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I Hate Reflective Belts


Toro

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At no point was I ever told to continuously switch from safe to semi while engaging the enemy. Once the lead went downrange and/or you were receiving lead your direction, the switch went to whatever let you fire, and stayed there until it was over.

When engaging the enemy in a firefight, safety and ORM kind of go out the window. At that point, it's about surviving and killing the mother fuckers that are shooting at you. No body gives a shit if you have the muscle memory to switch your weapon to safe, or the muscle memory to tuck your shirt...they care if you have the muscle memory to put a round in the other dude's center of mass.

Same thing the Corps taught ALL of us in boot camp and Marine Combat Training...

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At no point was I ever told to continuously switch from safe to semi while engaging the enemy. ...they care if you have the muscle memory to put a round in the other dude's center of mass.

No point trying to rationalize or get inside this guy's cranium; the whole idea behind his article was f'd up from the word go. His "there I was" story actually kind of fit in with the rest of his drivel.

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No body gives a shit if you have the muscle memory to switch your weapon to safe, or the muscle memory to tuck your shirt...they care if you have the muscle memory to put a round in the other dude's center of mass.

Debrief item:

2, say reason you were off dry tonight.

Switches.

Roger. Debrief is over for you. You are cleared off to proceed directly to apologize to the kids of the 7 Eagle guys who died making sure we could ingress to the target without getting schwacked.

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I understood it as: after every round fired, he immediately put the weapon back on SAFE, and didn't switch to SEMI until he was on the verge of firing another round.

Which, in the midst of a no-shit firefight, is still ######ed up as a football bat.

Maybe so, but for the record, that is exactly what Magpul teaches in their carbine course. The snake eaters train with these guys pretty frequently, and given the superior quality of AF small arms training (insert eye roll here), it's probably not too much of a stretch to think that a career cop has attended one of their courses or a something similar.

Edited by 60 driver
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Maybe so, but for the record, that is exactly what Magpul teaches in their carbine course.

I see what you're saying... but when we're talking about regular US military forces engaging enemy personnel in a combat zone, I honestly don't care what Magpul, or US Training Center, or Gunsite, or Thunder Ranch, or ____________ is teaching in their carbine course. The average Joe (and contrary to their delusions, USAF skycops are average Joes, not snake eaters, "operators", or any other euphemism for SOF) isn't trained that way in either the Army or the Marine Corps.

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The snake eaters train with these guys pretty frequently,

Wait, what?!

That's not what I saw on Blackhawk down...

Hoot: Y'know what I think? Don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window. When I go home, people ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it, man? Why? You some kind of war junkie?" I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand it's about the men next to you... and that's it. That's all it is.

Captain Steele: Sergeant, what's going on here?

Hoot: Oh, just some aerial target practice, sir. Didn't want to leave it behind.

Steele: I'm talking about your weapon. [points to Hoot's slung M4] Delta or no Delta, that's a hot weapon. You know better than that. Your safety should be on at all times on base.

Hoot: [holding up his index finger] Well, this is my safety, sir.

Eversmann: [in disbelief] You're going back in?

Hoot: There are still men out there.

Just sayin'...

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Flipping the safety on after each shot is a poor technique that would get most people killed. The carbine courses have so many different techniques, and some sound totally crazy but happen to work for one guy one time. Great training all, but I think that particular technique would get the majority of people killed. Sky cops fall squarely in the average majority. Bottom line is this guys is a total idiot, whether or not this particular technique is valid and used by someone at Magpul.

The conceptual idea that one absolutely must get the uniform standard right all the time or you simply aren't qualified to fight the war is fundamentally flawed. The true professional puts everything on a hierarchy of importance, a hierarchy that changes depending on many variables. As operators we're very comfortable living like this, and we usually call it SA. Sometimes your gas state is the most important thing, sometimes it's the weather, sometimes it's the mission then the icing on your wings, and when the critical part of the mission is over you RTB the area because now the icing is most important. The hierarchy is always changing, and a good flyer stays aware of what's at the top and the handful of items under it. This idea of juggling a group of variables which all slide up and down the priority list used to confuse the shit out of me in pilot training, resulting in my average performance. But with a few thousand hours it's natural to all of us.

And I think this is why we all know his argument is bullshit, but an articulate response is hard because the concept is so simple. We think "of course my mission planning is more important than having my sleeves rolled down." Or "of course I put my sunglasses on my head, I'm doing shit with my hands."

