The Marine Scout Sniper school is the most elite military sniper school on earth. It is also one of the toughest special operations courses in the US Military.

Not only do the Army, Navy, and the Air Force send troops here, but foreign services like the Israelis and the British also trade students for the opportunity to earn the Marine Sniper designation.

One of the profiled students in this Discovery video was attached to the unit Business Insider also covered in Afghanistan in 2012. Not only did he supply the company with absurdly accurate intelligence on the enemy. He also took a couple of them out when the unit needed it most.

Those are the two primary missions of Marine Scout Snipers: Recon and targeted strikes on enemy personnel and equipment. They can be more devastating for enemy forces than a plane full of bombs.

This post was originally by Geoffrey Ingersoll and Robert Johnson

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There are fewer than 300 active snipers in the US Marine Corps — and only four Marine sniper schools including this one at Camp Pendleton, in California.

The 32 elite students who enter the course need almost perfect physical fitness (PT) scores, expert rifle qualifications, and superior intelligence test scores

It is here where Professionally Instructed Gunmen (PIG), become Hunters Of Gunmen (HOG)

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is considered the deadliest sniper in US military history. Kyle had 160 confirmed kills, and his autobiography, "American Sniper," led to a hit movie of the same title.

The real-life story has a tragic ending. In 2013, Eddie Ray Routh, a 27-year-old Marine veteran, allegedly shot and killed Kyle. Jury selection began Thursday for Routh's trial, scheduled to start next week.

Finally back on American soil after four tours in Iraq, Kyle started taking veterans to shooting ranges as a form of therapy. When a woman who lived near Kyle heard about his efforts, she asked him to help her son, Routh, then just 25 and reportedly suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield took Routh to target practice at the 11,000-acre Rough Creek Lodge Shooting Range on Feb. 2, 2013, near Chalk Mountain, Texas. That day, Routh allegedly shot and killed both men. No witnesses saw the situation unfold.

"Someone taking the lives of two people that were there to help them — that's not PTSD, in my opinion," Kyle's widow, Taya, told ABC News. 

Routh, an expert marksman who served in Iraq and Haiti, admitted to killing Kyle and Littlefield at the range and then driving away in Kyle's truck, according to a police affidavit. 

Later that night, Routh allegedly drove to his sister Laura Belvin's house. She told police Routh seemed "out of his mind saying people were sucking his soul and that he could smell the pigs." His brother-in-law also told police Routh said he killed two men at the range.

In another 911 call in September 2012, Routh's mother told the operator Routh had threatened to kill himself and others. Records obtained by the Dallas Morning Show indicate Routh spent time a psychiatric hospital at least twice.

With the popularity of the film "American Sniper"— which grossed nearly $250 million and was nominated for six Oscars — finding an impartial jury is a tough task. On the questionnaire, an affirmative answer alone to, "Did you see the movie 'American Sniper?'" will disqualify potential jurors. 

The location of the trial, the close-knit, military-friendly town of Stephenville, Texas, could also affect the jury's opinion of the case. Also, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just declared Feb. 2 "Chris Kyle Day" in honor of the late Navy SEAL sniper. Routh's lawyer already tried and failed to postpone and move the trial.

Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty against Routh.

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The widow of the Navy SEAL depicted in the Oscar-nominated film "American Sniper" clutched military dog tags as she told jurors about her final moments with her husband, just hours before he and a friend were slain at a Texas gun range.

Taya Kyle was the first prosecution witness called Wednesday in the murder trial of the ex-Marine accused of fatally shooting Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield two years ago. The trial in the small town of Stephenville, located about 30 miles from the rural luxury resort where the men were killed, has attracted national attention with the recent release of the blockbuster movie based on the memoir of the sniper who served four tours in Iraq.

Defense attorneys are seeking an insanity defense for Eddie Ray Routh, 27, who faces life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder. Kyle had taken the troubled Marine to the shooting range after Routh's mother asked Kyle if he could help him.

