September 11, 2007

Can you believe that it's been six years since the twin towers and all the attacks? When First Sergeant said that today, I almost couldn't believe it. Where does the time go? It was a good reminder that time is precious and we need to make the most of what we have.

You wanted more information for the blog and you will certainly get some here. Yesterday, as I said in an earlier letter, was an extremely busy day. The first things we did was go to the ETS (Electronic Targeting System) building and get our first Advanced Rifle Marksmanship class. ARM involves close quarters combat. In the ETS, we were engaging targets at 25 meters and closer. It involves using a red dot sight, which is pretty cool. I scored 31 out of 36 possible during the ETS portion. So I was pretty happy with that.

After that, we had lunch, then caught transportation to one of the ranges. There, we did the same thing only with live ammo. It was quite fun. You start with your rifle on safe, locked and loaded, and at the low ready position. On the command to engage the target, you snap the rifle up into firing position while switching it from safe to semi and fire a controlled pair at the target. You then lower the weapon, flipping the selector switch from semi to safe. We fired two twenty-round magazines between twenty meters and five meters. I liked it a lot. It was much more fun than BRM was.

After that, we waited around until dinner time, ate dinner then walked over to the next range for night firing. Now that was really fun! For that, we used a combination of a night vision monocular that mounts to our helmet and a device that paints the target with a laser (visible only through the night vision) that mounts to the forward handgrip. That was really cool. The night vision device was amazing. There's a reason the US Army owns the night. We fired forty rounds there also.

Today was cool also. First, we caught transportation to a range where we learned to fire the AT4 rocket launcher. Then we got to fire five or so practice rounds from them. I hit my target every time and got several compliments from the drill sergeant working my firing station. After that, the two guys who scored the highest in BRM got to fire the real thing so we could see what they are like. Then we caught transportation to another range where we learned to fire the M203 Grenade Launcher. We got to fire several practice rounds from that as well and that was fun also.