TTPOA will be hosting a 6 day advanced sniper course on Sunday December 15^th through Friday December 20^th in Austin Texas from 7am to 5pm daily. The course will consist of 60 hours of training on various sniper related topics that will hone your current skills and expose others to new areas of operational readiness. The cadre of experienced instructors from the central Texas region will cover many topics to include incident debriefs, shooting through barriers, moving targets, rollover prone and tripod deployments. The course will be taught across the city at various locations so expect to travel to training within a 45-minute radius. The cadre will also be putting the students through stalking exercises, long range sniper engagements between 500 and 1000 yards, covert over watch assignments, hostage rescue and repetitions on hide construction. This class will entail areas where students will get the opportunity to experience numerous repetitions on sniper skills crucial to increase your agencies’ capabilities. This is a certification course that will have a skills assessment at the end of the week.

The lead instructor is active Austin SWAT and former sniper Team Leader Mike Castillo.  Mike as well as his co-instructor Matt Harmatuk have over 35 years of combined experience on a full time SWAT team deploying thousands of times on live operations with tested and vetted knowledge of field work and legal liabilities.  The students will return to their agency with a deeper understanding of how to be the most effective sniper, ranging from a wide spectrum to include justification of actions and unique situations that require the student to use critical thinking in order to be an asset to the unit.

Minimum requirements to be eligible to participate in the course

• Active member of a US based Police SWAT team
• Certified law enforcement sniper
• Deployed as a sniper on a part time or full time swat team for at least one year
• All requirements will be verified prior to class with the agency
• Austin SWAT basic sniper school preferred but not required

Each student will be expected to download “whatsapp” so that everyone is able to communicate and you will be contacted the week prior to the start of the course. Each student needs to have a working knowledge of ballistic software with the weapon systems pre-set up prior to class, Hornady 4DOF  or a kestrel is preferred. Each student needs to have dopes confirmed out to at least 500 yards prior to the start of class.

Equipment requirements

• Ammunition
• 600 rounds of match grade DUTY ammunition
• 25 Barrier rounds
• NOTE: No armor piercing or frangible ammunition. No .338 or 50 caliber.
• Weapon System
• Precision rifle capable of 1 MOA or better accuracy (no exceptions)
• Precision optic with a minimum of 10x magnification with associated tools needed to adjust
• Bipod capable to canting left and right
• Adjustable rifle sling with carabineer
• Rifle data book
• Rear shooting support bag
• Weapon mounted night vision
• Bubble level system on the rifle, recommended
• Support Gear
• Shooting tripod capable of standing height
• Appropriate cleaning equipment
• Callout gear (armor, LBV, gloves, or any gear required by your department SOP)
• Sniper pack or drag bag
• Kestrel (optional)
• Individual camouflage (veils, hoods, sheets, covers, ghillie)
• Plain clothes for UC day
• Binoculars of at least 7X
• Shooting mat (optional)
• Laser rangefinder
• Note taking material, pen, pencil (laptop computer optional for classroom)
• Hearing protection
• Sunscreen/bug spray
• Long sleeve uniform