And that's the issue with this guy, and this entire school of thought with non-operators that if you can't get the uniform right how can you fly an airplane? They think "how can you possibly do the important things when you can't get this thing right?" And we think "how can you possibly worry about the unimportant things when there are so many others that matter?" Of course our perspective is right and theirs is wrong. We prove that by flying successful missions everyday wearing baseball hats with a dip in our mouth; and if they understood priorities they wouldn't correct an officer about a minor uniform violation by yelling at him in public-- a customs and courtesies breach that manifests their inability to differentiate importance levels between issues.

The only possible fix to our plight (two incompatible schools of thought) is leadership. Leadership must set the standard and leadership must judge what is most important when. And of course, leadership is what we are mostly lacking. Approaching the end of my commitment, this is a pretty strong argument for me to stay and try to fix it.

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Flipping the safety on after each shot is a poor technique that would get most people killed. The carbine courses have so many different techniques, and some sound totally crazy but happen to work for one guy one time. Great training all, but I think that particular technique would get the majority of people killed. Sky cops fall squarely in the average majority. Bottom line is this guys is a total idiot, whether or not this particular technique is valid and used by someone at Magpul.

The conceptual idea that one absolutely must get the uniform standard right all the time or you simply aren't qualified to fight the war is fundamentally flawed. The true professional puts everything on a hierarchy of importance, a hierarchy that changes depending on many variables. As operators we're very comfortable living like this, and we usually call it SA. Sometimes your gas state is the most important thing, sometimes it's the weather, sometimes it's the mission then the icing on your wings, and when the critical part of the mission is over you RTB the area because now the icing is most important. The hierarchy is always changing, and a good flyer stays aware of what's at the top and the handful of items under it. This idea of juggling a group of variables which all slide up and down the priority list used to confuse the shit out of me in pilot training, resulting in my average performance. But with a few thousand hours it's natural to all of us.

And I think this is why we all know his argument is bullshit, but an articulate response is hard because the concept is so simple. We think "of course my mission planning is more important than having my sleeves rolled down." Or "of course I put my sunglasses on my head, I'm doing shit with my hands."

And that's the issue with this guy, and this entire school of thought with non-operators that if you can't get the uniform right how can you fly an airplane? They think "how can you possibly do the important things when you can't get this thing right?" And we think "how can you possibly worry about the unimportant things when there are so many others that matter?" Of course our perspective is right and theirs is wrong. We prove that by flying successful missions everyday wearing baseball hats with a dip in our mouth; and if they understood priorities they wouldn't correct an officer about a minor uniform violation by yelling at him in public-- a customs and courtesies breach that manifests their inability to differentiate importance levels between issues.

The only possible fix to our plight (two incompatible schools of thought) is leadership. Leadership must set the standard and leadership must judge what is most important when. And of course, leadership is what we are mostly lacking. Approaching the end of my commitment, this is a pretty strong argument for me to stay and try to fix it.

Well said. I sincerely hope that you make it to a senior leadership position, and you can change some of these idiotic policies and the thought process behind them.

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I thought AF standard was round in the chamber, gun on fire. At least, that's one item the inspectors dinged the life support guys on during our last ORI.

I thought for a pistol that was true.

But from brief chats with SF guys it's different for an M-16.

Granted this was all on a CONUS base but normally they go out with a magazine in the well but nothing chambered on safe. Then for escalation of force they would chamber a round. Then it was game on.

I can't imagine going out of the wire without a round chambered though down range...so yea.

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Guest Crew Report

I thought AF standard was round in the chamber, gun on fire. At least, that's one item the inspectors dinged the life support guys on during our last ORI.

Yeah for the M-9. Not so much for the M-16/M-4.

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Approaching the end of my commitment, this is a pretty strong argument for me to stay and try to fix it.

Amen.

I support you sticking around. So does my family, the USAF and the rest of America.

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3. Well said.

4. With a few minor tweaks (so it's not directly attacking E-9 Numbthumb) that would be exactly the type of short, sharp, and effective reading I would expect in PME. Much better than the 70/30 drivel mix that is currently shoveled off the truck.

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Really? That isn't your source is it?

I'll assume not.

Really, you assume not?

Some people are just dense...

... for these people I offer a very special service...

Come one, come all to Butter's sarcasm detector repair shop! For a low low monthly payment of $500.01, over the course of 10 years, I will personally repair and maintain your sarcasm detector!

But wait, there's more! Call now and I'll double your offer. For the same price, not only will I repair and maintain your sarcasm detector, but the sarcasm detector of one of your friends (you do have friends, right?) for free!

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for your sarcasm detector, and will only repair it when I feels like it, which is probably never.

This is a test:

No one would ever use a movie as a source for describing how something works or is done in real life. Well, unless that movie is Iron Eagle. This shit was spot on!

Edited by Butters
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Guest Jollygreen

Really, you assume not?

It is clear you can't pick up sarcasm. Your repair shop will soon be out of business.

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