Military Rifle Quals

[Rellik]

Ok, I rated Expert on the AR platform, but that was back in 97, and was an AF standard. 

I have heard since the wot, the standards have become more even between the services. Is this true?

[Eric]

When I was in the Army in the mid-eighties, rifle qualification was 40 rounds at popup targets between 50 meters and 400 meters. The 50 meter popup target was just a head and shoulders target. All the rest of them were head & torso popup targets. The time varied based on the distance of the target, but you had a few seconds to engage each target after it popped up. If you didn't hit the target in that time, it dropped on its own. The targets didn't pop up in any particular order, so you had to keep scanning for your next target.

Twenty rounds were fired from a defensive position (Foxhole) and twenty rounds from the prone position. you had to make 26 of 40 shots to qualify, 31 (I think) of 40 shots for Sharpshooter and 36 of 40 shots to qualify expert. I don't know how the other services did things. We used M-16s in Basic of course, but I was stationed in The Old Guard after Basic and we carried and qualified with M-14s. I qualified expert with both rifles, but I far preferred to carry and shoot the M-14.

[Rellik]

In my day, it was a bulldozed berm. No motorized or pop ups. 

[Eric]

5 minutes ago, Rellik said:

In my day, it was a bulldozed berm. No motorized or pop ups. 

We had pop-up targets on the machine gun qualification course too. Those targets ranged from around 300 (I think), out to 1,000 meters. The targets would be torso & head targets, in clusters of 4 to 6. I was an M-60 gunner, so I had to qualify with it as well. Part of our qualification included night firing. I don't remember how it was scored.

[Batesmotel]

USMC early 80s. IIRC
 

200 meters. 10 rounds standing. 10 rounds standing to kneeling.

300 meters. 10 rounds kneeling. 10 rounds standing to sitting.

500 meters. 10 rounds prone. 
 

The new course covers 15 to 500 yards. 

[janice6]

Since the military qualifications was brought up, I guess I should come clean:

 

I joined the Active Navy Reserve while in High School.  I was the station Radioman and ran the Radio station communications with the Great Lakes Training Center.  I found out that if you held a qualifying Amateur Radio License you could go into service as an Radioman Striker (E3), so they couldn't send me to boot camp.  I went into the Navy upon graduation and was sent to a receiving station and from there to my own ship.

As a youngster I read all the Greek Mythology in the State Teachers College library along with all the science fiction.  I would copy engineering texts with a pencil into a notebook, since I was too young to check out reference books. This is where my Electrical Engineering knowledge started in the Third Grade.  I also had an Amateur Radio License while in grade school and built my own gear.  I hold a W0xxx call sign for my whole life.

I was in the Navy.  I never went to boot camp.  I never learned to be a sailor.  I learned what I needed from the Manual, "Bluejackets manual".  Usually, just before I needed to know it.  I never qualified to shoot.  

I never was asked if I could swim, (yes, my buddies and I would swim across small lakes for fun in the Summer) I was never asked if I could shoot (yes since early grade school), I never learned to march, I was the only radioman on the Minesweeper.  International law said that no ships could go to sea without a radioman.  I was gold since the captain couldn't go to sea without me.

I reconfigured the Transmitters and the antennas with the permission of the Captain (Patently illegal) and we could talk to Washington D.C from anywhere in the world).  One time I had to relay a message to Washington from the Sixth Fleet Communications ship while we were tied to it in Beirut harbor (they couldn't raise Washington, my Captain was pleased to have the attention of the whole Sixth Fleet)

I learned to shoot a Thompson SMG while on the ship. At sea the had them on a card table on the bow with stick magazines for free shooting every couple of weeks at sea.  The target was a 50 gallon drum kicked into the sea.  We had one Thompson for each crew member. I left the Navy after two years, as an RM3.

The Navy took me to all the countries around the Mediterranean Sea.  I got to visit all the ancient historical places I read about in my youth.  Gibraltar (One of the Pillars of Hercules),  Athens, Greece.  Naples, Italy, Rhodes, Greece (the Colossus) Crete (the labyrinth), Malta ( an English Destroyer tracked us with the main battery as we maneuvered to our anchorage in the harbor,  for practice they said) That was unnerving to say the least. I was amazed that I could walk among the ruins of civilizations thousands of years old.

