Getting Army Qualified

This week was all about qualifying with our weapons the M-4 and the M-9. We learned everything we need to know about the how they function and how to care for them. We also concentrated on shooting fundamentals. Everything was really great except the class size. They really squeezed us in and that made it difficult when we bore sighted our M-4s with our PEQ-2 and M-68.
The day before we hit the range we all had to shoot on the simulator to check our grouping. It’s all computerized and was like a very expensive arcade game. You have to get your grouping within a certain area to make sure our fundamentals are strong. Some people had breathing issues and others had pull issues. I got a good grouping with the first round and felt pretty confident going to the range.
We had to qualify day fire and night fire with the M-4 so that was first on the range schedule. Any time I get to go to the range and fire I feel guilty for getting paid. I could have spent the whole day on the line. I was in the first group to zero in and got done pretty quickly. I zeroed with iron sights first and then with my M-68.From the zero line I got to go up the hill to the qualification line.
Army ranges are much different than Air Force ranges on so many levels. I got to do things on the Army range that would have shut down an Air Force range. And the language is much more colorful on an Army range. The target system is different too, but in a good way. We got to shoot at life like pop up targets that ranged from 50-300 meters in three different firing positions. I felt pretty good about shooting on a range I wasn’t familiar with and scored sharp shooter. I was done with day fire. Unfortunately, being in the first group means you have to wait for the rest of the people to go through. I was on the bench by 1000 and I was there until the last person qualified at 1530. It took the last person 11 times to finally get a qualifying score. After everyone was done we came back to Camp Funston to eat and get ready for night fire.
We headed back out to the range at 2000 to get night qualification done. Again, I got into the first firing group. Night firing was unlike anything I had ever done before. The targets popped up with a blinking light on the top. We wore our N.O.D.S (night vision) and lined up the laser on the targets and fired. There wasn’t any looking through a scope or sights. I could have used this system deer hunting several years ago! By 0030 everyone was qualified and we headed back to the dorms. It was a long day and we had formation at 0730 followed by a full day of classroom lecture. This was one of the hardest days to date to stay awake.
The class was Basic Fire Support which was very interesting. We learned the radio procedures for ground artillery and airstrikes. We got to play with another video game and call in fire to bomb strategic interactive targets. Zac would have loved it because it actually blows up your target and destroys it. Not your average day working in a pharmacy so I’m still having fun playing Army.