How to Become a Scout / Sniper in the US Army

what's going on guys today I'm gonna talk a little bit about how you become a scout or a sniper in the US Army and this is gonna be I don't know what else is out there but we're talking specifically army infantry okay and that's the reason I say scout or sniper is because in the Marine Corps they call them scout snipers I believe in the army there is a difference there's a scout position and there is a sniper position both coexist in the same platoon and for me I'm going to be talking from my personal experience at a battalion Scout platoon level okay because and the reason I'm making this video is because when I came into the army I was really into the idea of becoming a sniper how do I become a sniper I actually didn't find out how to become a sniper for like a year and a half into my enlistment so you're gonna go through your infantry basic training and then any follow-on training airborne whatever you end up doing and you're gonna get to your unit okay this is gonna happen after you get to your unit there's no way to guarantee you a spot as a sniper or Scout before getting to your unit once you get to your unit you're gonna have to you're probably gonna go to a line Fulton very very rarely do you ever get recruited right into a scalpel tune I've seen it happen once a kid just came in with over a 300 PT score into our battalion and they like scooped him right in ended up having a bunch of problems because they didn't actually go through our selection process that we have and so there's that but it can't happen so once you get to your standard line platoon it's probably what you're gonna report to where you're gonna either be a Grenadier rifleman or a Saul gunner you they're probably gonna expect you to do some time there but you don't necessarily have to the scalpel tune in the sniper section is located in the headquarters company okay hhc I didn't know that because those guys were like ghosts to me they didn't exist on my radar when I was on the line and all the way through my deployment I didn't even know that they existed because they're doing they do there things like a 30 man element maybe 40 man element that exists in hhc away from all the line companies so you never see them you never train with them there they have their own special mission set that they have to train for that doesn't have anything to do with what the line guys do so that's why you won't see them that's why you won't hear about them really you have to go probably over to HACC like if you can't ask your your any of your first or second line supervisors or anything you're in cos when Scout tryouts are then you're going to have to go over to HACC and ask them like where the scouts are at and you're gonna have to go talk to them about tryouts and when they might have tryouts we would have tryouts like three times a year - or two to four times a year I think and it's it's pretty it's not too crazy okay so once you get in contact with them and you figure it they're probably gonna have a sign-up sheet for tryouts or they might post fliers around your battalion area that's how you're gonna have to initially do it is you're gonna have to sign your name you're actually gonna have to show up to the tryouts and tell your leadership that you have that you're doing scout tryouts and that that's what you want to do and you're gonna go do that they can't really hold you from scout tryouts especially once you've made contact with the scalpel tune and even if you tell them that hey my NCOs aren't letting me come then they'll they'll straighten that [ __ ] out so going through the tryouts the tryouts are typically they try to the way that we do it okay I can only speak from my platoon experience and what we did because we had a guy who had been through higher-level selections I'll just say that I don't get into specifics of what different things he's trying he's gone to select before and where he came from but he kind of ran it like the like the started like a mini Special Forces selection so we would start out I think it was like an an RP ft which is a Ranger PT test so your push-ups sit-ups a 5-mile run and then a pull-up test and I think after that on the first day we had a swim and that was it for the first day of tryouts and then the next day I believe we went into land nav or know we had yeah I already said this one test the next day we went into land nav and I think these trials only covered like three to three or four days I think and so I went into land nav land nav is set up like the Special Forces star course meaning they're longer movements it wasn't the whole star course and this was on Bragg so I think we did part of this land net force in the star force area but not all of it there were longer movements several clicks per movement you're carrying your ruck with you the whole way and you're carrying a weapon and we ended up doing day into night land nav so we did have night vision that we used as it got darker and you don't get all of your points right from the get-go you get one point and then you have to go and find that point and then once you get to that point they give you your next point and so on and so forth until you complete it or you get your minimum required amount of points directly after that we had an unknown distance unknown standard ruck so this is like in the middle of the night they basically say hey you're gonna stay here every time you hit a chem light you're gonna turn there's gonna be like a an NCO there that's gonna tell you where to go and then you're just gonna you're gonna keep going we're not gonna tell you they don't tell you how long it is they don't tell you what the time standard is you're just trying to go as far as you can as fast as you can and I think ours was just shy of 12 miles and I think I did it in like just under three hours and I made it so I'd never found out what the standard was exactly but so this is going into the morning and after our unknown distance unknown time standard ruck we had a a rigged X so