My MP friend came back from Iraq as a young, fit white-belt in jiu-jitsu. His combatives training familiarized him with jiu-jitsu, but nothing more. When we went to the range together, I was fairly new to defensive pistol shooting, but he was amazed by what even a novice could do — namely, draw and put two shots on target in under a couple seconds.

He had become a prison guard by then, and he was practicing for his annual pistol qualification. Our institutional standards for such skills are very, very low.

It depends which kind of OPFOR you’re fighting, and what kind of unit you’re in. For Army combat units, you can also have a squad from the unit be the ad hoc OPFOR, and most intermediate-proficiency level unit training exercises do that.

When a large unit (like a Brigade) does a major, month-long unit-readiness-certification exercise, like NTC, CMTC, or JRTC, then there are special units stationed at the training center that do nothing but play OPFOR.

MILES gear is still used. You’ve got to use blanks to make it work (via the air pressure blast), and they foul up your weapon horribly – it takes three times as long to clean as the same number of regular rounds.

I’m curious to know if such rigs are used for actual training, or if they are in fact useful for such.

I would think that young guys would line up to join the Army or USMC if they got to airsoft-skirmish every day for free.

Airborne training is an interesting case, because no one skydives into position any more, but jumping out of an airplane is quite the rite of passage. I know the Soviets used it as a filter for the kind of man you’d want in an assault force.

Land navigation seems like a useless skill — until it isn’t. When you control the skies — and space — I suppose you get used to mechanized transport, GPS, ets.

Combatives seems like a merely nice-to-have skill for anyone except MPs and the like who might really need to control someone without shooting them.

But you’re right, Tschafer; they might not be popular with everyone in the modern armed forces.

At the time of the US Civil War, the bayonet was still a vastly superior weapon for close-quarters combat — if a vastly inferior weapon overall — because the rifled muskets of the era were still single-shot muzzle-loaders. Against modern (semi)automatic weapons though, a bayonet charge won’t stand a chance. Jerry Miculek is hardly an average soldier, but watch him speed-shoot an old .30-06 M1 Garand, and any kind of charge looks like a bad idea.

It’s a valid point though, that making the other side run away achieves a purpose without generating a body count.

Sharp things are scary, I agree, but loud things are scary too. I suppose the blade’s advantage is that it’s scary even when it isn’t really being used.

Like you affirm, though, bayonets aren’t (usually) useful in modern combat. If I remember correctly they are still useful for crowd intimidation and control under some circumstances.

Learning fun but modern-combat-useless skills is perceived as a waste of time by some, and can undermine their morale as well. Airborne, land navigation, and combatives have nothing to do with what modern Soldiers do in the fight, but it’s hard to talk sense to someone who loves these things.

My own bayonet training was a stupid joke – the thing sits in the bottom of the duffel the whole deployment, along with your compass and protractor.

No Taliban has ever run away from an affixed bayonet. They are less scary than the thing they are affixed to, which is a barrel which can shoot rounds in your face.