• Transitions

  June 9, 2010

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  Tags:  

  army   Marksmanship  

  During my time 17 years in the Army, 14 years have been spent with the 75th Ranger Regiment, serving in all duty positions from rifleman to platoon sergeant. Upon leaving the Regiment, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime; to serve as member of the Service Rifle Section of the US Army Marksmanship Unit.
   

  As a senior leader within the premier light Infantry unit in the world I thought I knew exactly what marksmanship was all about. To some degree, I was right, but you don’t know what you don’t know. During the past 5 months assigned to the USAMU my knowledge of the fundamentals of marksmanship and their proper application has exploded. I have transitioned from a Soldier who was raised under the “seen equals killed” mentality, to understanding the finite intricacies of ballistics, environmental effects, and how important sight alignment truly is.
   

  I fired my first competition as member of the unit 2 months ago. One thing I found most interesting was how nervous you can get while shooting at this competitive level. Stripping away all of the optics that I had become accustomed to using throughout my career, and engaging targets at distances of 600 yards using only iron sights was an eye opening experience. Not only was it difficult to maintain consistent sight alignment and sight picture at these distances, compensating for the effects of wind and weather dramatically increased the level of difficulty. At the conclusion of this 3 day event, I looked back on everything I had previously been taught, and what I had taught to others regarding marksmanship.
   

  The title of this story is “transitions”. If I could go back and do things differently, I would focus on mastering the basic fundamentals of marksmanship without the use of technological advances such as daytime optics. The fundamental training pathway would be to first master the use iron sights well beyond the standard 300M target engagement. I’m not saying that optics are bad. I’m saying that they will dramatically enhance your capabilities once you have become a master of the fundamentals. The moral of the story is not to allow yourself to become entrenched in traditional training methods because “that’s the way we have always done it”. Instead, apply an outcomes based training approach and build from the ground up.
   

  submitted by Sergeant First Class David Steinbach on Jun 9 2010

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