My Pet Peeve!

[Old Guy]

When is the US Military going to treat its staff like professionals?

Even Seal training is done with unloaded Rifles first, what kind of crap is this!

Advancing to contact, a whole platoon, not firing! Targets with legs, the legs bringing bigger target closer, no risk to the enemy!

The how too... Rifle is only unloaded to clean it, check it, WHY? you loaded it did you not? It has a full magazine does it not, it has a chambered round does it not? You have it with you always, going to the head, dinner, shower, it is in the stall with you, clean it after, you go on a truck, plane, chopper, always fully loaded, always. Off for a night out? Gun locker by your bed, in it loaded rifle. All rifles are loaded always.

A lecture hall, all with loaded rifles, if the individual is found not to be correct in this system? Retrain, still a problem, out! Gone!
A weapon is found leaning against a tree? You no were in sight, you get it back, the cost of a replacement is deducted from your pay, even though it is back with you.

Too radical? Grow up. How do they run with a Rifle? Not as far, and all ways in Boots and fatigues! We are not training runners, we are training soldiers, if the training does not fit a Trooper with a Rifle? Well we drop it!

 

[RobNDenver]

Simmer down big fella. . . . I think this one is over the top. The United States Military trains with weapons the same way that everyone who lives by the four rules of firearms safety does.

During parades, most field activities and training except at the range firearms should be unloaded. We need our soldiers and shouldn't risk losing them to a negligent discharge.

 

[Corporal K]

I was a professional soldier for 6 years in the infantry. Many soldiers do NOT act like professionals around weapons, armored vehicles or a myriad of other things that could kill them or someone else.

The branches need to invest much more time on personal weapons handling.

 

[JImbothefiveth]

How do they run with a Rifle? Not as far, and all ways in Boots and fatigues! We are not training runners, we are training soldiers, if the training does not fit a Trooper with a Rifle? Well we drop it!

They should probably do some of that, but I've noticed (and maybe this is just me) that if I wear a sweatsuit or the like when running, I overheat quicker, and can't go as far, and am thus unable to get as good of a cardio workout.
This is the U.S. military, remember, they probably know what they are doing.
(Unless you are a veteran, in which case, you might know more than they do, and thanks for serving.)

 

[Fred Fuller]

Most of what S&T applies to deals with armed citizens, or the interchanges between armed citizens and LEOs. That's the primary purpose here- the proper education of armed citizens. Taking on methods and modes of LE training, or military training, is mostly beyond the scope of what S&T is about.

My initial temptation was to move this to General and let it run there. But if y'all will keep it on topic and move the discussion along, I'll leave it here. It's an interesting gambit.

An old friend of mine, once known as "the oldest captain in the US Army," used to have a particular tee shirt he wore to PT before someone came along who actually believed that uniform regulations meant that PT uniforms be... well, uniform. The special ops folks always were a little different.

Anyway, Uncle Mikee's PT shirt- in black with gold letters- said, "If we could shoot, we wouldn't have to run." See why Uncle Mikee stayed a captain for so long? 8^)

John Farnam is IMHO the grand old man of firearms training in the USA today. He does a lot of training with military units around the country, and believes in training on hot ranges.

This is a shock to most in the military. That's a shame. But we live in a nanny state, and nanny states run nanny militaries.

From John, for example:

http://www.defense-training.com/quips/2007/16Oct07.html

More Unloaded Guns in the Green Zone!

16 Oct 07

On military pistols, from a friend who currently works in the Green Zone:

"Who carry pistols here openly have 92Fs (M9), Glocks, and SIGs, mostly in 9mm but a few in 40S&W. Now and then, one sees a 1911 in 45ACP. Lots of shoulder holsters and tactical leg rigs.

All exposed pistols are empty. No chambered round and no magazine inserted. Some carry one or two charged magazines separately, but most don't even do that much. All with these empty weapons have to go to the clearing-barrel in front of the mess hall a minimum of three times a day, and the longer soldiers are here the more careless gun-handling/muzzle awareness becomes. For one, I avoid the area near clearing-barrels (AKA, "ND Centers") like the plague!

I've long-since grown weary of this institutionalized stupidity, so I carry my (fully loaded) pistols, and blades, concealed, never saying a word about them. A few other Operators do also. That thought, of course, never occurs to VBCs, who constitute the vast majority here."

Comment: One of our students, an O6, was "caught" carrying an obviously loaded M9 in the Green Zone earlier this year. The fellow colonel who turned him in (real "camaraderie" here!) had never seen one carried loaded!

My student soon found himself standing before a two-star who asked him where he learned to carry a loaded pistol. He explained he picked up the practice at our Military Pistol Course at Camp Pendleton and was thus persuaded that carrying the pistol any other way was really silly! The two-star continued by saying the practice of carrying loaded guns is dangerous. My student enthusiastically agreed!

