From the Soldier side: I warms the ventricles of my heart to see a soldier shoot well. I don't care what duty they have, they should know how to shoot their assigned weapon. In Iraq, we had a shortage of security team (gunners, drivers & riflemen) to go out on convoys with us. So, who do you think they used? People who were not doing their "normal" duties. We had cooks, image analyst, clerks, etc on the guns.
This was something I be they never thought would happen. Most of them were friggen outstanding at their "other assigned duties." But, in most cases they had just qualified on their new weapon (M-249, 50 Cal, etc) and had not really fired these weapons since Basic Training.
This is why my big push when we do "Army Training" is to get every soldier a chance to shoot all the weapons we have...not to just shoot them, but to shoot them well and be able to keep them working. How do you keep a weapon "working?" Keep it clean, and feed it ammo as needed.
The above shooter is female and an "office poge" who listened to instructions and qualified well.
This was from "Table 5" of the Army's standard pistol course. In this table, the shooter has to walk forward and load 2 magazines...while engaging multiple pop up targets. I had my "Range Safeties" actually hold onto the shooter while moving on line with several other shooters. It sounds scary to those in the Army who're not use to moving and shooting, but it was actually very slow.
I was so happy.
5 comments:
It can't be good to have a shortage of people who can shoot...
Hey...she's pretty good. Yea for the girls!
I really prefer training a shooter who's got no or little experience....fewer bad habits to try to correct.
What I really get tired of is when I show a dude how to shoot better and they say: "that's how I always shoot." They're telling me that they don't want to change.
I now respond with: "Well, if you don't want to listen to me, your shooting will never get any better and you suck."
1. Scary to me.
2. At Polk, Infantry AIT, we had a course where we moved down firing lanes.
3. Each shooter had a handler holding unto his suspenders.
4. We moved down the course more-or-less on line.
5. Spotted a pop-up target I'd not seen, on my left, and fired a quick shot.
6. Turned out, missed the guy in the next lane by about six feet.
7. As I was swinging the weapon, six feet was nothing.
8. Every one was very unhappy, but the issue was let drop without charges.
9. Even in fights, assure you, I was cautious about clearing my flanks, after that.
10. When it was my turn to operate ranges of that sort, I:
a. Used every other lane
b. Used people I trusted as handlers
c. Briefed thoroughly on how dangerous I thought the exercise was
V/R JWest
Mr West,
I went through the same walking pop up target rifle course at Ft Polk. They didn't hold on to us, but they walked right behind us. I train cops on the same concept:
"Fire down you lane only, on the range an in real life...to avoid friendly fire."
Ft Polk was where I learned to respect handgrenades to. We were the OPFOR (since I was in mortars) and I threw one of the training grenades into a wood area and had it bounce back next to me. I was so happy it was only a training device and not a real grenade or I'd been chunks of meat.
Train as you fight, train hard, sweat a lot so you don't bleed in battle.
Shooting while moving isn't too complicated. It's trying to HIT something while running and shooting over your shoulder thats complicated.
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