The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Another Record Long Sniper Shot
by James Dunnigan
January 23, 2006
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
A U.S. Army sniper set a new distance
record (1250 meters) for a kill with a 7.62mm sniper rifle. Staff
Sergeant Jim Gilliland made the shot on September 27, 2005, during
fighting in Ramadi. The Leupold sight Gilliland used is only accurate
out to a thousand meters, so the chest shot was partially guesswork,
and luck. Gilliland aimed 12 feet high, to adjust for the drop the
bullet would make over that distance. Gilliland later found out that
the Iraqi he dropped had just killed a friend of his, Staff Sergeant
Jason Benford,.
Gilliland leads a ten
man squad of snipers (the “Shadows”), that have been averaging ten
kills a month in support of the infantry battalion they belong to. Some
members of the team are averaging over ten kills a month. The snipers
are particularly effective at night, when they often catch Iraqis
trying to set up IEDs. In one case, his snipers killed ten members of
an IED team. Ramadi is a Sunni Arab town, and full of Iraqis who
really, really want to go back to the old days when Sunni Arabs ran the
country, and a Sunni Arab dictator was in charge.
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