted in Advanced NonCommissioned Officer Course for refusing to remove a Combat Infantry Badge he never earned.

That's just three, and some of the others are even worse.

The New York Post first wrote a story about him earlier this week, and the impending release of "Carnivore" (named after the call sign of his Bradley vehicle).

Immediately several veterans contacted Business Insider Military and Defense insisting that we look into Johnson's claims.

Supposedly, according to the Post, most of his kills occurred during a wild wave of suicide attacks on Johnson's Bradley vehicle. Johnson then counted "heads and rifles" to come up with his tally.

Following the publication of a skeptical article by Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy, Johnson contacted the Monitor to set the record straight.

Murphy offered the following update:

I spoke to Mr. Johnson after this story was first published. He says his new book doesn't claim that he killed 2,746 enemy combatants or that he has 121 sniper kills. He says while those numbers are on the book jacket, and in HarperCollins' publicity for the book, that the claim is never made in the text of the book and that it is inaccurate. He says he is not responsible for the publisher's writing. The 2,746 number he says is his battlefield estimate of those killed by both him and the men he was fighting with. Johnson says the he did kill 121 enemy combatants on his second deployment to Iraq, with M4 and M14 rifles, and that the choice of the term "sniper" was because average readers don't understand the difference between a marksman and a sniper. He says that Mr. Spaid could not have read the book, that Spaid's claim that dismounts were extremely rare during the invasion are inaccurate, and that Spaid wasn't in a position to speak to what Johnson witnessed and experienced. Johnson says that while he once gave an estimate that he'd perhaps fired 7,000 depleted uranium rounds from his Bradley during the invasion of Iraq that he gave that estimate to an interviewer while wounded and at Walter Reed hospital in 2003 and that it was only an estimate. He is uncertain about how many rounds were fired. He says the story about cutting the wire is true, that it was the sort of wire you might buy at the hardware store for a dryer, and that it's played for laughs in the book. He says that he regrets that he did not correct the Fox and Friends interviewer's statement that he had 2,746 confirmed kills in Iraq, but that it was his first television appearance and he was a bit flustered; he says he did correct this assertion on a later airing of the O'Reilly Factor on Fox (available here) and in other media interviews. Johnson said his motivation in writing the book was so that his comrades would get more credit for what happened and so there would be less focus on him, correcting a failure in emphasis in an official US Army history of the Iraq invasion published in 2004 that he was interviewed for. Tomorrow, I'll write more fully about my interview with Johnson with more details on his war experience.

SEE ALSO: Take an inside look at the Army's Green Berets

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two former U.S. soldiers have been extradited to New York to face charges of plotting to murder a U.S. federal drug agent and informant as part of an international drug smuggling operation, authorities said.

Those cartel leaders were, in fact, Drug Enforcement Administration informants posing as druglords.

Hunter and Timothy Vamvakias, both former U.S. Army sergeants, and several other suspects were arrested this week and are being transported to New York to face charges that include murder and drug conspiracy, as well as weapons possession.

"The bone-chilling allegations in today's indictment read like they were ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement. "The charges tell a tale of an international band of mercenary marksmen who enlisted their elite military training to serve as hired guns for evil ends."

The DEA informants agreed to pay Hunter and two others $700,000 for the two killings, as well as an additional $100,000 to Hunter "for his leadership role," according to an indictment filed in New York.

The killings were to take place in Liberia, Bharara said at a press conference on Friday.

Hunter and his alleged accomplices - who include Vamvakias, Dennis Gogel and Michael Filter of Germany, and Slawomir Soborski of Poland - were rounded up in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting.

Hunter was arrested in Thailand.

Vamvakias and Gogel were apprehended in Liberia, where they had traveled to commit the murders. Filter and Soborski were arrested in Estonia, where they had gone to "provide other services" to the DEA informants posing as Colombians, Bharara said at a press conference on Friday.

Bharara declined to identify the DEA agent and informant targeted for murder as part of the sting operation.