Taya Kyle paused and then her voice broke when a prosecutor asked her to give jurors the name of the man she'd married. But her testimony was conversational and compelling and she often looked straight at jurors as she talked about him, smiling when she said he had attended Tarleton State University in Stephenville before leaving to ride broncos in the rodeo and later joining the Navy.

"I'm not nervous, just emotional," she told the prosecutor.

She told jurors that as her husband left to go to the shooting range on Feb. 2, 2013, "we just said we loved each other and gave each other a hug and kiss, like we always did."

The day started like any typical Saturday for the Kyles. As parents of an 8-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl, they had spent their morning cheering at youth sporting events and chatting with friends. Taya Kyle had plans that afternoon to take their daughter to a Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Taya Kyle said she'd called her husband midafternoon — around the time he arrived at Rough Creek Lodge and Resort — and noticed he was unusually terse. Instead of his usual "hello babe," he gave a quick "hello." He said it would be fine to have dinner with friends. Then she asked if he was OK. He just said "yep."

"It was short, like: 'I wish I could say more,'" she said.

During opening statements, a defense attorney revealed a text message exchange between Chris Kyle and Littlefield as they drove to the lodge with Routh, whom Kyle had picked up at his house.Kyle texted Littlefield: "This dude is straight-up nuts."

"He's (sitting) right behind me, watch my six," Littlefield texted back, using a military term for watching one's back.

As dinnertime approached, she became concerned. Littlefield's wife called her, also worried. Taya Kyle's alarm grew when she texted her husband: "Are you OK? I'm getting worried." There was no reply.

The bodies of Littlefield and Kyle were found at the shooting range at about 5 p.m. Both were shot multiple times.

Erath County District Attorney Alan Nash described Routh as "a troubled young man" who on the morning of the killings numbed himself with marijuana and whiskey. He said a history of mental illness should not absolve Routh in the deaths.

"The evidence will show that mental illnesses, even the ones that this defendant may or may not have, don't deprive people from being good citizens, to know right from wrong," Nash said.

Tim Moore, an attorney for Routh, said Kyle and Littlefield's text exchange shows how Routh was spiraling out of control. He told jurors that Routh was suffering from severe mental strain that day and thought he needed to kill the two or they would turn on him.

Routh was a small arms technician who served in Iraq and was deployed to earthquake-ravaged Haiti before leaving the Marines in 2010. Authorities say that after the shootings, Routh drove to his sister's house in Kyle's truck, admitted to the killings and told his sister "people were sucking his soul."

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A former US Army sergeant pleaded guilty in a New York court Friday to charges that he conspired to murder an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and an informant, after being snared in an elaborate sting operation by authorities.

Joseph Hunter, 49, who was a sniper instructor, recruited an international team of former military personnel, many of whom were also snipers, to work as security and enforcers for what they believed was a Colombian drug cartel.

In fact, his employers were working in cooperation with the DEA. Hunter and five other men were arrested in Sept. 2013, after being recorded agreeing to kill a DEA agent and an informant in Liberia for $800,000, the BBC reported. The murders never took place.

Three of the other men arrested with Hunter, former U.S. Army Sergeant Timothy Vamvakias, former German sniper Dennis Gogel and former Polish sniper Slawomir Soborski, have already pleaded guilty to charges associated with the plot and are awaiting sentencing. The fifth man charged in the case, former German military sniper Michael Filter, goes on trial in June, according to Sky News.

Hunter's lawyers unsuccessfully sought to have the charges against him dismissed on grounds of outrageous government conduct, the New York Times reported. They cited the DEA’s use of a cooperating witness -- a former boss of Hunter’s who had threatened to kill him in the past -- to introduce Hunter to the informers who were posing as traffickers.

One of the charges Hunter pleaded guilty to carries a ten-year minimum sentence, and he could face up to life in prison when sentenced in May. In addition to the conspiracy to murder charges, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S., and firearms charges.

Hunter’s lawyer, Marlon Kirton, told the New York Post that his client's “judgment was severely affected by his PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder],” and urged the sentencing judge to take it into consideration. Hunter was reportedly diagnosed with PTSD after serving in Iraq.

