Posted: 9/18/2009 1:24:33 PM EDT
Just got my certificate of training from the US Army Marksmanship Unit CQM course. Five days of range time, 1700rds of 5.56 and 500rds of 9mm. I learned so freaking much!!! Here are a few pics, more to come later.
COOLEST. ARMY SCHOOL. EVER. |
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Just got my certificate of training from the US Army Marksmanship Unit CQM course. Five days of range time, 1700rds of 5.56 and 500rds of 9mm. I learned so freaking much!!! Here are a few pics, more to come later. COOLEST. ARMY SCHOOL. EVER. Cool. Would you mind sharing a little more about it? |
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First off, this was the best instructed course I have ever been to in the US Army. This class was taught by all "President's Hundred" tab winners. You win the tab by being in the top 100 at the Camp Perry Matches. This course was conducted by the United States Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU).
This was shot at the Krilling Range Complex at Fort Benning, Ga. AMU runs the range like I have never experienced before in the US Army. They run a "Big Boy" range. We didnt have to wear a kevlar helmet, first off. The senior instructor said "I don't have to teach you how to be miserable." They believe that a no-stress, comfortable class is a great learning environment. All the stress in the class was self induced, because you want to make yourself shoot better. We didn't have to be 'rodded' on and off the range. All we had to do was 'buddy clear'. That was an awesome aspect. They treated us like professionals, not privates. It was great. The first day was about 2 hours of classroom instruction, and it was all a overview of expected safety on the range, shooting positions, kit setup, rifle setup, magazine exchanges, and sling choice. The USAMU unequivocally reccomends the Viking Tactics sling. I already have two of them, and I LOVE IT!!. They also teach putting the ring finger of the firing hand above the middle finger firing notch and stacking the middle finger over the ring finger, as well as using a LOT more trigger finger. It made trigger control much more smooth, and the sights move much less when sqeezing like that. If you look closely at the second pic, you can see how my middle finger is wrapped over my ring finger. Then we went to the range and started by confirming the zero on our rifles. Then we went straight into 'up' drills. Then recoil management drills (6 rounds as fast as you can shoot accurately, concentrating on controlling the rifle). Then up drills at longer ranges (50m), and building some memory on point of aim, point of impact at different ranges. We fired about 400 rounds the first day. At the end of the day we grounded all our gear and shot a "cooldown" magazine, concentrating on sight picture and trigger control. Day two was more up drills, recoil management and reloads. We also did a lot of shoot on the move and multiple target array shooting. ~500 rds Day three was all barricade shooting, standing and kneeling, supported and unsupported. Almost the whole day was barricade. ~600 rounds Day four was 95% pistol. We fired a little rifle, just to practice transitioning to the pistol in the event of a malfunction or the shooting your rifle dry. We ended the day with a Bianchi plate rack competition. ~400rds of 9mm Day five was kind of like a competition day. They set up 5 USPSA style three gun stages (although we did not shoot shotgun). We shot steel at 150m, a few pistol stages, a transition stage, and had a blast, with a little friendly competition in out 'squads'. I thought I could shoot my rifle well prior to this class. I learned soooooooooo much, and I was able to practice these skills a lot, and all with ammo I didnt have to pay for. The instructors were outstanding, and it was nice to have one instuctor per 4-5 students. Everyone who can needs to try and get their unit to send them to this class. Awesome. |
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We shot wearing our gear, but this was a train the trainer style class. The point was for us to be able to master the skills in order to be able to pass these skills to our soldiers.
This was a class to build on, and we can always shoot more, using the skills we learned, while in full kit. They just wanted to make sure we were paying attention ot the instruction, not the damn hot helmet. |
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Teach you how to be uncomfortable? The reason for making you wear you helmet, is that you train like you fight and mounting the weapon with your fighting gear on is different than without it. Which is why we rod on and off ranges, and take all commands from the tower, and move up and down range in mass, we do anything and everything BUT train like we fight. |
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Teach you how to be uncomfortable? The reason for making you wear you helmet, is that you train like you fight and mounting the weapon with your fighting gear on is different than without it. Which is why we rod on and off ranges, and take all commands from the tower, and move up and down range in mass, we do anything and everything BUT train like we fight. Never been on a range that required roding, other when watching the army. This is a CQM course, meaning you should have the basics down prior to going. On a basics of rifle and pistol marksmanship or position shooting course I totally understand not wearing combat gear. But this is meant to be a combat/fighting course and you should train as close as you would as when you fight. |
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AWESOME!
You're right on-target –– you don't need the dome of obedience and IBA to get it right the first time. Learn it right and you'll do it right the rest of your life. Learn it wrong and you'll spend the rest of your life trying to do it right.. AJ Johnson wrote two articles that appeared first here on ARFCOM as threads (DM and CQM) that went on to become Infantry Magazine articles. http://www.usaac.army.mil/amu/News/SDM.pdf http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAV/is_6_97/ai_n31527123/ |
| I've done it in armor. The skills i learned will transfer easily to wearing armor. This was a fundamental skills class, to give us the ability to teach our soldiers. Of course we will train wearing full kit and helmet. Full Kit and Helmet was not the point of this class. That is for another training environment. |
| Not really sure what the issue with wearing a helmet being a hard to do cames from? I learn to not be bothered by it when I was with the Army. The Marines on the other hand have a totally different mind set, the only time you can keep a Marine in his helmet is when doing live fire. |
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Not really sure what the issue with wearing a helmet being a hard to do cames from? I learn to not be bothered by it when I was with the Army. The Marines on the other hand have a totally different mind set, the only time you can keep a Marine in his helmet is when doing live fire. You are missing the point. The point is this was a school, not combat training. The skills learned here are applied to combat training. That is the difference. I agree that combat taining should be in full kit. That was not the point of the school. |
| No I think you are missing the point, the school is a train the trainer for combat shooting. If are you are training for combat shooting, you and your troops will be in full kit when running the course. If an ACH is causing you not to learn how to do it right, in the right uniform, how are you going to do it right in the right kit? |
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There is no argument, I am just saying you know how to do it right and have muscle memory on how to do it right without your gear on. I have done the Marine Corps equivalent on both coasts and we wore full gear because you mount the weapon, stand different and get a different cheek weld when you have your armor on.
