Army Guard Sniper Team Wins International Sniper Competition

I am pretty proud of them! I've worked a few of the B4 guys, they are all great guys.

Ever since GWOT we have seen multiple instances of National Guard teams winning major competitions at the national and international level -- often beating Active Army teams.

MSG Thomas Currie - They've done it before that too. Of the 8,372 Distinguished Rifleman badges awarded, 831 Guardsmen, 371 Reservists, 2,412 Army, 1,459 Marines, 335 Airmen, 395 Sailors, and 95 Coast Guardsmen. The remaining 2475 went to civilians.

At Fort Hood, the old 49th Armored Division (TXARNG) build at least one tank range at the base, which were operated by DA civilians, and that both the Regular Army and the Guard used. At one point, a delegation from the House Armed Services Committee came on an inspection, and one of the Congress Critters asked who were better shots, the Regulars with the M1 Abrams or the Guard with M60 (RISE) Pattons. The answer by the DA civilian was unequivocal, the Guardsmen were much better on tank gunnery than the Regulars, adding that the Guard had the same tank crews for years, they weren't changing people in and out all the time.

In a real world comparison, in Desert Storm, after the Regulars were doing everything that could to keep the Guard out of the conflict, two MLRS units, one from Tennessee and one from Oklahoma shipped out to the Gulf within days of being mobilized. Those two units put more steel on target down range than any active duty MLRS unit.