that's probably an airborne specific unit thing your Scout even if you are in an airborne unit your skeleton might not make you do that but we had to do that we had to rig our rucksacks for an air one operation and then that was the end of that night we got like chow and got the trans back to our battalion AO so in the morning all right so I think it was only three days that this really took in the morning because we kind of finished all that stuff and it wasn't too demanding it was more just like a mental test to do that really long way and have that you didn't know how long it was and then to go and do that rock immediately after we ended up putting quite a few miles on her feet in those two days and following that morning it was just in an interview with all the NCOs in the Scout platoon because it is called the Scout platoon and then there the sniper section is internal of the skeleton so once I got into the interview they go over your ERP and all the things that you've done in your time and service and your different positions that you've had and they just talk to you and it's very informal it's not like a board you just come and you sit down and they just talk to you like man to NCOs and they're just asking questions about your personality where you came from what your passions are like what you want to do in the military and what position you would like to have in the Scout platoon so naturally as I said I wanted to come into the army and be a sniper so I just said straight up I would like to be a sniper and then they said but I did say I'd like to be a sniper but I understand if I have to start somewhere else and then hopefully work up to that eventually and they're like okay so you're cool with being a scout and then maybe eventually we'll transition you over to become a sniper I was like yeah that's fine I just I want to come over here because it was a way more laid-back atmosphere that's for sure it's funny because all the guys who said they wanted to be snipers ended up not being cyphers and all the guys who didn't necessarily say that they wanted to be snipers they didn't care they got put in ciphered positions so take that for what you will I'm not gonna tell you one way or the other how to answer a question like that and how it might affect your chances but either way if you end up in the scalpel tune you're going to have a more enjoyable time in that platoon because you're gonna be training by yourselves because you're you have reconnaissance mission it's very different from the lines mission so you're not gonna be training with those guys very often you're gonna be doing your own thing and you will be working with them but you're going to like for what we would do on a regular basis is we would jump into an objective or air assault into an objective before the rest of our battalion and then we would conduct reconnaissance for several hours and then once our battalion did their thing and secure the DZ and all that then they would get in comp with us and we would have already found the best intriguer out for them to come into the objective and then we would meet with them guide them in we talked to the to their leadership for that companies whatever element we're dealing with what gives them all the information we had and a lot we would have pictures we had laptops and a bunch of really cool [ __ ] we get to use and we would show them like hey at this building there's this many guys this area and then we'd give them a whole layout of the entire village that's what your job is is giving you're doing reconnaissance to provide to the line companies and your job is to not be compromised so you're being sneaky and stealthy and [ __ ] and then you guide them in and you tell them the best way the the most vulnerable part of a village or a building and then they will take that and then they assault the objective accordingly so because of that it's a it's a thinking game because you're trying to be you're trying to maintain your level of stealth and not being compromised that's like the biggest thing your Java's are as a recon if interment is not to get compromised in to not get in gunfights you're supposed to never be seen and if you get into a gunfight you did something wrong so it's it's fun that way though because you're having to use your brain being on the line is very robotic and you do the same thing over and over again every single time you go no matter what the objective is you're basically doing the same exact thing and a skeleton is very different because you have to approach the objective differently and then depending on what your specific job in the skeleton is they're usually very hands-off they train you how to do your job and then they expect you to do your job and if you can't do it then they'll they'll boot you like if you suck they'll pick you out of the Scout platoon so you are constantly working to prove yourself and prove that you belong there and that you are an asset to that platoon with that comes a lot of freedoms because you're out operating with a like a five to six man element and you can be out there for days at a time and a lot of times they might have you doing route reconnaissance so you're just posted up in a hide site watching a road and you might have friendly elements over here setting up base of operations and then you have to give them early warning and you're not going to go get in a gunfight but you're gonna give them early warning if anybody's coming into their AO their area of operations so it's it's a cool job getting to like actually use ghillie suits and use stealth and really think through what your job is and do your job independent independently of the rest of your team and actually being trusted to do that and problem-solve on the fly and because of that I think it it's kind of hard to come back to the line after that because you're so used to thinking for yourself and doing a job that you're trusted to do even as a private if you get into scalpel tune as a private then you're held to the same standard so overall