In a release cited by the Associated Press, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Hunter became "a soldier of misfortune who recruited and led an international band of criminal mercenaries. This global gun for hire will now be confined stateside in federal prison."

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Much like US special operations forces, Russia has its own elite troops who shine during special missions such as counterterrorism and hostage rescue.

"Spetsnaz," or special purpose, is an umbrella term for special ops in Russia and other Eastern Bloc states. These elite troops traditionally fall under the GRU (intelligence service), FSB (security service), and other ministries, in addition to the traditional military structure.

Regardless, they are the "core of the best trained men the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, could produce," according to Sofrep.

In this video, we get a sense of what these troops are capable of. It is worth pointing out, however, that this was produced in Russia and isn't exactly an impartial look at this force.

Here is the video:

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A sniper demonstrates his camouflage (note: German Waffen-SS Camo Pattern: named unofficially "Early Plane Tree") at a sniper school in a French village, July 27, 1944.

A sniper applying camouflage face cream at a sniper school in a Normandy village, July 27 1944.

A 6th Airborne Division sniper on patrol in the Ardennes, wearing a snow camouflage suit, January 14 1945.

A British sniper aiming through the telescopic sights of his rifle on the range at a sniper training school in France, July 27, 1944.

A British sniper, Private Sutcliffe, at a window of a house in Caen watching for enemy snipers through telescopic sights.

A camouflage suit for a sniper of the British Army.

A sniper from C Company, 5th Battalion, The Black Watch , 51st (Highland) Division, in a ruined building in Gennep, Holland, February 14 1945.

A sniper from C Company, 5th Battalion, The Black Watch, 51st (Highland) Division, in the loft space of a ruined building in Gennep, Holland, February 14 1945.

A sniper from the Seaforth Highlanders aiming from behind a carrier as 15th (Scottish) Division troops deal with German resistance in Uelzen, April 16 1945.

Canadian Sniper, Pte. L. V. Hughe.

Lance Corporal A P Proctor, a sniper with 56th Division, cleaning his rifle, November 24, 1943.

Sergeant sergeant H.A. Marshall of the Calgary Highlanders Sniping Platoon. Kapellen, Belgium.

Snipers at a sniper school in a French village, July 27, 1944.

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Simo Häyhä, also known as "The White Death," was a Finnish sniper who is credited with killing more than 500 enemy troops within 100 days during the Winter War against the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1940.

Häyhä accomplished this with a Russian-made Mosin-Nagant M91 rifle and iron sights. He preferred the iron sights to the scope because it allowed him to shoot from a lower, less visible position. The sights also didn't fog up in the cold or glare in the sun, which could give away his position, according to "Special Forces Sniper Skills," by Robert Stirling.

His career ended when he was shot in the face, blowing off part of his cheek and lower jaw. He survived the shot, becoming one of Finland's most legendary heroes. He died in 2002 of natural causes.

This six-minute video tells his incredible story.

Watch:

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Fort Sumter, South Carolina was famous for having suffered the first shots of the Civil War in April 1861.

Over three years later, the two sides were still fighting over it.

Confederate troops held the badly damaged fort while Union soldiers fired on it with artillery from batteries on nearby islands.

On Dec. 5 an unidentified Confederate soldier in Fort Sumter saw a Union soldier moving in Battery Gregg, 1390 yards away.

The Southerner was likely using a Whitworth Rifle when he lined up his sights on the Union soldier and fired, killing him.

That’s longer than any confirmed kill of World War I or II and only 400 yards shy of making a modern top 10 list. Wikipedia still ranks it as the 14th longest sniper kill in history.

Whitworth Rifles are sometimes called the first real sniper rifle. Capable of accurate fire at 800 yards, its hexagonal rounds could penetrate a sandbag to kill an enemy standing behind it.

The rifle made the shot easier but the skill and luck needed to kill an enemy at 1,390 yards was still great. When the rifle was mounted on a special stand and tested at 1,400 yards, 10 shots created a grouping over 9 feet wide.

