THESE PICTURES STARTED making the rounds yesterday.

While they’re unauthenticated, it is nearly certain there were snipers at the biggest sporting event of the year.

Jerry Jones said as much in Dallas before last year’s Super Bowl ”We’ve got a lot of places for snipers in here,” he told CNN. Ashton Kutcher also filmed a pair of snipers at the 2009 Super Bowl (via Deadspin)

And that is one of the newest sniper rifles in America’s arsenal, the XM 2010. Manufactured by Remington and released in 2010, the XM 2010 is the product of a long string of modifications to the 22 year-old M24 sniper rifle.

The XM2010 was designed specifically to be effective in the high altitude long distance fighting in Afghanistan.

To provide quiet, pinpoint accuracy at up to 1200 meters the XM 2010 carries more gun powder in the bullets it fires, has a flash suppressor, sound suppressor, and a thermal sleeve to hide the warm barrel from FLIR.

When US Snipers graduate from the five-week school at Fort Benning, Ga. they are capable of hitting a man-sized target nine out of ten times at 600 meters — over a third of a mile away with this rifle.

We’ll update this post when the new information becomes available about their origin.

Pics: 4chan

Read more at Business Insider

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