We reached our final anchorage in Beirut, Lebanon Harbor with the rest of the 6th fleet during the revolution, 1959 IIRC.  Went on liberty to a bar one night the next morning it was nothing but a hole in the ground. Our crew started too many fights with other guys in town.  I asked a Beirut cop to see his Beretta and he smiled and gave it to me!  I gave it back with two fingers on the grip!

Our Minesweeper was run out of Beirut for being a distraction during their revolution, so we went back from port to port around the Med again. 

At sea.  We got buzzed by Navy fighters with them coming so close that they could identify us by our facial characteristics, they said)  Later, remember the USS Liberty!

My Navy experience was a blast.  I really did get to see the world in a ship that was wood throughout, 180 feet long 20 some feet in beam.  We took a month to cross the Atlantic.  Flank speed was 13 or 14 knots.

Back then, I would recommend Military service to anyone.  You learned how to do whatever you wanted in a closed society.

 

 

 

[pipedreams]

Qualified Expert with the M14 don't remember many of the details.  The M60 & 50 just remember learning about sitting up defensive positions and how to make out cards.  Carried the M60 for awhile till I got a promotion, glad to quite lugging it around but was a good experience.    

[Rellik]

5 hours ago, janice6 said:

Since the military qualifications was brought up, I guess I should come clean:

Janey, this sounds like the intro chapter to an autobiography.  

At the least, I hope you write all this down, with pics, for your grandkids. So they know who you are.

Gives them family history, so much of mine has died off while I did my 20 and was gone.

[janice6]

1 hour ago, Rellik said:

Janey, this sounds like the intro chapter to an autobiography.  

At the least, I hope you write all this down, with pics, for your grandkids. So they know who you are.

Gives them family history, so much of mine has died off while I did my 20 and was gone.

No, I'm not interested in going over it much more.  My point was that I never qualified  for much of anything but Radio and electronics in the Military however, that was enough to let me make my way.  

I tend to write more than I should, but I like writing so it's addictive.  I mentioned elsewhere I wrote proposals for my company for the Navy, it fit in with what I like to do.

Nonetheless, my other point is that I still got along in the military without any training and had fun doing it.  Again, I'm nothing special but I had fun in my life.

[pipedreams]

Here are three videos on the U.S. Army's Trainfire program as it was originally intended and changed from the mid-1950s to late 1970s. This all predates the "Four Fundamentals" model most Soldiers are familiar with.

Video 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZk9DxK54QI

Video 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w52KdOlLKWw

Video 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs7U4lr04s0

[Mrs.Cicero]

If you want to do something similar, go to an Appleseed course.  It's shot at 25m so you can use a .22 (if you want to), with targets sized to represent farther distances -

100yd target, standing, 10 rounds in 2 minutes,

2 200yd targets - start standing then transition to seated, 5 rounds in each target - 2 rounds then mag change then 8 more rounds for a total of 10, in 55 seconds

3 300yd targets  - start standing then transition to prone, 2 rounds in first target, mag change, 1 more round same target, then 3 rounds in middle target, then 4 rounds in last target, in 65 seconds

4 400yd targets - prone - slow fire, no mag change or transition, just put rounds into targets 2,2,3,3 for a total of 10 in 5 minutes (points are doubled on this stage)

The first three stages are 50 points each, the final stage is 100 - for a total of 250 for the course of fire.  You need 210/250 to score "Rifleman"

I like it 'cause it's cheaper to blow through 40 rounds of .22 than 40 rounds of .30-06 (also easier to find .22 ammo, sigh).  

 

 

[Gunboat1]

USN Rifle Expert, M14

USN Pistol Expert, M1911A1 and Sig P226

 Won the marksmanship competition for my ship on both weapons, 1990.  Good times.

[janice6]

         I didn't go to boot camp so I had no training on rifles or handguns.  My father taught me shooting well so rifles didn't bother me.  The 1911 was something that at that time I hadn't shot.  So, believing all the hype about "recoil from a heavy round", at sea we had pistol and rifle practice/  I love to shoot so I chose a 1911 that day.  I go all braced to shoot it and my shipmates were laughing at me for expecting a monster recoil.  We shot at a 55 gallon drum bobbing in the ocean.  I aimed and slowly pulled the trigger and it went off.  I waited and waited but no recoil!  I thought something went wrong with the pistol.  They laughed harder.