Unfortunately, the record-setting shot on Dec. 5, 1864 was illegal. The Confederate soldiers didn’t know a ceasefire was in effect in the area and the shot violated that ceasefire. Other Confederate snipers at Fort Sumter took up the volley, forcing the Union troops to seek cover.

Fort Sumter in Sep. 1863 had already been subjected to two years of shelling by Confederate and then Union forces. After this photo was taken, it would suffer another year of shelling before the events of Dec. 5, 1864.

The Union soldiers endured the fire for an hour before they responded. They began firing cannons from the battery at Cummings Point, a group of cannons protected from retaliation by iron armor.

After an hour of shelling, the Confederates learned of the ceasefire and sent the Union general a very gracious letter of apology.

Both sides returned to the truce, but it didn’t last. Charleston was still under siege and Union batteries soon resumed shelling the city. In mid-February 1865, Confederate troops withdrew from Fort Sumter and Charleston as Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman arrived on his famous march to the sea.

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Sniper duels are common in movies, but they’re actually pretty rare in real life. Snipers spend most of their time protecting friendly troops and engaging enemy riflemen.

Still, snipers have faced off in tense, life-and-death battles. Here are six legendary cases where snipers hunted one another.

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1. Carlos Hathcock and his hunter

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Marine legend Gunnery Sgt. Carlos Hathcock fought a few sniper battles during his time in Vietnam as the North Vietnamese sent sniper after sniper to hunt him.

In one sniper duel, Hathcock found the trail of an NVA sniper hunting him. While following the sniper, Hathcock tripped over a tree and gave away his position. The NVA sniper took a shot but hit Hathcock’s spotter’s canteen.

The men maneuvered against each other and Hathcock eventually caught sight of a glint in the brush. He fired and then moved forward to investigate. As Hathcock had suspected, the glint was from the enemy scope. Hathcock’s round had gone straight through the tube and through the sniper’s eye.

2. Australian Billy Sing vs. Abdul the Terrible

Trooper Billy Sing was an Australian who volunteered for service in World War I and found himself in Gallipoli fighting the Turks. Most days, he and a spotter would find a spot in the trees overlooking the enemy’s trench and then kill a soldier or two.

By the time he had amassed 200 kills, he was well known to the Turks who sent their own sniper, Abdul the Terrible. Abdul managed to kill Sing’s spotter, Tom Sheehan. Sing later spotted Abdul and avenged Sheehan. The Turks then attempted to shell Sing’s hiding place, but the sniper had already withdrawn to the trenches.

3. Simo Häyhä and the Soviet snipers sent to kill him

Simo Häyhä, a Finnish sniper from World War II, was known for scoring more than 500 Soviet kills in only 100 days. Of course, the Russians weren’t okay with this and sent sniper after sniper to kill him.

Häyhä picked them all off one by one until March 1940, when an unidentified Soviet sniper shot him through the face. Häyhä survived the shot and the war. He was promoted straight from corporal to lieutenant for his success on the battlefield.

California's Department of Justice made its largest-ever weapons seizure from a single home on November 18th, removing 531 individual guns and more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition from the home of Clovis resident Albert Sheakalee, Frens0-based ABC affiliate KFSN reports.

Sheakalee, 59, was formerly a federally sanctioned arms dealer, but he lost his license this year, ABC reports.

In June, the state institutionalized Sheakalee three times for mental health issues, believing that he was a danger to himself and others.

By California state law, that makes it illegal for him to own any guns, according to a statement from the California Department of Justice.

After being institutionalized, Sheakalee missed a court-mandated deadline for relinquishing his guns, and was subsequently was charged with illegal possession of firearms.

During a raid on Sheakalee's home, agents seized 209 handguns, 88 shotguns, 234 rifles, 181 standard capacity magazines, 10 high-capacity magazines, 100,521 rounds of various ammunition, and 10 assault weapons including a .50 caliber bolt action rifle, which are banned under California law.

DOJ Special Agent-In-Charge Michael Haroldsen noted in an interview with ABC news that "these firearms were not stored in safes or locked up, so anyone breaking into this home would have access to these firearms."