The indictment charges that Hunter and his team acted as security for cocaine shipments originating in Asia and bound for the U.S.

In late 2012, according to the indictment, Hunter "collected resumes via email for prospective members of the security team."

Earlier this year, Hunter and his team allegedly traveled to an unnamed Asian country to discuss the drug trafficking security work with the two informants they believed to be part of the cartel.

Hunter, Vamvakias and Gogel were recorded discussing plans to commit the contract killings in Liberia, authorities said.

Hunter told the DEA informants that "he himself had previously done 'bonus jobs'" - code for contract killings, and that his team "wanted to do as much 'bonus work' as possible," according to the indictment.

Bharara said that since leaving the U.S. military in 2004, Hunter "has allegedly worked as a contract killer, arranging successfully for the murder of numerous people."

Bharara declined to reveal who Hunter is believed to have murdered, but said he "leapt at the chance to serve the purported drug traffickers" as a hired killer.

"Thanks to the determined, skillful and intrepid efforts of the DEA's Special Operations Division, an international hit team has been neutralized by agents working on four continents."

The DEA's Special Operations Division is a secretive unit within the U.S. Department of Justice that includes representatives of the DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

In a series of stories published earlier this year, Reuters reported that the DEA's Special Operations Division funneled information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Reuters reviewed internal government documents which showed that law enforcement agents have been trained to conceal how such investigations truly begin - to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up the original source of the information.

DEA officials said the practice is legal and has been in almost daily use since the 1990s. They have said its purpose is to protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence.

(Additional reporting by John Shiffman and David Ingram; Editing by Scott Malone and Gunna Dickson)

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A surgeon who recently volunteered for a five-day tour of duty in the Syrian combat zone detailed a particularly troubling trend: snipers shooting at specific body parts for sport.

Bill Neely, international editor of ITV, produced a short video report of Dr. David Nott's tribulations in Syria.

Nott gets onto the subject of snipers during one of the interviews. To him, proof of the game is in the gunshot wounds he treats: 

One day we'd have pregnant women being brought in with gunshot wounds to the uterus. Not just one or two, but seven or eight, which meant to me they (the snipers) must be targeting pregnant women.

And the following day, we would get people coming in with chest wounds to the right side of the chest.

The next day it would be the left side and no other injuries. Then it would be groin wounds; everybody would come in with a groin wound.

So it seemed to me that there was a death game going on with the snipers

Neely corroborated Nott's analysis, writing:

I have seen them myself in the last month; bored gunmen, peering through cracks in the breezeblock walls of their sniper's nest, locked in a conflict neither side seems capable of winning, shooting anything that moves.

Nott, who normally works in Britain, has donated a month each year to work as an emergency surgeon in war zones for the last 20 years.

Of course, the sniper tactics speak of armed men who have grown tired of the stalement and, under cover of general lawlessness, seek instead to terrorize the populace.

All told, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — which tracks casualties in Syria— reports that 40,000 of the 110,000 killed in the war have been civilians. Of those, 4,000 were women and more than 5,800 were children.

SEE ALSO: The madness of the Syrian proxy war, in one chart

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Syrian snipers appear to be targeting pregnant women, a British surgeon said Saturday after returning from the conflict zone.

David Nott, who spent five weeks volunteering at a Syrian hospital, told The Times newspaper the gunshot wounds he had treated also indicated that bored snipers were targeting particular parts of civilians' bodies in a bid to entertain themselves.

"One day it would be shots to the groin. The next, it would only be the left chest," he told the newspaper.

"From the first patients that came in in the morning, you could almost tell what you would see for the rest of the day. It was a game."

Nott, a prominent surgeon who counts former prime minister Tony Blair as an ex-patient, said he had treated more than half a dozen shot pregnant women on one day in the Syrian city, which he did not identify for security reasons.

On another day, two consecutive gunshot patients were heavily pregnant women, both of whom lost their babies.