it kind of ruined me in a way because like now I'm back in a line infantry unit and we were alert unit and then they got rid of all the loose units in the army so now we're going back to being a line infantry and all the guys are having a really hard time not being able to think for themselves and ask questions and just being expected to do things by the book but it's so much fun and it looks really good on your on your resume on your er be having experience in a reconnaissance unit means that you had to be specially selected to get that position so it usually carries some weight moving on with your career as you as you go up and you get promoted and stuff so I can't recommend it enough there's no guarantee that you'll be a sniper but I promise like I wanted to be a sniper and I ended up being a scout RTO which so I held the radio and being a scout RTO is very different from being a lined RTO a line RTO basically follows around the PL everywhere he goes and you're just talking on the on the radio for him essentially there's that there's obviously a lot of other roles and responsibilities that you have as a line RTO but as a scout RTO you're doing your own thing you like you you as a private or a specialist are on the radio with first sergeant's sergeant major battalion commanders company commanders very high-ranking people and they're talking to you like a man has a valid source of information on what is on the objective they're actually trusting you you know you are this you might be a private or specialist but you have been selected for this position and if when you come to them like I can think of several times where there's even one time going into this little mock training village that I had a platoon sergeant get on the radio with me and said that and said hey we're coming this way we're gonna walk in from this direction and we got on the radio we were like hey negative you probably don't want to go that way and this is me as like a like a two-and-a-half-year efore on the radio with an e7 saying negative sign you probably don't want to do that it's very thick and very thick with vegetation and really flooded out with water you're not your element with all of your machine guns and everybody that they have their massive element you guys probably are gonna get through that very easily we have another wrap for you to take and he just said negative we're gonna take this way it's like all right whatever do you think well we ended up getting to listen to them on the radio as they lost contact with a lot of their elements because they couldn't get through when they ended up getting broken up and it delayed the whole mission a long time and they ended up actually coming to us and I had to go meet this he's 7:00 in the woods as he came up to this position we told him to come too and then we just came out of the woods and they didn't even know we were there and come up like hey and he just sees it you're some lower-ranking dude and you're like hey sorry we're gonna go this way and so you you what you're doing directly affects like the rest of the element is relying on you to do that job and being trusted to have a position like that that is so mission essential to the success of that mission is a great feeling like I said because you guys are working in such small elements a lot of times the standards are relaxed I mean if it doesn't if it doesn't directly contribute to mission success they usually get rid of it like regulations and standards if you're going out on a mission for three days you're taking exactly what you need for three days so you're not taking like your hygiene kit and you're not taking anything extra so there's a lot of times you come back and you're not shaving and your uniforms all ragtag and dirty and we would be rolling our sleeves we wouldn't have any patches we'd have slick uniforms because in a real-life scenario if you got compromised and caught you wouldn't want to have any unit identifiers or nationality identifiers because you you wouldn't want them to know that you're Americans you know to me it's kind of that train of thought so there'd be a lot of times we were just kind of doing around saying what we had to do to be successful on blasting our boots rolling our sleeves having slick uniforms had just working the bare minimum gear that a lot of the line guys would look at us and be like who the hell are these guys and it's it's a blast my a culminating event I got to jump into JROTC attached to part of a British reconnaissance element and I actually still have a lot of stuff hung up that I got from those British dudes but that was like an experience I'll never forget being embedded with a British team and getting to to conduct reconnaissance and learn their ways of doing it and there you just get a lot of unique opportunities that guys on the line are never going to get and you're gonna have a much different view of the infantry at that low level that you wouldn't otherwise get and so I can't recommend it enough I know being a scout or sniper is a very popular thing so I just want to put this out there for you guys coming into the army if you are coming in wanting to be a sniper this is the pathway to do it so get to your element or get to your unit asking about scout tryouts and go to the hhc AO and ask them about scout tryouts and that's gonna get you started down that path so thanks for watching guys hit the like button and subscribe button send me comments down below if you're in the marine corps what your whole selection process was like if you're in other units because I was in the one 508 in the 82nd airborne and that so that's how my selection process went let me know how your guys's was and what your experiences were in your respective Scout platoons and yeah thanks for watching guys have a good one

Channel: The Veteran to Veteran Podcast

Views: 6,820

Rating: 4.9753084 out of 5

Keywords: How to Become a Scout or Sniper in the Army Military Recon Reconnaissance

Id: 1dsbr2E3NR0

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019