July 31 Mounted Combat Patrol

Late post due to Army blocking of blogs. I finally found a way.

We spent one day in a convoy simulator, with full-size mock humvees and electronic weapons. Like a video game except you could get out of the “vehicle” and shoot your laser rifle at the bad people. On the other hand, the graphics were like mid-80's. Little detail, poor scrolling.

This prepared us for our first convoy yesterday, and all weapons having blanks. We did the “Riley 500”, a humorous comparison to NASCAR. Our turret gunners were soaked by heavy rain but hung in there. We were ambushed (insurgents with blanks) and IED’d (big bang with smoke). We practiced protocols for securing perimeters and setting defensive positions. Our OC (observer-controller) told us to pretend one vehicle was disabled and we set up a quick tow with a strap within 2 minutes.

The trip ended with our arrival at a mock village complete with a civilian protest. They wouldn’t move so we did a bit of cross-country (piece of cake in a humvee). Our leader then got out to help mediate with the “mayor” and “brigade commander” while the rest of us set our perimeter. The unruly crowd were instructed to be pushy so we had to do the shout-shine (laser pointer)-show (our weapons)-shove-shoot (warning shots) protocol. A couple KA-BOOMS from the 50 cal settled the crowd. To cap it off, 2 of the crowd snuck behind a derelict car and popped up shooting rifle blanks at us; we fired back within seconds and were given good marks for the whole “op” (operation).

Today we headed to the convoy shooting range where we used live-fire in a simulated convoy. We stopped at designated points and targets would pop up. The first three stops were for the rapid-fire big guns. The last stop included our dismounting the vehicles and shooting targets with our rifles.

Along the way, we did a tow and called in a medevac.

Main complaint: we spent 12 hours at the range, of which 2 hours we actually did stuff. The rest of the time was either waiting on the 6 other teams or just waiting for someone to make a decision. Hurry up and wait is the mantra.