"The women were all shot through the uterus, so that must have been where they were aiming for," he told The Times.

"I can't even begin to tell you how awful it was. Usually, civilians are caught in the crossfire. This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this. This was deliberate. It was hell beyond hell."

Nott, who usually works as a vascular surgeon at London's Westminster and Chelsea hospital, has been volunteering as an emergency surgeon in warzones for 20 years, including Bosnia, Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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This is scary.

The Wall Street Journal's Rebecca Smith reports that a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman is acknowledging for the first time that a group of snipers shot up a Silicon Valley substation for 19 minutes last year, knocking out 17 transformers before slipping away into the night.

The attack was "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in the U.S., Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time, told Smith.

A blackout was avoided thanks to quick-thinking utility workers, who rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But the substation was knocked out for a month.

The FBI says it doesn't believe a terrorist organization caused the attack but that it continues to investigate the incident. 

Smith and colleague Tom McGinty assembled a detailed chronology of the attack that includes some amazing details, including more than 100 fingerprint-free shell casings similar to ones used by AK-47s that were found at the site and small piles of rocks that appeared to have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.

A U.S. Navy investigation ordered by Wellinghoff determined "it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack," he said.

Other utility officials disagree with Wellinghoff's assessment, and say the electric grid remains highly resilient.

Click here to read the full story at WSJ.com » 

SEE ALSO: The U.S. 20: Twenty Megatrends Reshaping the Country

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Snipers are the most cost effective weapon in any military arsenal. Despite the massive amounts of training, snipers save the U.S. military about 249,999 rounds of ammunition for each enemy killed with nearly one kill per bullet.

Snipers spend their mission trying to remain invisible while positioning themselves as closely to the enemy as possible. Then they wait, often for hours, even days, if that is what's required to hit a target.

There are just nine qualified female snipers in the U.S. military today. They can all look up to a Russian girl who began working at a munitions factory when she was 15, to bring a pound-and-a-half of bread home to help feed her family.

Klaudia Kalugina remains one of the deadliest snipers ever.

Klaudia volunteered for Russia's sniper school when she was 17. Accustomed to manual labor, she impressed her trainers enough that she was given special instruction on her shooting. Her keen eyesight, a requisite for all 2,000 Russian female snipers of the time, pushed her abilities to the top.

The women snipers were all members of the Communist Youth, terribly idealistic and very close to the women with whom they served. Klaudia was partnered with her best friend Marusia Chikhvintseva who was killed by a German sniper not long after they joined the war. 

Klaudia's sorrow after Marusia's death may have spurred her to kill a reported 257 Axis troops. The best U.S. sniper in history, Chris Kyle, claimed an unconfirmed 225 kills.

Klaudia gave an interview prior to her death, reprinted here in English where she casually comments on hits she made at over one mile away.

It's an impressive story, particularly as the U.S. Armed Forces continue its path to some type of gender equality.

SEE ALSO: Eighteen things no Navy SEAL would leave home without

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A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded, The Telegraph has learnt.

The 20-year-old marksman, a Lance Corporal in the Coldstream Guards, hit his target from 930 yards (850 metres) away, killing the suicide bomber and five others around him caught in the blast.

The incident in Kakaran in southern Afghanistan happened in December but has only now been disclosed as Britain moves towards the withdrawal of all combat soldiers by the end of the year.

Lt Col Richard Slack, commanding officer of 9/12 Royal Lancers, said the unnamed sharpshooter prevented a major attack by the Taliban, as a second suicide vest packed with 20kg (44lbs) of explosives was found nearby.

The same sniper, with his first shot on the tour of duty, killed a Taliban machine-gunner from 1,465 yards (1,340m).

Several hundred British and Afghan soldiers were carrying out an operation in December when they were engaged in a gun battle with 15 to 20 insurgents.

“The guy was wearing a vest. He was identified by the sniper moving down a tree line and coming up over a ditch,” said Lt Col Slack. “He had a shawl on. It rose up and the sniper saw he had a machine gun.

