Today was a great deal of fun as we fired the heavy weapons I have been describing in previous posts. The smaller Squad Assault Weapons were fun...high rate of fire and tracers to track your aim. The real fun came with the .50 caliber machine gun and the Mk 19 Grenade Launcher. The .50 cal bullets are about the length of your hand from the base of your palm to the top of your middle finger and as round as your middle finger. The 40mm grenades for the Mk 19 are about the size of the 4 oz soda cans.
It's one thing for me to talk about how far these weapons shot their ammunition. It's a whole other (and eye opening) world to see the no kidding distance the bullets and grenades travel. The range we went to today had old armored personnel carriers for targets arranged at varied distances. We were able to engage each target and light it up with each weapon.
It's one thing for me to talk about how far these weapons shot their ammunition. It's a whole other (and eye opening) world to see the no kidding distance the bullets and grenades travel. The range we went to today had old armored personnel carriers for targets arranged at varied distances. We were able to engage each target and light it up with each weapon. Our final training for the day and for this 2 week course was the Fundamentals of Hand-toHand Combat. The moves and holds, sanctioned by the Army, come from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (www.ufc.com watch the video and see some moves). We learned how to gain dominant position, get out of a non-dominant position (read: on the bottom and getting your hiney handed to you); a couple of flips and holds to choke an opponent out; provide bodily harm to make the opponent submissive or pee a lot of blood if he survives the encounter, and most importantly, the ability for us to survive.
Tomorrow is admin wrap up day and loading the trucks with our bags. We'll dress out in our uniforms, carry whatever knives and gels over 3oz that we want to and start our journey. (unlike when I started this whole trip and had my tooth paste amoung 4 other items confiscated by the TSA agent at Security in Boise airport).
This has been some spectacular training over the last 2 weeks - real warrior stuff I could never get from computer based training while flying my desk from home station. My hats off to the Army for the training and the Navy for providing the logisitics and opportunity to do all of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment