FORT BENNING — The International Sniper Competition, which drew shooters and spotters from across the globe to a shooting range in the sandy, piney scrublands of western Georgia, concluded here the other day. The contestants came to test their communication, intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance skills.
And, of course, to set their gunsights on targets so far away or hidden that, at more than half a mile, some were all but invisible to the naked eye.
That meant some events didn’t offer much in the way of spectating. Then again, that is the idea in this line of work. You’re not supposed to see or hear them coming.
But where do they come from? Which soldiers have the mettle?
“The job kind of finds you,” said Staff Sgt. John Hjelle, an Army National Guard member based at Fort Benning near Columbus with the Warrior Training Battalion.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Hjelle, 36, a native Minnesotan, was a combat medic who later trained as a sniper. He placed second in 2024 and third last year. This year, he and teammate Sgt. Max Miller finished eighth out of 34 two-member teams from more than a dozen countries. (A team from the Marine Corps finished first this year.)
Early in this year’s competition, which is among the most prestigious for enlisted troops, Hjelle hit a last-second shot in a timed event that pinged a target 760 meters distant. Afterward, he told of the “mental mindset” of not overthinking, of reading the wind, watching the trees, the branches, factoring all that in.
Miller, 29, his teammate from Denver, said to do the job well takes long hours on the range and mastering a set routine.
“Everyone out here is incredibly talented at shooting,” Miller said. “But can you do it while you’re tired or when you need to solve a complex problem. … How do you maintain that level head space to still be successful?”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Though no one spoke of it openly as the competition played out last week over parts of three days with teams from across Europe and U.S. allies from Asia and South America, it was hard not to consider the U.S. war with Iran. Or the international tensions the war has spawned, including President Donald Trump’s sharp, renewed criticisms of NATO allies.
Until now, the war has been fought from the air with missiles and fighter jets. If U.S. ground troops are sent into Iran, snipers would almost certainly join them. And soldiers from Georgia’s several military bases would likely play an expanded role, including those at sprawling Fort Benning, home to the 75th Ranger Regiment, which fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even so, amid all the international tensions and uncertainty, there seemed to be a camaraderie among those present at the sniper competition. They’d come to test themselves and learn from their foreign counterparts.
The competition’s rigors include sleep deprivation and marches and tasks that test exert soldiers beyond what they might see in combat situations. They can become one with the landscape. They were drones before drones. They serve what some refer to as overwatch, often the forward eyes and ears of the battlefront, there not only to neutralize enemy targets but also to serve as guardians for fellow troops.
They can also, as one former sniper described it, land paralyzing psychological blows to foes, leaving adversaries wondering where precision shots came from and, “Am I gonna be next?”
Last week, the spartan gun range here at the Army Sniper School on, of all places, Good Luck Road, included signs or banners or postings that read “Noise Hazard Area,” “Live Ammo” and “Death From Afar.” Despite the booms of gunfire and at times the barrages from a nearby machine gun range, no one seemed to flinch.
For the couple of dozen or so spectators, their ears were the best way to tell if a target was struck. First hearing a sniper’s rifle blast and then one, two, three seconds later hearing the distant target’s TING or the silence of a miss.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
“You just kind of fall in love with the craft,” sniper and Army Sgt. Darien Jones said.
“You have a memory like a goldfish. You take the shot, you miss. Just forget about it.”
Jones, 23, is from Iowa and stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York. He told of the competition’s pressure and the quick corrections it requires and the calm required. He said in those moments it’s “just you, the sound of the wind, the sound of the gun.”
Greg Robertson, retired from the Australian army and now director of that nation’s Army Sniper Association, described the competition as a pressure cooker, a way to help shooters learn to troubleshoot in a high-stress environment.
“The only other way to find out is on the battlefield,” Robertson said, “and by then, it’s too late.”
Scott Raitt, a former Army sniper and another of the first instructors hired at Fort Benning’s sniper school in the late 1980s, said that with the best snipers, he has found “you really can’t train them. It’s something they’ve got in them.”
Former sniper Jim Harris, who won a similar competition in the early 1990s, now serves as president of the Georgia-based nonprofit and roughly 1,500-member Army Sniper Association.
Harris, 60, who, after leaving the Army, worked for three decades as a police officer in Tampa, figures that across all branches of the armed services, there are perhaps 500 active-duty snipers.
He said the annual competition here, which he attends regularly, offers snipers a chance to see how good they really are.
“Every country in the world will tell their soldiers, ‘You’re the best-trained, you’re the best-equipped, the most lethal, deadliest guys on the face of the planet.’ And I tell everybody, I don’t care where I am in the world, ‘Your country’s lying to you,’” Harris said. “Because you live inside that little box of your military, your equipment, your training. This offers guys the opportunity to get outside of the box.”
The top foreign competitors included a two-man team from Ireland that finished in fifth place and a Finnish duo that placed ninth.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
When asked what movies tend to get wrong about snipers, Harris laughed.
“Everything,” he said. “They tend to glamorize and put things out of context, perhaps. I think the saying, the catchphrase, that we like to use is that these guys are silent warriors. They’re also very humble people.”
Harris said the Army, early on in sniper school training, identified traits of those best suited for that work. In general, he said, they are expert marksmen, self-starters, of above-average intelligence and team players with sharp communication skills.
“People,” Harris said, “who can work independently and solve problems without falling apart.”
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