In the end, our colonel was told to stop carrying loaded pistols. Like my friend above, he responded by switching to concealed carry, not wishing to continue arguing with idiots!

Pistols are seldom a critical factor in the grand scheme of modern warfare. Pistols are designed only to preserve the lives of those who carry them (loaded). That is why they are considered optional/trivial/unimportant bythose who don't have to risk their own lives!

For a soldier getting killed, the war has already gotten as big as it can get!

/John

 

[Old Guy]

Veteran

Yes, Brit.

We were the same!

 

[Steve C]

Remember that most every safety rule and training procedure is the result of a death or several deaths that where preventable.

 

[Old Grump]

Before I got old and crippled I was a hiker and a long distance runner, I didn't need to carry a rifle to get in shape. When I found myself having to do 2 miles quick step with a rifle at port arms I was a little soggy and a lot winded at our destination but at least I was still on my feet. The juke box and pinball machine boys were in trouble and it took awhile to regroup. Military sometimes makes mistakes and eventually they correct them, I wouldn't 2nd guess their techniques. Not the type of exercise and whether or not you are armed doing them its the fact that you are working. As good a shape as I was in the only times I was ever really in shape was when I was playing league football or training for a boxing tournament. It carried over to my duties because I had more stamina and I was both stronger and more flexible. Pushing the piece in a drill hall or playing badminton, the important thing is to keep using those muscles and making your lungs work hard. Now thinking about pushing the piece makes my blood pressure rise and my back hurt.

 

[Hook686]

Professional what ?

 

[Titan6]

Interesting. Everyone has a different experience. In mid April I put my M4 in Condition 1 and did not take it out again until June when I went on leave. When I got back from leave I put it back in condition one and did not take it out again till yesterday. When I go to a base camp of some kind I carry my M9 and normally it is unloaded with a mag or two on hand. This is command policy not a personal choice.

There is a balance between threat level and percieved safety. There are some areas in Iraq where you will never see the enemy except on TV or maybe the stray IDF round. The reality is that all people who carry all the time have NDs. An ND is harder to explain than why the soldiers are running around without magazines in their weapons.

In the end, our colonel was told to stop carrying loaded pistols. Like my friend above, he responded by switching to concealed carry, not wishing to continue arguing with idiots!

Some camps have banned concealed carry also. Not normally punitive but simply annoying.

 

[Old Guy]

The semi auto pistol ND

The biggest cause of ND is the constant loading and unloading of this item.

In training the Glock pistols, which require you to pull the trigger to dissemble, my verbal instructions.

1/ "Draw your pistol, finger along side the slide, point it in a safe direction, take out the magazine, place it in your front left pocket."

2/ "Wrap all four fingers, and thumb around the grip" "Draw the slide to the rear, vigorously 3 times"

3/ "If three rounds fly out? Whatever is in your front left front pocket, it is not the magazine"

Go back to #1.

The loading and unloading for safety reasons. Silly. No touch, no bang!

 

[Floppy_D]

When is the US Military going to treat its staff like professionals?

When every single one of them acts like a professional. One bad apple...

3/ "If three rounds fly out? Whatever is in your front left front pocket, it is not the magazine"

4/ "If nothing flew out, still check the chamber, because extractors can break or wear."

I watched a buddy shoot his dog on accident, because he "cleared" a 22 lever action several times and shot at the ground, which sent an unextracted, live 22lr ricocheting off of the ground and into "Blue." Blue made it ok.

 

[cliffy]

Old Grump

You're my kind of guy! I'm 66 and physically 77. Still I try hard to be the person to beat. Overcoming handicaps remains my goal. On a fishing charter last Thursday, I felt my heart giving out as I boated a twelve-pound Lake Trout on copper-cored line. My left forearm burned, and I sat for the last minutes of battle, but I managed to win! I caught the largest TWO fish of four guys: a King Salmon and a sizeable Lake Trout. My heart is semi-protected by a "built-in" defibrulator. I still need a right total hip joint replacement, but I prefer to wait. Rather, I have to wait impending the results of my "heart stress test" in November. In January, I WILL drive to Texas for a hog hunt. Then I plan to go East for a fishing session on the Laguna Madre. Bum Heart, spare me the sorrow! cliffy

 

[strambo]

In my unit we like to keep our rifles unloaded or loaded with blanks while training so we don't kill the soldiers acting as OPFOR...maybe that's just us. We do, however, load them up for live-fire exercises.

Yes, certain chains of command (most) don't trust soldiers with live weapons on base in combat zones...it's annoying. Look on the bright side, if they feel safe to play games like that then the threat level must not be too high.

As far as "hot" ranges...there is a move towards more of them. In my Guard unit we have sent a number of people to Gunsite courses and I'm an NRA instructor. We run hot ranges all the time unless it is a zero or qual range where we are constantly going downrange to check targets..