“Removing firearms from dangerous and violent individuals who pose a threat to themselves and the public is a top priority for the California Department of Justice,” California state attorney general Kamala D. Harris in the statement. 

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A Special Air Service sniper who spotted a group of Islamic State fighters leaving a suspected bomb-making facility in Iraq fired three shots that detonated two suicide vests and killed all five fighters, according to reports in British media.

The SAS sniper was operating 800 meters away from the factory when he noticed the group wearing unseasonably warm and bulky clothing.

The 10-year veteran of the SAS hit the first man in the chest and detonated his vest, killing three fighters. As the two survivors attempted to escape back into the factory, the sniper shot one in the head and the other in the vest, which detonated the second vest.

“This was a classic SAS mission,” a British Army source told the Express. “About three weeks ago the intelligence guys got information that a bomb factory had been set up in a nearby village.

With just three well-aimed shots, that single team has probably saved the lives of hundreds of innocent people. The unit was sent in to see if they could identify the house and the bombers.”

The decision to attack with a sniper was made due to concerns about collateral damage.

“There were too many civilian homes nearby and children were often around, so an airstrike was out of the question,” the unidentified British Army source said. “Instead, the SAS commander in Iraq decided to use a sniper team and the operation was a complete success.”

In another engagement in Aug. 2015, another British sniper reportedly saved an 8-year-old boy and his father who were about to be executed.

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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 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 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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Simon Menner contacted the German army in 2010 to see whether it would be interested in helping him create images in which 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."

Because it's not a documentary project, Menner said part of the fun was 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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"You dumb pig!! What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

My sniper instructor screamed in my face after I had ID'd and shot a target on the stalk lane, all while remaining hidden.

The beratement confused me. I had just successfully completed a stalk lane, and on one of my first attempts at Marine sniper school too.

This was not an easy thing to do. Luckily, I had plenty of time to ponder my instructor's "feedback" as I did pushups in a full ghillie suit with my rifle and gear strapped on my back.

I'll explain a few of these sniper terms so you can understand the gist of what I'm talking about here.

• Pig: A non-flattering word hurled at those lowly scum training to become scout snipers. It's an acronym: Professionally Instructed Grunt (PIG). Those in training hope to graduate sniper school and become HOG's, which stands for Hunter of Gunmen.
• Stalk: At its most basic level, stalking is the art of movement. It's when a sniper moves into position, sometimes extremely close to his target, with the intent of elimination while avoiding detection. A stalk lane is just an area of space a sniper is allowed to move in during a military exercise. It's generally a kilometer long and maybe a hundred yards or so in width. The sniper starts at the opposite end of both his target and observers (the instructors with scopes trying to spot him) and then walks, crawls, and worms himself to within 200 meters of his target to take a shot. The goal throughout the exercise is to avoid discovery by the observers. It's an extremely difficult task and is the primary reason why most fail sniper school.
• Ghillie suit: The ghillie suit is the bush-like suit that you see snipers wear in movies. It helps camouflage our movement.

While doing my pushups in my piss soaked ghillie (you can be on the stalk lane for hours and it's not like you can just stand up to go to the bathroom...) my instructor asked me if I knew what I had done.

I said "yes, I successfully completed the stalk lane and eliminated the target without being compromised".

To that he responded "wow, you really are a dim-witted window licker. Yes, you eliminated your target without being compromised... but you rushed your shot.

By doing so, you lowered your chances of producing a killing hit, while raising your chances of being exposed. And in a combat situation, this means you raised your likelihood of failing your mission and getting killed."

This made sense to me and I rushed to speak up to let my instructor know that I understood. But as I opened my mouth he yelled "shut your damn c*** holster pig! I'm not done cracking an egg of knowledge over your undeserving pathetic grape (marine speak for head)." I nodded in the affirmative.

"Listen." he said. "If you ever make it as a sniper and get deployed on a live mission, you are going to be flooded with a wide range of emotions. Fear, excitement, hope, adrenaline, they're all going to be coursing through your veins. This is normal. The danger is that you let these affect your decision making.

