Today was mostly boring. It started off as a gaggle, since we were traveling by HUMVEE all day today. We split the entire class (110 people) between 22 HUMVEES in convoys of four or five vehicles. (The picture below is of Major Peter Keegan from my team.) You'd think nobody ever drove in an organized fashion before! Folks crossing paths all over the parking lot, teams getting out of order. Eventually, everything fell into place and we were on our way. We drove to a training location about 15 minutes away and broke off into small groups for training. We were outside in our "battle rattle" most of the day. The weather held at about 80 degrees and sunny - hot, but not too hot. In the gear, though, it drains you.
The most interesting training was tactical clearing of a room. Now we will never do it, and the trainers know it, so they gave us the Reader's Digest version. How to go in as a group of four, take a position of dominance in the space and crossing sectors of fire. Cool stuff. Now I can critique the SWAT teams on television! The pictures below are of a few fellow airmen perfoming the task in simulated spaces (called a glass houses).
Another interesting class was on defeating IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). IEDs are those roadside bombs that the insurgency uses to attack military convoys. They come in all shapes and sizes. Those guys really know how to hide a bomb. Many of them are detonated by cell phone; just dial the number and BOOM! Luckily, we now have portable jamming devices that mount on a HUMVEE to overpower the cell transmissions used to activate IEDs. There are other technologies we employ, but I can't get into those here. (Nothing real secret squirrel, but you never know who reads these things.)
We also did some radio training, cultural awareness training, and basic convoy tactics. Again, not much that we - as Airmen - will ever use, except the cultural awareness. We will be practicing base defensive tactics on Sunday. Something we'll never do, but the Army wants us to know. The last picture is of me drinking water from my Camelback during an MRE lunch. MMMM..good!
Tomorrow, the 4th of July, is a day off, so to speak. We are going to have a picnic lunch, but are required to wear our PT clothes. No fireworks for me. So please enjoy the holiday and stay safe!
Later,
-Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment