More IED Training and Firing the BIG Weapons

We continued our training and preparation for our final exercises on Thursday and Friday. Tuesday's training was interesting, however it was made a bit miserable by the set up of the training. The most interesting part was looking at sample IED's made by the Army to simulate what the insurgents are doing. We then took a short convoy in vehicles and had to look for signs of a planted IED at 10 mph. The other training included sniper awareness, setting up a landing zone, and setting up what amounts to a combat road block. The material was good, but standing in the sun in full battle gear for 6 hours receiving instruction was a little rough.

Today we went to a range and fired the big guns. We fired the MK19 ( Grenade Launcher), the M240B machine gun and the M2 .50 cal machine gun. I'm not someone who gets excited about firing guns, but it was a good familiarization. We all fired the M2 (see below) and some of us got to fire the MK19.

The training is winding down. We are ready to be done and move on. We are trying to keep our attitudes positive even though much of this weeks tactical training will not be utilized by us downrange. We turn in our equipment on Saturday and "graduate" on Sunday. We are finalizing our plans to fly to theater for the next week.

Until next time....