“They were in contact and he was moving to a firing position. The sniper engaged him and the guy exploded. There was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, 'I think I’ve just shot a suicide bomber’. The rest of them were killed in the blast.”

It is understood the L/Cpl was using an L115A3 gun, the Army’s most powerful sniper weapon.

The armed forces are gradually decreasing their presence in Helmand province, handing over security of the country to the Afghan armed forces.

Last month, three major bases were closed or handed over to Afghan control. At the height of the campaign, there were 137 bases across Helmand province — now there is only one base outside Camp Bastion, Sterga 2, which is staffed by a company from 4 Scots and the 9/12 Royal Lancers.

The sniper incident is one of a dwindling number of gun battles between British forces and the insurgents. In total, 448 UK soldiers have died since 2001, but far fewer have been injured in the most recent tour, with Afghan forces now leading 97 per cent of the security operations across the country.

On Monday, at Sterga 2 — the last British front line base in Afghanistan — soldiers said they were looking forward to returning home and hoped their work would help the Afghans achieve stability.

Sterga 2 stands on a plateau above the Helmand river, about 18 miles south-east of Camp Bastion. Between Bastion and Sterga 2 is the “protected zone”, next to the river, where the local population is living under the protection of the Afghan armed forces.

The camp has only come under attack once, and that was when it was being built last August. “In my tour in 2007, I had seven guys injured while they were actually inside the base,” said Lt Col Slack. “We had rocket attacks every day. This base hasn’t been attacked since it was built. It feels like it is time to go.”

Capt Ed Challis, who is in charge of Sterga 2, said he was hopeful about the future of Afghanistan.

The country has its first round of presidential elections this Saturday, with an upsurge in violence expected as voters go to the polls.

“I am an optimist,” said Capt Ed Challis. “There are lots of things that have changed for the better. You would be a fool to think you can change a hundred years of culture fast, but have things improved? Yes. I believe they are able to take it forward.”

He added: “I’d imagine once I get back it’s something I’ll look back on and sort of realise the historical importance of it – but at the moment we’re just focusing on our primary role here.”

Highlander Paul Carr, 27, from Paisley, was on sentry duty in the watchtower above the river. He said he was enjoying the hot weather, after the camp was hit by snow in February. “When this base closes, we will go home,” he said. “I get a holiday feeling when I think about it.”

Highlander Carr was monitoring a small compound on the bank of the river. Camels and goats wandered around outside the farm, with small fields of onions growing in the sun. Poppies were also starting to flower, despite years of programmes to eradicate the poppy crops in Afghanistan.

Abandoned fortifications — Russian installations from the Eighties and older — dot the horizon.

Inside the camp, a company of servicemen and women were working to gather intelligence about the surrounding area.

The information is passed on to the Afghan security forces and intelligence from Sterga 2 aided the sniper attack in December.

Cameras mounted on balloons monitor the fields and compounds for several miles around, feeding into an operations room and providing protection for Bastion. The Taliban thought that the large balloon was a “white whale in the sky” when it was first launched.

Lt Col Slack lost one soldier, Lance Corporal James Brynin, 22, of the Intelligence Corps, who was shot dead on patrol last October.

Lt Col Slack said he had watched Afghanistan evolve dramatically over the years.

“The price has been heavy for the Army and in particular it has been heavy for the families of those nearly 450 [dead soldiers], and no one is under any illusions about that,” he said.

“I will finish my tour knowing one of our NCOs will not be coming home and that is a heavy price to pay.

“Has it been worth it? At my level when I look at security that is here and the way the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) have developed, I certainly think it’s been worth it.”

SEE ALSO: The Forgotten Heroes Of The War On Terror

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As a sniper in the military, I sometimes wished I had a bullet that could steer its own course, especially in multiple shifty crosswinds, or if a target was slightly behind some type of cover. It appears that dream is now becoming a reality.

DARPA has done the “almost” impossible and created something that we’ve only seen in the movies.

