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.

Combat Life Saver

As I mentioned earlier, last week I spent four days training to be a Combat Life Saver.  A friend shared some photos from our last day there where we applied all of the skills and training.

We ran across fields, we were laying in the grass, running a few feet, laying in the grass, running, laying, running, laying... you get the picture and you'll see the field we ran/lay across in some of the photos.  (That body armor, or battle rattle as I like to call it, weighs close to 50 pounds.)  So if you see me or anybody else looking tired or mouth-open breathing you know why. 

I'm providing security while the guy playing CLS provides life-saving turniquets.

This is the Care Under Fire portion.  We provide security and put on turniquets.  That's the only thing we do, then we get the patient and us back to a safe/secure area.

Don't worry, those are fake wounds and fake blood.

The good Captain here is putting his knee almost in this guy's groin in order to stop blood flow to the leg while he applies a tourniquet.

We practiced putting pressure on the veins on each other and believe me, it's quite painful when done right. 
But hey, what's a little pain compared to stopping from bleeding to death in 2-4 minutes.  Nothing.

There is a real guy underneath that fake mask w/the wounds.  He's unconscious and they're trying to move him to the safe/secure area.  It's incredibly hard since he and his gear probably weighs something like 225 pounds.

Providing full medical CLS treatment in the secure area.

We have moved the patients to the medivac point and are waiting for our medivac folks arrive/the exercise to end. 

Waiting for medivac.  (See the field behind us, that is what we ran across.)

MRAP Training

Few things are cooler than driving a big, huge, heavy Army vehicle.  I'm not talking about a HMMWV, I'm talking about a 50,000 pound, 5.5 miles per gallon guzzling, drive through 3 feet of water, and survive an IED blast up-armored vehicle.

It's called a MRAP, which stands for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle.  That is what I drove today.

We had to wear our helmets, body armor, gloves and eye protection during the training.  Three students sat in the back and an instructor sat shotgun while a student drove.  It wasn't bad riding in the back, but I'm short and don't require much leg room compared to some guys who are 6 feet tall and all legs.  They probably didn't enjoy it too much & if somebody was sitting across from them they would have knocked knees and enjoyed it even less.

The doors and ramp in the back are set up with an air-assist system because they are so heavy once the armor is put on.

 The MRAP sits incredibly high off the ground compared to my car, that was the first thing I noticed when I climbed into the cab.  It has a 4-point harness, and the teachers told us it drives something like a semi-tractor trailer.

The training was good, I enjoyed it and wished I could have driven around for a few more miles because it was pretty darn neat and I'll probably never get the chance again.

Army Combat Skills Training

Right now I'm at Army Combat Skills Training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and it's been challenging in many different ways. 
1-We've had a lot of down time, so I've been bored at times and done a good bit of reading and working on my hand-quilting project.  I'm also trying to take a military education test later this week since I've had so much time to study for it. 

We were issued a lot of Army uniforms and gear for this training.  That is why I'm wearing the Army's ACU pattern above.  This photo was taken during my CLS training.  The yellow tip on my M4 rifle basically means that I don't have live rounds in the weapon.

2-Combat LifeSaver Class was tough.  It was a four day class and we had to bring/wear all our Battle-Rattle (helmet, body armor, knee & elbow pads, gloves and eye protection) and both weapons (M4 & M9) for all days of the class.  We saw lots of terrible photos of real wounds and learned about basic, basic field medical care.  I took this exact class several years ago at my Camp Shelby, Mississippi CST course but it was a great refresher course and I learned new things.  We covered applying a tourniquet, pressure points, needle-chest-decompression (if a lung collapses, how to remove the pressure that builds up around that lung), pressure bandages, occlusive bandages (wounds to the chest area), how to move patients, call in medical help and much more. 
The final day we did several exercises where we wore all our gear and had to run across a field to save some troops, then take them to wherever we were meeting the medivac folks.  We were exhausted from wearing all the gear and carting around other folks who were also wearing all their gear.  That stuff weighs around 40-50 or so pounds!
3-There is no privacy.  I live in a room with 6 other women (Lts and Capts), which is better than the 36 other women I lived with during my prior CST experience.  But still it's a challenge. 
The barracks have over 300 people in them and I have yet to take a hot shower.  They're mostly lukewarm to cold and sometimes the cold comes out of nowhere and it's like ice water.  Now that'll make you jump no matter how exhausted you are.
4-The classes can start as early as 7:30, which means we meet or check out our weapons around 6:30 a.m.  We can have lessons/meetings until late in the evening too.  They're 7 days a week but we are guaranteed to have Sunday morning off until 9 a.m.; so I'm grateful for that reprieve.