 

[SC Hokie]

Just like Floppy D mentioned, there are too many idiots out there. I spent last summer in Afghanistan. A couple months before I deployed I read about an Army guy in Iraq who was no kidding playing with his M9 in the barracks. He "thought it was unloaded" so when his buddy walked in he thought it would be funny to point the gun at his buddy's head and dry fire. Well, the gun went bang and he's now serving time for manslaughter. The Army has had several such incidents and the kneejerk reaction from the leadership is the situation we have now.

I agree that this problem could easily be solved by training as the OP mentioned. The problem the AF has with that is there are so few ranges and firearms instructors that they can barely keep up with the demand to simply qualify people before a deployment, much less make them proficient. I'm not sure what the solution to that is. I've heard that even the Israeli Army doesn't let their troops carry in Condition 1.

The real problem with this is the change in attitude it creates towards firearms in a combat zone. Once when I was preparing to go outside the wire one day, I drew my pistol, inserted a mag, chambered a round, and reholstered my pistol. A guy in my unit looked at me incredulously and said "what are you doing? You can't have a loaded gun around here!". Idiots everywhere.

 

[AndyC]

We called those LCD Rules - they are meant to apply to the Lowest Common Denominator.

I posted here a while back about travelling convoy across the desert with AKs cocked, set to semi-auto, fingers off triggers; you'd have thought I had shot the Pope with all the raving going on

Things is, there are LCDs and then there are BBRs (Big Boys' Rules), and you have to be unconsciously competent with the LCDs before you can break them and graduate to BBRs, assuming you have the freedom and need to do so.

Edit: I have a little bit more to say on this subject, but I have to take my mother out for her first Maine lobster.

 

[ronnieevans40]

Soldiers

They are treated as professionals, they are trained as professionals, and they are sent into harms way with the best training and weapons our goverment can afford. This however does not take away the fact that they are still people and people make mistakes. I served 21 years in the US Army and retired out of D Troop 114 Cav 3rd Brigade 2nd ID. I was lucky enough to be allowed to work with and train some of our countries best and brightest. Most around 19 years old. In all that time I have seen several mistakes made on ranges and in training that could have resulted in death but thanks to God no-one lost their lives in these events. I also served in a shooting event that resulted in people getting killed (that was the job). Now knowing that these young men and women are pushed to their point of exhaustion, pummeled with endless things to do, and now we are going to take 65 heart breakers and soul takers, put them into a parade, have them lock and load their weapons and march around all day in the hot sun. No sir I say that when they need to shoot we will and always have issued them the ammo and let them do the job with-in the ROE. When they need to train we provide as safe a training situation as we can, and when we fight we do so. To start of with a loaded weapon during the first day of CQB is just silly and should be viewed as such. I have way too much respect for the SGT. out there training their troops to handcuff them with 65 kids who have never done this type of work and combine loaded weapons. We Crawl before we Walk and we Walk before we Run. And of course we do it in tennis shoes because we are way smarter than we used to be. Train smarter not harder.

 

[HankB]

Remember the suicide truck bomber that killed 200+ marines at the barracks in Beirut?

In the aftermath, I remember a wounded marine telling his story - about how he saw a fellow marine desparately trying to load his weapon when the truck crashed the gate, because they weren't allowed to have loaded weapons . . .

His fellow marine didn't make it . . .

 

[Old Grump]

((In the aftermath, I remember a wounded marine telling his story - about how he saw a fellow marine desperately trying to load his weapon when the truck crashed the gate, because they weren't allowed to have loaded weapons.))

Exactly right, I have been on security details including nuclear missiles where we weren't allowed to put a magazine in our rifles or pistols. When we made a trek trek half way across the country I armed my weapons truck guards with 45's and when our Commanding Officer found out I had issued live rounds and the guns were loaded he nearly had a heart attack. I had 360 M16's on that truck not to mention, ammo. magazines, bayonets etc. and I'll be d#####d if I was going to leave a guard unarmed with that kind of cargo.

I really do not understand the CYA mentality that leaves soldiers in jeopardy. Running around playing cowboys and Indians for physical conditioning I understand. I have seen a hole half the size of my fist and a nasty powder burn on a mans ribs because some dim wit thought it would be a good idea to fire a blank at close range. He's really lucky he didn't get more than a chew down by the old man. He's even luckier he didn't do it to one of us Nam vets.

 

[WheelgunZealot]

I don't mean to ask a stupid question here, but what good is a weapon if you can't load it??

 

[Floppy_D]

An unloaded weapon... isn't. As the Officer of the Deck inport, we and our Petty Officer of the Watch were both Cond 1, with our Berettas. Our topside rover was Cond 3 with his M14. I can't imagine a safer place than a ship, and I can't imagine a person in a more dangerous place being less armed. Training has it's place, as every person who goes to MEPS isn't instantaneously a firearms guru.

