He was my primary input for understanding the differences in the Army’s courses and ultimately went on to become quite an accomplished member of the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU). I should mention that this was his fourth sniper course, the guy was an animal and had been through USMC, Army basic sniper and SOTIC before showing up to ours. He was the hardest gun in the class hands down. John was a hard shooting dude and took top honors in the old SEAL sniper course (we’ve made significant changes to this since) and earned it. I’ve never personally attended this course but a SEAL sniper classmate of mine was an Army Ranger (yes we let other services in our course sometime), SGT St. SOTIC is focused on supporting the Army’s Special Forces and a much more in depth course and I suspect (based on reports from fellow SEALs) that these candidates are more mature and have a solid foundation in basic marksmanship. We used to send qualified SEAL snipers through this course until they complained that there was not much to learn, not the case with the SOTIC course, it had an excellent reputation as a true sniper’s course. “They went through a lot of changes back in like 2007 to really modernize it then they expanded in to 8 weeks just recently.” -Jack Murphy (Ranger/SF/Sniper) It’s good to hear from Jack (below) that the course has improved. From what my teammates tell me, the course dives right into scoped weapons and doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on ballistics (internal-external-and terminal ballistics). The Army’s Basic sniper course, from what I understand, is a grab bag of candidates (SF, Ranger, and basic infantry,etc.), some have good marksmanship fundamentals, some don’t (this is where the problem develops).
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