Maybe you take a shot before you've fully doped out the target. Or maybe you pull the trigger when you don't have a great visual. You can't let this happen. Amateurs rush and Marine scout snipers are not amateurs. You need to operate with a detached machine efficiency. 

You need to practice infinite patience. You need to embrace the sniper motto of "suffer silently, silently suffer."

The idea of practicing infinite patience made sense to me. Unfortunately, it took a lot of pain and suffering and many more months of getting thrashed in my ghillie suit before the importance of this concept fully sank in and I began to practice it diligently. That knowledge ended up saving my life more than a few times later on during my deployments.

In sniping, I learned the art of patience and became a master of it. I would wait for days at a time, letting the right shot develop, never forcing it. I let my intuition tell me when the time was right.

Many years later, well after my career as a sniper, I had to relearn this art of infinite patience. The process was no less painful (though in different terms) and I was just as reluctant as before to fully adopt and practice the wisdom. But this time around, instead of being armed with a rifle, I had my computer. And my bullets were my uninvested capital, which I seemed hellbent on firing off at the first semi-attractive trade I saw.

For years I lost money on stupid trades that I should have never put on. Or I entered way too early, only to get shaken out before the stock ran like Usain Bolt.

My complete lack of patience didn't just kill me through bad entries and poor trades either. It also cut my profits when I finally did catch a winner because I would always exit much too soon. I also missed good opportunities because I didn't have any dry powder left after all my other subpar trades (all my capital was tied up).

The legendary trader Jesse Livermore once famously said:

"And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!"

Infinite Patience is the name of the game. Truly practicing this is impossible for most. The emotions created by markets are just too persuasive. They affect decision making and usually cause disastrous results. As my instructor would say "this is what amateurs do".

The truth is, to go from amateur to pro, and to embrace infinite patience in investing, you have to go through large amounts of pain. I don't see any other way around it. You're going to have to lose money and make bad trades over and over again. Eventually, the pain sears itself deeply enough into your conscious to leave a scar as a constant reminder.

Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest fund managers alive, has said that he won't hire traders who haven't experienced major losses. He sees the experience as a necessary rite of passage that instills a sub-conscious respect for capital. It fosters good habits.

One of the toughest parts for me was suffering from a strong emotional fear of missing out (FOMO). I hate missing good trades. This urge still remains, but I have developed rules and systems that I follow which prevent me from trading hastily. I diligently follow this system because I have been hurt so many times by my own stupidity.

Now... I love waiting. I love sitting patiently and waiting for a trade to develop, never rushing. I let price tell me when the optimal time to enter is and when it's a good time to take some off the table. I take satisfaction in the mastery I’ve gained over my own stupid tendencies and bad habits.

Just like when I was a sniper, I wait and wait and wait. I watch diligently. I let the trade come to me, knowing full well that if I miss this one, there's another that'll be just as good right around the corner. And then when the time is just right and the trade presents itself perfectly in my sights, I pull the trigger.

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Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney was one of the most lethal snipers of the Vietnam War with 103 confirmed kills. In a particularly daring engagement, Mawhinney stopped a Viet Cong assault by hitting 16 headshots in 30 seconds at night in bad weather.

“Chuck was extremely aggressive,” retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Mark Limpic, Mawhinney’s squad leader, later told LA Times. “He could run a half-mile, stand straight up and shoot offhand and drop somebody at 700 yards.”

Mawhinney was operating out of a base near Da Nang in what the U.S. military called Arizona Territory.

A large North Vietnamese Army force was spotted moving its way south towards the U.S. base, but a monsoon shut down air support. So Mawhinney volunteered to cover a river crossing where the force was expected to march.

Mawhinney left his sniper rifle at the base and moved forward with an M14 semiautomatic rifle and a Starlight scope, an early night vision device.

The sniper and his spotter positioned themselves overlooking the shallowest river crossing. A few hours later, the NVA appeared.

A single scout approached the river first, but Mawhinney waited. When the rest of the NVA began to cross the river, Mawhinney kept waiting. It wasn’t until the men were deep into the river that Mawhinney began firing.

