FHL Day 5

We are slowly falling into a rhythm here. Every day seems really long, but I think it's because we've got something different going on every day. Yesterday we covered a lot of Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM). The last time I went through a full BRM course was a few years ago in Basic Training. It doesn't take very long to lose these skills. BRM is a perishable skill they say, and it really is. If you don't pull your rifle out ever few months at least, you become less and less comfortable with it. So we went through all the basics, and I mean all. From identifying the different components, to proper firing positions, to proper cleaning methods. Really boring stuff, and difficult to stay awake for. I don't know what it is about the classroom environment, but it makes a lot of people really sleepy, even if the subject matter is interesting. Plus, humping around in all our gear doesn't help either.
We also covered all the different optics and night vision components for the M16. There's a few different day and night sights, but we were all issued one of 2 kinds: the CCO and the ACOG. The CCO, or Close Combat Optic, is a red dot optic made by AimPoint. It's a pretty nice sight, really easy to see though and super accurate once you zero it in. Zeroing is getting the weapon sighted to your firing style. Basically making it so that when you look through the sights, it fires where you want it to. The ACOG, or the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, was only issued to a few of our guys. It too is an expensive and awesome piece of equipment. It allows the wielder a greater range, as it magnifies the target 4 times it's normal size. It pushes the maximum range out to about 800 meters plus. You still have to be able to fire it, and that's what we got a taste of today.
After going through all these classes, we actually got out the the range today to become more familiar with our weapons and zero them and our sights. First we zero the iron sights, which are the sights already on the M16. To do that, the firer must put 6 consecutive rounds in a 4cm circle in the middle of a silhouette 25meters away. The silhouette is the same size as one that is 300meters away, pretty damn small. So if all goes well, you zero your weapon in a few shots and move on from there. You do the same this with the CCO also, but only after your iron sights are zeroed. We knocked all that out in a few hours, finishing jsut around 1300.
We also got a little familiarization on the M9 today too, just to say we did basically. They lined us all up, gave us two 5-round magazines and let us just pop 'em off at the targets in our lane. Two minutes of firing maximum.
Tomorrow we have the qualification range for the M16 and then a night-fire exercise after dinner chow. That should be pretty interesting, firing at night with the infrared lasers and such. It makes for a long day though, but as long as I get a good qual score I won't mind.

-Mac