Trust me, I have done the same sans armor (civilian based training) and I found that it was totally different when I did the same thing with my gear on. Many of the positions and handling procedures change when you have 2 inches more and gloves between your weapon and the harness on your helmet precludes you from getting behind the sights the same. Many of the ground shooting positions cannot be gotten into or must be modified when you have your armor and mags on. |
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Do all Marine recruits go to snap-in and qualification range in full kit immediately? Army teaching methodology is crawl-walk-run. Nope. But to take that analogy than this is the first shooting training the student gets. After shooting the KD, you shoot with your gear on no exceptions. If that is the case the shooter has never shot or done fire and maneuver than sure, do it sans armor. But if this is meant as a train the trainer the assumption is that the being going have been picked and should not be starting at day one with shooting. I totally get the crawl, walk, run. I am the process of writing a Regimental training plan. But my point is by the time you get to CQM, you have gone beyond walk, that is what BRM is meant to be and by the time you are shooting Close Quarters you are at least jogging. More important, you are building the wrong muscle memory if you are doing it all without gear. |
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Understood –– but the Army only gives a 20-40 shot CQM "Familiarization" in Basic Training.
We have no other FORMAL schoolhouse instruction until either going to the AMU course or to a Special Forces/Ranger shooting course –– all other MOSs have a total of maybe 30 minutes and 40 rounds exposure before teaching Joes to go through the door. |
| I've done it this way now. I've done it on a standard army range. I've done it on a Law Enforcement range. I've done it on an IPSC / USPSA range. I've done it on a two-way range. Don't discount training just because you dont like the way it was conducted. This is just another set of tools to put in my toolbox, a toolbox of which I try to incorporate everything I can to make myself the best shooter and trainer I can. Not wearing a kevlar doesn't invalidate training. Now i just have to adapt these skills to a combat skillset. |
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Teach you how to be uncomfortable? The reason for making you wear you helmet, is that you train like you fight and mounting the weapon with your fighting gear on is different than without it. Bullshit. You need to learn how to shoot well before you learn how to shoot with gear on. ETA: I see that others have piled on as well. 
@cvtrpr ... congrats on getting in more and better firearms training that most Soldiers get in 20 years. I know that it seemed like a shock to you (in terms of the "big boy" rules on the range), but this is how firearms training should be, once a Soldier has become comfortable with their weapon and has been deemed responsible enough to tote it around. |
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There is training and there is good or relevant training training. We use to do that sort of thing also, and what we found was you had to untrain and retrain the whole thing over again. You cannot say you know how to did it right, until you have done it right and many times at doing it right and doing right means with gear on. And as some who was a victim of this type of slick training years ago, I can attest that it wasn't too relevant and didn't translate well.
If on the first day you do it clean as an intro, okay that would make sense if it is an into. But a 1500 round course implies more than just basics. I cannot believe the day has come when the Marines are noting you need to wear a helmet. Years ago, we were the worst for not wearing helmets. How times have changed. |
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Teach you how to be uncomfortable? The reason for making you wear you helmet, is that you train like you fight and mounting the weapon with your fighting gear on is different than without it. Which is why we rod on and off ranges, and take all commands from the tower, and move up and down range in mass, we do anything and everything BUT train like we fight. Or why any type of reflexive fire needs to be cleared by battalion... whatever, train like we fight my ass. The training done in basic and OSUT is totally dependant upon the Drill Sgt's, you want better BRM training, have a full time staff who does only BRM train it like they do with CLS and pretty much everything else. When I did OSUT, they put the most worthless drill sgt on our M9 quals, and they Drill they put on to teach BRM was there only because he had the Silver Star and liked to shoot, the fact he could not correctly name the M16's components (the Bolt Carrier was the bolt, the bolt was the extractor etc..) and almost shot himself in the face with an ND from a SAW, or chewed out a private who's bolt catch broke during dry fire sans lower because he's never ever seen that happen so he obviously broke it while fucking around and didn't want to man up to it unitll we PMCS'd the rifles. They have proffessional staff for almost every different comittee for basic and AIT/OSUT, do the same for BRM. Looks like a great course, I'd love to get to SDM but so close to deployment it's not an option right now. Maybe when I get home. Steve |
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Steve... Try and get your unit to schedule the USAMU MTT to come to you. They do it on the road for deploying units. I'd love to, but being the MP Det in an STB, it's far more important for the HHC pogues to get all that training, and equipment, or so it's been so far. Steve |
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I took the class a few years ago and thought they did a good job of it.....For an army school. The guys were all P100 but that doesn't always translate. The bull eye pistol squad does NOT always mean good tactical training....That being said, whoever developed the lesson plan did a good job...The AMU pistol team executed it well.
Gear was optional but I chose to train as I fight minus the ACH......Like the Jar head...I agree that if you are past the crawl stage..which this course supposedly is...You should be training in kit.. Most importantly the IBA which dramatically changes balance, shoulder position, cheek weld. ect.. We now teach a similar class in state and body armor and ACH is mandatory. Not due to some bullshit range rule....but because that is the way you are going to fight....I even went out and got the plastic training plates for the IBAs....... YMMV |