He engaged the enemy at ranges from 25 to 75 meters, nailing one man after the other through the head. As he describes it, in 30 seconds “I shot 16 times, 16 went down the river.”

The two Marines then hastily fell back as the NVA tried to hit them with small arms and machine gun fire.

See Mawhinney and another Marine sniper describe the engagement in the video below:

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These 7 snipers reached out and touched the enemy from a long way away:

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1. The British sniper who nailed three 1.53-mile hits

Each shot took 6 seconds to impact. He fired five times. Two shots missed but one round ripped through the gunner’s stomach, another took out the assistant gunner, and the last one destroyed the machine gun.

2. A Canadian sniper who took out a machine gunner in Operation Anaconda

During Operation Anaconda, the bloody hunt of Afghan militants in the Shahikot Valley in Mar. 2002, Canadian Cpl. Rob Furlong was watching over a group of US troops and saw an insurgent automatic weapons team climbing a ridge 1.5 miles away.

His first two shots narrowly missed but the third broke open the gunner’s torso and left him bleeding out on the ground. The shot barely beat out Master Cpl. Arron Perry’s shot discussed below.

3. Another Canadian sniper in Operation Anaconda who took out an observer from nearly the same distance

Canadian Master Cpl. Arron Perry was also supporting US troops in Operation Anaconda when he spotted an enemy artillery observer 1.43 miles away. Perry took aim at the observer and nailed him. Perry held the record for world’s longest sniper kill for a few days before Furlong beat it.

Abu Tahseen is an Iraqi fighter known as “the Silver Sniper.” He’s a veteran of four wars, and now he’s fighting ISIS.

Tahseen claims to have killed at least 173 fighters since joining the Shia militia in May 2015, but that number could have gone substantially higher since the filming of this video.

His first mission is to push ISIS from the Makhoul Mountains, and he’s determined to get as many kills as possible before the war is over. Tahseen’s story has also inspired others to take up arms against the enemy.

This video shows the veteran shooting militants in the mountains of Iraq.

Watch:

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The best snipers in the world meet up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina each year to fight for top bragging rights and to learn from each other.

Twenty-five sniper teams from the US, Ireland, Singapore, Kazakhstan, and other allied nations competed in 21 tough events during the 2016 US Army Special Operations Command International Sniper Competition, which took place Mar. 20 to 25.

Each event tests snipers’ professional and tactical skills and is based on actual combat experiences. 

The competitors conducted day and night shoots in a tactical environment at ranges from a few dozen feet to over 3,000.

“The competition is combat-oriented on things that have been used on deployment,” Master Sgt. Jason Brown, a Special Forces Sniper Course instructor and an event coordinator during the 2014 competition told an Army journalist. “Because of this, it tests the competitors on tasks that will help them complete their missions down range.”

Snipers have to prove they can stalk through the bush and fire a variety of weapons to win. And the competition is fierce. Most units send their best sniper and spotter teams to earn top honors. They have to be masters of sniper techniques.

One of the best things about this competition and others like it is that when top-tier snipers from friendly militaries get together, they trade tips and secrets on how to be effective. The cadre running the event can also see skills they can teach to future students.

“It brings all the snipers together from all over the world, which gives them a chance to communicate on what they are doing in training to become better snipers,” said Brown.

“This helps the SFSC committee because most of the competitors are from the Special Operations Forces Regiments and it allows us to see how well they have been trained by us and how well they are conducting their own training once they have completed ours.”

Special Forces Association-Chapter 62 with The Special Forces Charitable Trust sponsored the competition and funded prizes such as rifles, optics, and other high-quality, essential equipment.

Green Berets swept the podium as 3rd Special Forces Group took the top spot in 2016 and two other Special Forces groups took second and third.

The US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and US Army Special Operations Center of Excellence Sniper Course instructors ran the annual US Army Special Operations Command International Sniper Competition.

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Former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb knew the real "American Sniper," Chris Kyle, and helped design the training course that Kyle took. When he watched Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper's movie he had a lot to say about it.

Produced by Eames Yates

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