International contest aims to test, teach best snipers

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Cpl. Eugenio Mendoza, a young veteran of the Iraq war, had to carry his buddy for 50 yards, scale an 8-foot wall and crawl through a water-logged tunnel at the fourth International Sniper Competition, where the challenges are designed to simulate combat scenarios in Afghan-istan and Iraq.

"It's good stuff we never thought about," said Mendoza, 27, a sniper with the Army's 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. "We're definitely going back and use what we've learned in these events."

Military snipers are skilled marksmen trained to kill key enemy targets -- usually with one shot over distances considered impossible for regular soldiers with M-16 rifles.

Sponsored by the sniper school, the five-day competition that ended Friday is designed to test marksmen's ability to fire at targets up to 800 meters away, to stalk and conceal themselves and to quickly pick out a villain holding hostages and deliver a lethal shot.

The competitors included 18 Army and Air Force teams from as far away as Alaska and two teams from the Canadian Army.

Staff Sgt. Larry Davis, sergeant in charge of the competition, said the military is putting more emphasis on snipers.

"The leaders realize that we're the eyes and ears for them. A sniper team is like the perfect smart bomb," Davis said. "We're out front and, based on a command decision, we can take out the threat. And we're not flying a $30 million airplane."

One of the new events added this year was firing from a helicopter. It proved to be a challenge for the shooters and the pilots, organizers said.

"All these are based on scenarios that are going on," said Sgt. 1st Class Frank Velez of the Army's Sniper School at Fort Benning. "This is not just about winning a trophy. It's sharing the knowledge. The end result is doing your job."

On Friday, the snipers had to carry a "wounded" buddy, clamber over the fence, roll a huge truck tire and then run to the range. There, they had to defend themselves by firing their pistols with both right and left hands at nearby targets. Then they fired at distant targets with their sniper rifles, squeezed through the tunnel and climbed a roof to continue shooting.

Snipers work in two-person teams consisting of the shooter, armed with a pistol and an M-24 sniper rifle, and a spotter, armed with a pistol and a M-14 or M-16 rifle. The M-24 sniper rifle with a telescopic sight is a military version of the 7.62 mm Remington 700 hunting rifle.

Mendoza's partner, Cpl. Nicholas Romero, another Iraq war veteran from the 101st Airborne, said the competition was challenging.

"I learned a lot from the other teams," said Romero, a Cocoa Beach, Fla., native.

Master Sgt. Cecil Lay, an Air Force sniper training supervisor from Camp Robinson, Ark., said the Air Force has stepped up its sniper training and now has two female snipers, a job traditionally reserved for men.

"With all the stuff going on in the war, the Air Force saw the need for the same training as the Army," Lay said.