US Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Brian Spreitzer
Staff Sgt. Joe Bastian and co-trainer Tarrol Peterson look for snipers during the 10-day sniper training course at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.
During large, multiunit exercises, the US military's snipers can be overshadowed by the men and machines roving the battlefield.
To correct that, Staff Sgt. Joe Bastian - a former active-duty sniper who is now a sniper observer/controller/trainer with the First Army's 1st Battalion, 335th Infantry Regiment - designed a special 10-day training course for snipers during the 33rd Infantry Brigade's Exportable Combat Training Capability, or XCTC, at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.
"The course is designed to get all of the snipers from the brigade together to train, broaden their horizons and share tactics, techniques and procedures," he said in an Army news story.
Bastian called on two former instructors from the US Army's Sniper School at Fort Benning in Georgia, and their course filled the 10-day exercise with weeks' worth of training for soldiers from Illinois' 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team and Puerto Rico's 1st Battalion, 296th Infantry Regiment.
The course teaches snipers how to design their own training courses, as well as how to work with ammunition, targets, and ranges, and how to use camouflage and stalking techniques during training.
Below, you can see some photos of US Army National Guard snipers getting the specialized instruction they need to seek out and pick off their targets.