This year, DARPA has successfully tested its self-guided, mid-flight-changing .50 cal. projectile. DARPA’s “Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance” (EXACTO) project is tasked with “developing more accurate military artillery that will enable greater firing range, minimize the time required to engage with targets, and also help reduce missed shots that can give away the troops’ location.”

It seems that the projectile operates in the same manner as laser-guided bombs used in the GWOT. A few months ago, DARPA successfully tested the .50 cal. bullet at a distance of 1.2 miles. The projectile uses optical sensors in its nose to gather in-flight information and internal electronic systems that control the projectile’s fins—which most likely deploy in-flight, as they cannot be seen from the EXACTO photos.

The video link below shows a live testing of DARPA’s guided bullet with the rifle intentionally aimed to the right of the target. In the video, it shows how the projectile homes in on its intended target, changes its flight path, and connects. If this technology hits our military, snipers may not have to worry about the environmentals on those must-hit shots.

Although I do like the technology, I am also a firm believer in the basics, and will continue to rely on what I was taught and continue to practice in regards to precision shooting.

DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program recently conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets. The following video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is initially aimed.  

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In this excerpt from The Red Circle: My Life In The Navy SEAL Sniper Corps And How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen, former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb, describes the deadliest sniper in US military history.

Everything I'd experienced in the navy up to this point, from those early days as an aircrew search-and-rescue swimmer to BUD/S and STT through deployment on the USS Cole, in the the Gulf, and in Afghanistan, all of it had gone into our work in revamping and refining this sniper course, and we were now turning out some of the most decorated snipers in the world.  

There is no better example of this than Chris Kyle.

Chris is a Texan who had been shooting since he was a kid, and like a lot of guys who grew up hunting, he knew how to stalk. He was also a champion saddle-bronc rider; in fact, the first time he applied to the navy he was flat-out rejected because of pins in his arm, the result of a serious accident he'd had while in the rodeo ring. The navy later relented and actually sought him out for recruitment. Good thing for our side, as it turned out.

Chris immediately made a big impression on all the staff and obviously had great potential, although it didn't jump out and bite you at first. Chris is a classic example of a Spec Ops guy: a book you definitely do not want to judge by its cover. A quiet guy, he is unassuming, mild-mannered, and soft-spoken — as long as you don't get him riled. Walk past Chris Kyle on the street and you would not have the faintest sense that you'd just strolled by the deadliest marksman in US military history, with more than 150 confirmed kills. 

Like me, when it came time for assignment to the teams, Chris had chosen SEAL Team Three as his top pick, and gotten it, too. For his first deployment, he was one one of the SEALs on the ground in Iraq with the first wave of American troops at the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. While he was there, Chris saw some serious action; it was a helluva place to have your first deployment.

Upon rotating back home, one of the first things Chris did was to go through our sniper course. After graduating, he shipped right back out to Iraq, where he fought in the Second Battle for Fallujah, which turned out to be the biggest and bloodiest engagement in the entire Iraq war. Since the largely unsuccessful First Battle for Fallujah seven months earlier, the place had been heavily fortified, and we had big army units going in with small teams of our snipers attached to help give them the edge they needed. 

Our snipers would sneak in there, see enemy insurgents (sometimes snipers themselves) slipping out to try and ambush our guys, and just drop them in their tracks. It was no contest. 

Our guys were not only expert shots, they also knew how to think strategically and tactically, and they came up with all kinds of creative solutions on the battlefield. For example, they would stage an IED (improvised explosive device) to flush out the enemy.

They would take some beat-up vehicle they'd captured in a previous op, rig it up with explosives, drive it into the city, and blow it, simulating that it had been hit by an IED. 

Meanwhile, they would take cover and wait. All these enemy forces would start coming out of the woodwork, shooting off guns and celebrating, "Aha we got the Americans!" and the snipers would pick them all off like proverbial goldfish in a bowl. You didn't hear about this on the news, but they did it over and over, throughout the city.

