One of the first leaders of the Provisional IRA, Seán Mac Stíofáin, supported the use of snipers in his book Memoirs of a Revolutionary and was attracted by the motto "one shot, one kill".

[10] The report identifies four different patterns of small arms attacks during the IRA campaign, the last being that developed by the South Armagh sniper units.

[12][13][14] The regular shipments from the United States, once the main source of arms for the republicans through the gunrunning operations of Irish immigrant and IRA veteran George Harrison, were disrupted after he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1981.

[15] The smuggling scheme suffered a further blow when the Fenit-based trawler Marita Ann, with a huge arms cache from Boston, was captured by the Irish Naval Service in 1984.

According to letters seized by US federal authorities from a Dundalk IRA member, Martin Quigley, who had travelled to the US to study computing at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania,[19] the organisation managed to smuggle an M82 to the Republic of Ireland just before his arrest in 1989.

He was part of a larger plot to import electronic devices to defeat British Army countermeasures against IRA remote-controlled bombs.

[23] An unidentified leading figure inside the IRA sniper campaign, quoted by Toby Harnden, said: What's special about the Barrett is the huge kinetic energy....

Another six rounds achieved nothing, but two of them narrowly missed the patrol boat HMS Cygnet, in Carlingford Lough[26] and another holed Borucki sangar, a British Army outpost in Crossmaglen square.

[37] On 31 July 1993 at 10:00 pm a British Army patrol which had set up a mobile checkpoint on Newry Road, near Newtownhamilton, was fired at by an IRA sniper team.

[39] Two different sources include in the campaign two incidents that happened outside South Armagh; one in Belcoo, County Fermanagh, where a constable was killed,[41] the other in West Belfast, which resulted in the death of a British soldier.

[37] The IRA Belfast Brigade claimed that the latter incident actually involved two shooters, who fired 28 rounds from assault rifles on a British Army vehicle.

[48] His killing, along with the reaction of the MP of his constituency, was covered by the BBC's Inside Ulster,[49] which also showed Blinco's abandoned helmet and the hole that was made by the sniper's bullet on the wall of a pub.

[26] The last serviceman killed by snipers at South Armagh, Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, was also the last British soldier to die by hostile fire during the Troubles, on 12 February 1997.

[53] During the ceasefire, an alleged member of the Drumintee squad, Kevin Donegan, was arrested by an RUC patrol in relation to the 1994 murder of a postal worker in the course of an armed robbery.

[58] After two attacks in 1997, a Special Air Service unit captured four men from the sniper team based in the west of the region on April 10, who were responsible for several deaths.

After a brief scuffle, James McArdle, Michael Caraher, Bernard McGinn and Martin Mines were seized at a farm near Freeduff and handed over to the RUC.

[63] One of the key players in the British campaign against the South Armagh sniper was Welsh Guards' Captain Rupert Thorneloe, according to the journalist Toby Harnden.

[3] Another senior figure involved in the British efforts against the sniper squads was SAS Staff Sergeant Gaz Hunter,[4] whose experience in South Armagh dated back to 1975.

[73] The British Army's official assessment on Operation Banner acknowledges that the sniper campaign "had an impact on morale among some troops and police officers".

Following the Good Friday Agreement, the "at work" caption inscribed on the sign has intermittently been covered with slogans such as "on hold", "job seeking" and variations thereof.