We have to remember that the military is a cross section of society, and that cross section includes folks who know guns and folks who don't. Some commands train a lot and some don't. Unexperienced people in commands that don't train enough yield tragedy, harsh lessons, safety reports, and unit SITREPs.

 

[devildog66]

In answer to the OPs question, the military branches of the US DoD are under civilian control and thus there is not a "pure" military ethos run amok, i.e., the military has to answer to the mothers of America. I agree with the sentiment that weapons handling and proficiency is deficient for most individuals currently serving. But to cut to the chase, if a commanding officer is given the choice of strong weapons proficiency at some risk vs the POSSIBILITY of having to answer a wrongful death investigation I can tell you what 90% of them will choose. Human nature is risk averse and gaining a high level of weapons proficiency is not...

 

[Old Guy]

Here goes!

Well as always my training methods get me in hot water, other Instructors have told me on a few occasions, I am nuts! (more than a few?) but firearms are for shooting people, they are called the enemy!

If it is not always locked and cocked? you should not be in that occupation, what ever it it is.

I read a story of a truck loaded with explosives crashing barriers, the US Soldier had a short English guy in a sweater and jeans next to him? No, don't know why. The Sentry was calling Halt, and loading his Rifle, when the trooper next to him shot several multiple burst from his MP5, into the driver, it continued with a seemingly dead driver and blew up.

First. This is how training should be worked out. Find the threat that person, or persons face, via history of their employment/deployment.

Second. Now build training for that threat, if getting attacked while running in shorts is one of the threats? You might have to modify the size of the Rifles. When did a grunt in Iraq have to run 3 miles? Not! When did he have to run 60m carrying an M60/GPMG or M16 and 8 magazines? a lot! well that is were the training has to focus.

We always did it this way? is H++++. I know the M60 and GPMG dates me? I am old.

There is no mystery about a gun that is always loaded, when all guns are always loaded, even less of a mystery! ALWAYS LOADED, ALL GUNS

The people getting shot by accident ends! they all know all guns are always loaded "Shot his buddy, thought it was unloaded" you can not think it was or wasn't, it always is! And do not tell me KIDS! of 19 can not be trusted with always loaded weapons, they won WW11 did they not?

 

[Old Guy]

Two page rule?

Most of my bread and butter training was directed at Security Officers, with S&W .38s, this paid the bills, 500 a year for 23 years, as soon as the cleaned Revolvers, were shown how they worked, handled them, holstered and dry fired back to back, at stone walls (concrete) then on the range, loaded Revolvers, pocketed two full Safariland speed loaders, and proceeded to have loaded revolvers till the 20 round test had been shot and scored.

One AD in all that time, a young chap in showing this young Lady how to pull the trigger, shot a round into the wooden sub floor!

He stood there with a look on his face that made one think he thought the roof was going to fall on his head!

"Why did you do that" I said. "I was showing her how the trigger worked" He said. "Did it" said I, yes it did he said, so I relived him of his revolver, told every body to take their Ear muffs off, and crowd around, I then showed them what a fired round looked like from the back, wee dent, showed all (8) how to take that fired round out, how to drop a single round in, "You all got that" couple of questions. Put it back in the holster. He did. "You know it's loaded now?" "YES SIR" so you are not going to take it out again till I give the command are you? "NO SIR" Class continued, the helpful shooter shot a 100%

He did come back in when the class had left "Sir, I expected to be kicked out" "Did any one get hurt?" "No" well thats the name of that tune I said.

"You learned a lesson?" "Yes Sir" Like I said, I am somewhat non conventional. I could have wrecked that young mans life right there, not my style.

 

[AndyC]

"All guns are always loaded" should be the standard philosophy as far as safety is concerned. However, this doesn't mean that firearms always need to be loaded; in practice, and I'm speaking of military operations here, there should be a sliding scale for the loaded state of a weapon based on the likelihood of combat.

If you're on or outside the wire, there's no excuse not to have a loaded weapon ie. a magazine or belt in place (I'll leave aside for now the loaded/unloaded chamber argument) - the threat-level is higher so the state of the weapon should be more immediately ready-to-go than, say, a REMF would need it to be. This might sound obvious, but some managers/officers have gotten guys killed by bad guys because of their insistence on unloaded weapons even outside the wire "for safety's sake" - and don't tell me it doesn't happen, because I knew 3 of those dead guys.

Inside the wire eg. the DFAC or chow-hall, all weapons should be present but unloaded (ie. chambered cleared and magazine out) apart from any guards whose job it is to secure that environment - the threat is much decreased, and I don't care if you are/were Delta, you don't need a weapon in Condition 0 or 1 when getting another Twinkie.

Horses for courses - the condition of the weapon is proportional to the threat-environment.