Chris was in the middle of all this. In his first deployment he racked up close to 100 kills, 40 of them in the Second Battle for Fallujah alone. He was shot twice, in six separate IED explosions, and received multiple frag wounds from RPGs and other explosives.

The insurgents had a sniper there from the Iraqi Olympic shooting team, who was packing an English-made Accuracy International, about $10,000 worth of weapon. This guy was not messing around. Neither were Chris and our other snipers. They shot the guy and took his rifle. Al Qaeda put a bounty on Chris's head—but nobody ever collected. You can read about Chris's exploits in his book, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History.

As remarkable as he is, Chris Kyle is quick to point out that he was not unique on that battlefield. There was a whole lineup of SEAL snipers in Iraq at the time who were cutting a wide swathe through the hotbeds of insurgency, providing clear zones for our marines and army forces to operate without being picked off by enemy snipers themselves or being ambushed by IEDs.

It's easy to have an image of these guys as trained killers—mean, ruthless men who think nothing of ending other people's lives. Maybe even violent and bloodthirsty. The reality is quite different. Think about the various ways we have gone about winning wars in the past. Think about American planes firebombing Tokyo and Dresden during World War II, which burned to death hundreds of thousands of civilians. And that's an awfully painful way to go...Now think about a trained Navy SEAL sniper like Chris, waiting, sighting, and finally squeezing the trigger of his .300 Win Mag. The supersonic round reaches its destination in less than a second—the man is gone before the rifle's report reaches his ears.

The reality is that the death that comes with the sniper's strike is typically clean, painless, and as humane as death can be. A cleaner death, if we're really going to be honest with ourselves, than most of us will experience when we come to the end of our own lives. The sniper is like a highly skilled surgeon, practicing his craft on the battlefield.

Make no mistake: War is about killing other human beings, taking out the enemy before he takes us out, stopping the spread of further aggression by stopping those who would perpetuate that aggression. However, if the goal is to prosecute the war in order to achieve the peace, and to do so as fast and as effectively as possible, and with the least collateral damage, then warriors like Chris Kyle and our brothers-in-arms are heroes in the best sense.

Brandon Webb is a former US Navy SEAL with combat deployments to southwest Asia, including Iraq, and Afghanistan. He was a Course Manager for the US Navy SEAL Sniper program, arguably the most difficult sniper course in the world. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Excerpted with permission from The Red Circle: My Life In The Navy SEAL Sniper Corps And How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen. Copyright © 2012 by Brandon Webb. All rights reserved.

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Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper," a film based on the life of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in US military history, posted a $89.5 million opening weekend that smashed records for January. 

Despite earning six Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best actor, the film has politically divided audiences.

Comedian Seth Rogen likened the film to depictions of Nazi propaganda in the film "Inglourious Basterds." At least one prominent billboard in Los Angeles was defaced with the word "murder." And Kyle's widow has canceled some interviews following criticism.

Filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted to his 1.8 million followers that snipers are "cowards," though he later said Cooper's performance was "awesome" in a Facebook post.

My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 18, 2015

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich ripped into Moore:

Michael Moore should spend a few weeks with ISIS and Boko Haram. Then he might appreciate@AmericanSniper. I am proud of our defenders.

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) January 19, 2015

The film is based on the true story of Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle, who claimed more than 200 enemy kills (with 160 confirmed), making him the most lethal US sniper ever.

After four tours in Iraq, Kyle was shot point-blank and killed by Eddie Ray Routh, a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Cooper defended the film.

"We need to pay attention to our vets. It doesn't go any farther than that,"Cooper said in an interview with The Daily Beast. "It's not a political discussion about war. It's a discussion about the reality. And the reality is that people are coming home, and we have to take care of them."

Former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb echoes that sentiment: "The biggest issue is transition from military to civilian life," Webb said. "You get a one-week class and then you're on your a--."

Both Webb and Kyle, who knew each other for more than 10 years, served on SEAL Team 3. 

