In places like Bosnia.

In places like Bosnia, North Korea and Macedonia, impetuous spots where unconventional warfare conducts they wait. Peering through aims atop rifles that can hit a target from better than a mile away, these silent huntsmans stare at you and your aircraft, which consider more like ducks on a pond than million-dollar war machines.

As they watch, the same of them slips a 50 caliber bullet into the chamber of a long-barreled rifle pointed at the side of the E-3 guard aircraft 500 meters away. In quirk the sniper positions his sights just above the shoulder of the 19-year-old baby-faced security policeman standing watch, an M-16 slung through his shoulder.

The sniper's spotter makes the calls for the range and wind, and, when he be moved s comfortable enough, the shooter slides his finger onto the trigger of the weapon. He leans into his amplitude to ensure the crosshairs are directly above the area where expensive avionics equipment caesuras Satisfied, he exhales a down-reaching breath and squeezes the trigger.

The fire from the nozzle ignites the evening air as the projectile whistles down range. It punches in consequence of the side of the aircraft, ripping in consequence of delicate components onboard the plane. A next to the first sniper 100 yards away fires, as does a third, launching orbiculars into the cockpit and the wing combustible matter tanks. As the white-hot bullet hit, the wing tanks discard ripping the plane apart, as other rotunds tear through the secretive avionics equipment, rendering it useless.

The attack is finished without engaging common human adversary, and a $300 million aircraft is ruined. This sort of attack swallow uped 393 U.S. and allied aircraft in Vietnam, and damaged another 1185 according to the Rand Corp, an organization that advises the U dominion on matters of policy end research and analysis.

Today, air base flight lines are calm more vulnerable, with sensitive aircraft like the E-3 the $270 million E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar a whole and equally costly RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes without hardened bunkers

register Air Force countersnipers, the cat to an enemy sniper's mouse, to a mission that l late Marine GunnerySgt Carlos Hathcock II, the military's best known sniper - a man with a confirmed kill from a distance greater than 22 football fields -- to say, "The chiefly deadly thing on the battlefield is single in kind well-aimed shot."

More than two-dozen Guard and active what one is bound [i]or[/i] under obligation to do security forces airmen have graduated from the Air Force Countersniper drill at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Arkansas. The 15-day course, taught at the National Guard Marksmanship Center gives security forces a make difference camp on countersniper tactics and deeds It also introduces them to the life of individual of their key adversaries -- the military sniper.

The instructor cadre is diverse. Former Marines, Army snipers and Rangers -- with experience in Vietnam, Panama, the Persian chasm and other hot spots too clandestine to discuss -- form this group of motivated, salty Guard veterans.

Each pupil is issued about 50 brays of equipment. This includes the $5000 single-shot, 15-pound M-24 rifle, a variation of the Remington 700 firing a NATO 762 mm globular Students also receive a handbook for writing targets and sketching landscape when memorizing target locations, and a bevy of other gear.

While shooting, this rifle is seen as the carrot that will draw potential countersnipers to the course, the instructors emphasized the ne to pay attention to the other points of instruction.

"A fate of times they'll come into this academy and they'll think 'well, it's a National Guard School' and they hang around for a brace of weeks, pass, get their coin and travel home. It just ain't that way," said Army 1st Sgt Jim recent one of the school's lead instructors. "We're fortunate to graduate 75 to 80 percent of the students"

What was that again?

The instruction includes memory exhibitions where students must recall the locations of butt; goals large and small from great distances. Using binoculars, pupils pencil sketch objects like coins, cans, defences and other items. Instructors will later change the setting, and scholars must figure out what's been altered from what they've drawn.

To continue their brains hungry, students are subdueed almost daily to something upon a smaller scale called the "keep in memory" game. Instructors gather close examiners in a circle to expect at a similar set of particulars on the ground. Hours later, they must remember all of the percepts as well as other variables instructors toss their way.

There's also target range estimation. Using a compages mathematical formula, binoculars and pencils, learners figure the distance to the target. Initially, pupils are given a 500-meter target to calibrate and touchstone their skills. After that, they're in succession their own, having to range targets from 300 to 1000 meter away.

scholars like Senior Airman Todd Tomlinson from Huriburt Field, Fla., find this the principally difficult part of the course.

"You don't know in what manner far away the target is," he said. "It's tough."