ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Gassing_Badgers

At the moment - 5 days...


Yes, that's 5....


I do agree with B-C on this one...GPMG is likely to be far more sustainable at unit level, although there are advantages to having a small cadre trained as HMG gunners.

There is of course no reason why you cannot train and qualify your soldiers on HMG in addition and even fire it on static ranges (where the larger template is of less concern), if ammo permits. But GPMG with its cheaper ammo and smaller RDA is going to be much better for the vast majority of the training you want to get out and do.

5 Days ? I was lucky and learned the fundamentals in a morning on exchange with the Minnesota National Guard.

Headspace and timing ? Nae bovver.

Whilst the training burden for all of the courses needs to be severely reduced and courses be based on training objectives rather a certain number of 45 minute lessons, this has got to be seen by everyone as a significant improvement in the offer for the yeomanry?

Apart from those winter journeys on a Friday night down the 303 to SPTA in an open topped vehicle?!

Originally Posted by Purple_Emperor

Is that 5 regular days with NAAFI breaks and finish for tea at 5 or 5 proper days work?

Unless there's a four-tonner worth of ammunition, targets and spare barrels per trainee... I'd suggest it's four and a half days of legalese, doctrine, paperwork, late starts, early finishes and long stand-easies with at most three or four hours of "learn to use the weapon".

Back in the day, it was routine to go from "never handled a real weapon ever" to "firing live rounds" in about four to six hours of training time; it was the regular[1] practice with underpowered blank rounds that guaranteed at least one stoppage per magazine that taught you how to keep your weapon clean and firing as much as possible. You can still see the traces of the scars on my forefinger and thumb, where I carelessly cleared a stovepipe stoppage by simply grabbing the empty case and wrenching it out of the breech... the pain of the second-degree burns caused by a freshly-fired 7.62mm blank round took a little while to sink in (and, unfortunately, a long time to fade away). I was handed Bren and GPMG with even less formal training, and fired 84mm on the range after an afternoon's instruction from a keen young cadetship officer (who went on to be cashiered in disgrace... shame, he just seemed overenthusiastic in 1991)


Now? Apparently it takes a week to be allowed to handle and fire a rifle, regardless of prior experience and training. Admittedly with L85 I can accept two days required to learn to rig that damn sling (it's great once it's on, but it's the one part of the weapon I would accept I definitely couldn't strip and reassemble properly without serious help) but what's the rest of the time spent on?


Oddly, at Chilwell in 2003 (as a civilian, albeit in DPM) they were teaching us basic care-and-feeding of everything from L85 to GPMG to the AK family, accompanied by clips from "...We Were Soldiers".

"Not taking a rifle, Sergeant-Major?"
"Sir, if I need one, by then there'll be plenty on the ground..."

"Sir...? I'm a non-combatant?"
"Ain't no such thing here today, boy..."

(And when I went to Iraq, I spent four months there without touching a weapon, hearing a shot, or seeing more than a few tracers rising into the Basrah sky... some big well-armed lads kept all the problems well away from the civilian analyst in Div HQ, thank you kindly)


[1] 'regular' being weekends and annual camp for me, this is long-ago STAB days...

First off, well done RY, always good to see the Yeomanry moving forward. Up north we have been sitting around in bars talking about how it would be much easier to train on a WIMIK platform for ages so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

Now for the interesting part, we have already discussed the complexities of going from CVR(t) to WIMIK without suffering from some sort of 'clankety clank, I'm a tank' syndrome. What I'm wondering about is how different the 'doctrine' for light cav will change, will the different platform make a significant difference to things like tactics courses etc. It'll be interesting to see anyhow.

Originally Posted by Balloonatic

First off, well done RY, always good to see the Yeomanry moving forward. Up north we have been sitting around in bars talking about how it would be much easier to train on a WIMIK platform for ages so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

Now for the interesting part, we have already discussed the complexities of going from CVR(t) to WIMIK without suffering from some sort of 'clankety clank, I'm a tank' syndrome. What I'm wondering about is how different the 'doctrine' for light cav will change, will the different platform make a significant difference to things like tactics courses etc. It'll be interesting to see anyhow.

Well, light cav seems to be a new thing for the whole army, so who knows, but given we (QOY/RY) have been doing the same tactics course down at Warminster on a mix of LR and CVRT am guessing doctrine will remain similar.

Who knows, with a bit of luck we may actually see a couple more tactics courses thrown in!

I imagine the doctrine will be similar - or the same - however, the characteristics of the RWMIK are quite different to that of our previous default setting for all things recce (i.e. CVR(T)), so the ability to conduct some of the tasks will vary.

The US Army FM 3-20.96 (Reconaissance and Cavalry Squadron) has quite a good approach to this, in that it lists all the potential tactical tasks of the unit, then describes the ability (and appropriateness) of each type of ORBAT to achieve the mission. For example, an Armd Cav sqn (mounted in Bradley and Abrams) is more likely to be able to achieve 'recce in force' than an IBCT sqn (mounted solely in Humvee), whilst the reverse is true of a more covert point area recce.


Interesting factoid: it wasn't so long ago that a Herrick-specific doctrinal note emphasised that WMIK was a heavy weapons carrier, not a recce platform...