"Chris Kyle was a human being, a Texan, Navy SEAL, father, husband, and a hero to many at a time when we need all the heroes we can get. I knew him to be a good person, regardless of all the bulls--- floating around in the media," Webb writes.  

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SEE ALSO: Navy SEAL Sniper Instructor Describes America's Best Marksman Ever

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As a US Marine and former Scout/Sniper, I have trained, operated, and learned in turn from America’s best warriors.

These include Navy SEAL’s, US Marines Force Reconnaissance, US Army Rangers, Delta, and Green Berets, among others.

The recent portrait of Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, along with the controversy surrounding it, has been fueled by comments on the morality or even intestinal fortitude of military professionals such as me.

Unfortunately, as happens so often in American discourse, those speaking the loudest are giving opinions on a matter of which they have no knowledge or experience.

The direction that the conversation has taken on social media and major news networks has tended to focus on a “bad” versus “good” notion of snipers’ actions and their beliefs.

A movie has caused the ignorant to pass judgment on an entire group of professionals whose actions and experience they know nothing of.

Some claim that snipers are cold-blooded murderers. Others say that being and using snipers in combat is cowardly.

There are those who have never wore the uniform themselves (and some who have) who have opined that shooting an enemy combatant from a concealed position rather than facing him in open combat lacks bravery.

Notably, most of them say this from their couches thousands of miles away and safe at home.

One Shot, No Kill

As a Marine Scout/Sniper, my training went well beyond simply pulling the trigger while hiding in some bushes. Shooting and concealment were only part of the training. Making fast, life-and-death decisions in very difficult scenarios was another.

Nothing was black and white. Our world is colored in grey, where actions could either influence the battlefield in our favor or the enemy’s favor. Eliminating the right target could save lives; eliminating the wrong target could lead to many more deaths.

Imagine the effect on world events if one American sniper had been able to get Adolf Hitler in his sights. We all know the effect of the assassination of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy by one — or more — determined shooters. “Second and third order effects” was not the official terminology used, but the concept was ingrained in everything we did.

My proudest shot of all time was sitting on the 5th floor of the Baath Party Headquarters in Saddam City, Baghdad in 2003, a scene actually depicted in another film, the HBO series Generation Kill.

A building was being set fire to outside of our position by people lighting rolls of paper on fire and throwing them at the building. Through my optics I watched a teenage boy walk toward a roll of paper with the clear intent of setting it on fire and throwing it at the building like the others.

I had been cleared by my command to take a shot. These individuals were threatening lives and property. It would be a high angle shot and he was about 100 meters from our position, so I had to quickly calculate the mathematical adjustments that I would have to make in my head.

I could would have shot him in the head, a decision that some snipers actually made. Instead, I decided to teach him a lesson that would be seared into his memory forever. Just as he bent over to pick up the roll of paper, I took the shot.

The distance was too close for me to observe the impact, but my spotter immediately began rolling on the ground laughing at the result.

As the boy had grabbed the paper, the roll violently exploded from his grasp and the loud bang of my round echoed through his brain. He jumped into the air, turned, and ran away. No more fires were set.

Instead of turning his family or his entire tribe into insurgents bent on revenge by killing this young man, those arsonists who witnessed it and those he told the story to would understand that we were not there just to kill people, though we had clearly shown that we could have.

Collateral Damage

The job of a sniper is not about strapping on “cool-guy” armored gear with lots of straps, Velcro, and guns, flying in on helicopters with 20 other bulked-up bad-asses with beards, sunglasses, ball caps, and dip in their mouths with the intent of killing “brown people,” as the movies picture it.

The reality is that my spotter and I found ourselves alone, on foot, and much closer to the action and its results.

We once went on a “Hunter-Killer” mission to find and eliminate insurgents, but instead ended up “going slick” with no protective gear other than pistols stuffed down the front of our pants and sitting in the dirt speaking Arabic with an Iraqi family who had happened upon our position.