The next time gunnery practice at sea I picked up a Thompson with a stick magazine.  We had no rifles since our ship would be so close to shore we just needed spray and pray.  One Thompson for each crew member.  When sweeping near shore as in a harbor, all the crew had to be on the open deck armed.  Your chances of getting shot were less than being riddled by splinter below deck as rounds went through the wooden hull. Lesson learned in Korea.

Any way, I had read how to shoot a Thompson as a youngster, and surprisingly all went well, of course I used the sling.  Our NEW Ensign (right out of OCS, grabbed a Thompson off the table on the bow and with the other hand shoved the magazine in place while at the same time the hand holding the Thompson pulled the trigger.

With only one arm on the MG, it spun him around and he put three slugs through the canvas sun shield above the Captains chair on the flying bridge.  Just as soon as the sound stopped, the Captain confined him to quarters for two weeks.  He gave us fits having no experience aboard ship.

[Walt Longmire]

My son was in the last group of 10 Americans leaving the base in Somalia. Before they left he was going out to the 'range' (a dump) to fire off all the ordinance. 50 cals, rockets, all kinds of stuff. his favorite was the fully automatic grenade launcher. With the 50 cals he fired until the barrel was red hot then swapped out another. Someone was shoveling the expended brass away with a grain scoop.

[Wyzz Kydd]

On 3/18/2023 at 8:21 PM, Eric said:

When I was in the Army in the mid-eighties, rifle qualification was 40 rounds at popup targets between 50 meters and 400 meters. The 50 meter popup target was just a head and shoulders target. All the rest of them were head & torso popup targets. The time varied based on the distance of the target, but you had a few seconds to engage each target after it popped up. If you didn't hit the target in that time, it dropped on its own. The targets didn't pop up in any particular order, so you had to keep scanning for your next target.

Twenty rounds were fired from a defensive position (Foxhole) and twenty rounds from the prone position. you had to make 26 of 40 shots to qualify, 31 (I think) of 40 shots for Sharpshooter and 36 of 40 shots to qualify expert. I don't know how the other services did things. We used M-16s in Basic of course, but I was stationed in The Old Guard after Basic and we carried and qualified with M-14s. I qualified expert with both rifles, but I far preferred to carry and shoot the M-14.

I seem to remember very similar accuracy requirements when I shot the 1911 in the Navy.  We didn't shoot any long guns in basic, only the 1911s.  On the subs sentry duty guns were either 10 gauge shotguns, which is what everyone who hadn't qualified with a 1911, or the 1911.  You definitely wanted to be carrying a 1911 rather than a heavy 10 gauge.  

'Qualifying' with the shotguns was just 'familiarization' fire.  The few times I did it we went into some of the wooded areas of the sub base at Kings Bay Georgia and shot random crap until we were out of ammo.

[Eric]

5 hours ago, Wyzz Kydd said:

I seem to remember very similar accuracy requirements when I shot the 1911 in the Navy.  We didn't shoot any long guns in basic, only the 1911s.  On the subs sentry duty guns were either 10 gauge shotguns, which is what everyone who hadn't qualified with a 1911, or the 1911.  You definitely wanted to be carrying a 1911 rather than a heavy 10 gauge.  

'Qualifying' with the shotguns was just 'familiarization' fire.  The few times I did it we went into some of the wooded areas of the sub base at Kings Bay Georgia and shot random crap until we were out of ammo.

When I was in, it was a real PITA to check back in ammo we had been issued, but hadn't expended. This meant that we often got to have a shooting free-for-all at the end of many range sessions. One time in Basic, they mistakenly issued us like 7,500 rounds extra of belted .50cal ammo. The Drill SGTs actually tried to turn that back in, but it was a Saturday shoot and the ordnance guys didn't want to hassle with it, so they said it would take many, many hours for them to come retrieve it. Long story short, anyone who cared to got to expend a shitload of ammo at the old WWII half-tracks being used as targets. I fired off a pretty big chunk of it myself. The old Ma Deuce was fun to shoot, although it was quite a bit less fun to clean.