The words "Train as you Fight, Fight as you Train" were words to live by for us. Perfect practice makes perfect. If we were not deployed, we were training. Either in a live fire shoot house, on a flat range, or like in the picture below, in a two way range using SIMUNITIONS or UTM. We had many buildings to use, with all sorts of floor plans. We would set up scenarios, and train realistically, against aggressive adversaries that not only shoot back, but know tactics as well as we did!
Fun times!
Reading the floor plan on the fly, became as natural as breathing. When dominating a structure, it's rare to know the layout before you breach. Simple things like being able to know if a door is an IN swinging door or an OUT swinging door, moving into a room from a corner fed or center fed entry point and TRUSTING your Team Mates takes thousands of repetitions and countless hours just doing it.
Here, I'm locked down on a deep corner, flowing into a room from a corner fed entry point. I'm holding position, waiting for my number two so we can advance. Spending all day soaking up 5.56 SIM rounds is no picnic, but it was one of the best ways to test and evaluate tactics.
I am forever grateful for the years I spent honing these skills. I sure do miss it.
The rifle I'm holding here, was one of our SBR's converted to shoot SIMUNITIONS. Basically, you just swap out the bolt carrier and then mark the weapon with the blue tape. Safety was paramount. No live ammo was permitted anywhere near us when we were in the SIM Houses. The pistol on my leg was a Glock 17T (or Blue Gun). It was specially designed to use with SIMUNITION rounds.