Some of them had been left badly mutilated by US collateral bomb damage and we helped them pick sunflower seeds to sell at the market, income they now depended upon to live. Instead of not valuing their lives as highly as ours and not caring about Iraqi “savages” and “killing them all”, we listened, learned, and helped where we could.

Why? A year earlier, on our first deployment, we watched the smiles and waves of the populace that had greeted us as liberators from Saddam turn into scowls and later into IEDs that were killing our guys on the roads. We wore out our welcome as our convoys and checkpoints ground the city to a halt. Our cordon and search operations disrupted homes.

Political decisions such as disbanding the Iraqi Army and de-Baathification fueled an insurgency that became a call to international Jihad. The people no longer wanted us there. It was all “collateral damage” — physical, political, societal, and otherwise — to a military operation that had no clear guidance from Washington.

As a Scout/Sniper, I had been trained and given the job of taking advantage of opportunities to win battles with one or several well-placed shots. This placed my thinking in a different realm. In my mind, my job was “one shot, one kill.” Instead of creating a thousand new insurgents by killing five “savages”, we could kill a thousand insurgents by creating five friends.

Taking the population — the center or gravity in counterinsurgency — away from the enemy would prevent new insurgents as much as kill them. In many ways, our job was the delicate brain surgery that Washington was attempting to perform in Iraq with the hammer that is the US military.

We were cutting out the cancer, one bad guy at a time. If policymakers had considered the “collateral damage” invading Iraq would cause, many things would be different there today.

In my battle, I did not raid or fire explosive munitions into houses. I only unleashed one 7.62 millimeter bullet when I was sure it was going to hit the one enemy combatant it was meant for.

No “precision munition” or laser-guided bomb can claim that. Reducing “collateral damage” to women, children, and non-combatants was a priority and eliminating extremists with one bullet was how I went about it.

Snipers are not cold-blooded murderers. Forget all those bashing American Sniper in the media. 

In our fight, two men went outside the wire alone with nothing but their wits, their skills, and their rifles with the intent to win the war one bullet at a time. If that is not bravery, I don’t know what is.

Matt Victoriano was a Scout/Sniper Team Leader with 1st Battalion 4th Marines from 2000 to 2004. He was recently honored as a White House Champion of Change for his entrepreneurial work helping veterans and the community in Durham, NC.

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Simon Menner contacted the German army in 2010 to see if they’d be interested in helping him create images where members of the army are hidden, or, “Camouflage,” like the title of his series. Turns out they were, and the images ended up going viral.

Menner arranged two separate shoots, one in a “boring” forest in northern Germany with soldiers who were young and inexperienced. The second shoot, in the German Alps, was done with a group of elite soldiers.

“I found it quite interesting to work with soldiers who had been ordered to follow my instructions,” Menner wrote via email. “I tried to be as respectful to them as possible, but nothing of what I told them was questioned in any way.”

Menner think of his work as a conceptual take on conflict and war. He said the idea of conflict for him isn’t just about battle, it is also a reflection on society — including the ways in which branding and marketing influence consumers.

“The key question for me and my work at the moment is, how images are used to influence people and their decisions,” Menner wrote. “At the core, hiding snipers and ads for Apple have something in common, since both try to infect us with ideas about things we are not able to see. But I think that this is easier to detect while ‘looking’ at hidden snipers than by looking at Apple ads.”

Since it’s not a documentary project, Menner said part of the fun is trying to find the hidden snipers. While he is using real people and creating images in which the snipers are actually hidden, many of the comments he has received from viewers questioned the authenticity of the images, something he finds amusing.

“First of all, it is real,” he wrote. “Whoever has doubts about that should contact the German Army. There were snipers present in every single shot and they were in fact, ordered to aim at the camera, so they could see me, even though I was almost never able to see them. The professional training they have received means that in some of the images, no trace of them can be seen, even if you look at the image pixel by pixel. This is exactly how a sniper in a forest is supposed to appear.”

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