IBA

You've heard me talk about the body armor that I have been wearing.  It's called IBA and that stands for Interceptor Body Armor.  The interrnal plates are appropriately sized for the vest size and are removable. Websites for IBA state that the vest weighs 16.4 pounds and the plates weigh 4 pounds each, the groin & neck protectors weigh about 1 pound, for a total of 25 pounds.  I was told that the large vest with plates is 10 pounds heavier than the small vest with plates.  So the size truly does make a difference in comfort, weight and protection. 

Here are a few more pictures to give you a better idea of what it looks like and is made of.

 The front of my IBA.

Here is the plate that goes in the front.  The back plate looks exactly the same.

Here is the profile of the plate.  It's quite substantial. 

Ft Dix in my rearview mirror

After spending 3 days and 4 nights in the field (or camping) Army-style we finally returned to our dorms and were able to fully-appreciate modern conveniences like air-conditioning and flush toilets.  It was good training but the days were long but there was a lot of waiting for our turn to do the training.

The best news is that I'm done.  I am done with CST.  Thank-goodness!

We took our M-4s/M-16s to the field with us.  So I ended up watching all these weapons while folks took their bags back to the dorms.  You wouldn't believe how dirty/smelly I was when this photo was taken.  However, I was so incredibly happy to be done.  (Photo by 1Lt Joel Cooke)

I've had a great time.  I've enjoyed hanging out and meeting new people.  I've learned a lot; probably more than I will ever need (an abundance of knowledge is always a good thing).  I even more so fully appreciate that I joined the Air Force and not the Army.  But I am mostly happy to be going home!

Photo Credit

A special thanks to 1Lt Joel Cooke who took most of the photos posted in the Firing Range post (June 2).  He's a great photographer & really captured what happened during our training.  Thanks Lt & congrats on your promotion!

The Firing Ranges

We've done a lot of training at the firing ranges this past week.  Which means we've spent most of our time outside, wearing all our gear and sweating a lot.  It's the Army's weight loss regimen -- I don't recommend it.

We zeroed our M-4s with our ironsights and then with our optics.  That took an entire day.

We also did the Army's qualification course for our M-4, which was another day.  However this even was a lot more fun because we were shooting at various different pop-up targets.  That was a lot of fun and it makes you truly appreciate your optic.  With that beauty all you have to do is put the red dot on the target; no lining up ironsights. That evening we also did night firing.

Yep, that's me!

I was trying to find shade behind this sign.  Even a small amount of shade is better than none!

Perhaps the best thing about this day was that one of our 2nd Lieutenants was promoted to 1st Lieutenant.

Movement Firing

Another morning we fired our M-4s from different distances after walking, running and moving left & right.  We were very tired after night firing the night prior and getting back so late.  So I was really quite worried about firing and having to move but it didn't turn out to be an issue.  That afternoon & evening we spent qualifying on our M-9 pistols.  Once again we fired at moving targets.  It turns out that I'm much better at shooting the M-4 than the M-9 but I still did a pretty decent job at shooting the targets.  Then, following the trend, we did night firing with the M-9.

The red streaks are from the tracers in our M-4s.  Isn't that cool!

By the way, it was really humid and sunny on all of these days.  At one point for the M-4 and M-9 we had to wear our gas masks and fire.  Now that was a new level of miserable. 

My unit's convoy.  By the way, I'm in the first vehicle, riding shotgun.

We had two days of land navigation.  On day one we learned how to read maps, use military protractors (they are square; yes, the Army found a way to put a circular protractor into a square... leave it to the Army), and use compasses.  Then we spent about 3 hours walking around the woods looking for several different locations using both a compass and landmarks.

(These woods were infested with ticks & loads of folks found ticks on them and their clothing later that day and evening.  I had sprayed my uniforms with permethrin and was tick-free.)

On day two we learned how to use the military version of a GPS and then we drove around looking for 8 locations.  That was a lot of fun because the folks in my HWWMV are awesome!

Finally, on Tuesday we had a class that reviewed low crawls, high crawls, Bounding Overwatch, and the basic infantry walking tactics.  (Bounding Overwatch is where you leap-frog from with a friend from one position to another.  One person provides cover fire while the other says in their head, "I'm up, they see me, I'm down."  It's exhausting b/c you're only up running for 3-5 seconds before you're back on the ground.  So it requires a lot of energy.)  Then we got to throw practice grenades that were weighted appropriately, that had little explosive caps in them.  I was quite surprised, the grenades were much heavier than I thought they would be.

This day was probably one of the worst ones so far due to multiple bad decisions by many, many people, to include myself.  We wore the wrong uniforms (lightweight but non-breathable fabric), black flag heat stress conditions, wearing all our gear (helmet, body armor), not eating a good lunch, and hours of being out in the sun.  I made it through the training, searching 2 hours for a lost item and then the drive home in a HWWMV with no air conditioning.

Throwing grenades; that's me with the tan gloves.

They threw smoke and we had to low crawl, high crawl.  They also had fake bombs and when we heard the whistle we had to hit the dirt.

However, I made it to our building to turn in my weapon and after spending 45-60 minutes with one of my room mates who is a nurse, trying to cool down, I ended up going to the ER and was diagnosed with heat exhaustion.  I got almost two IV bags, some medicine for a headache and nausea and I felt immensely better.  Apparently that hospital had seen 8 patients from the training ranges for heat and dehydration related problems and the doctor was very upset about their poor treatment of us.  Three students ended up going to the ER and so did one of our instructors for the course -- it was that hot and miserable.  I am OK now, and have two days of restriction to quarters to rest and rehydrate before I can go back to any training.  Here are some photos I took earlier on in the day.

Our first heat/dehydration casualty being taken to the hospital.