Before we go too far down this road, I'd say that there are allot of theater entry requirements which stress CQM and CQB for all MOSs - I'll bet Tom can speak to the MREs at FT Polk. Every unit that I've seen has pushed hard on this, and even in theater there are ranges on the FOBs - part of the requirements are to shoot allot - if there is a use of deadly force / or a negligent discharge - somebody usually asks the question when the last time a Joe or Jane fired a weapon - its part of making sure we are able to follow the ROE for deadly force.

Now - those troops which are out patrolling are probably firing more then the ones who are tagged to more supporting roles - but that is probably natural.

If there is one complaint I did not see in theater in 06/07 it was the lack of trigger time. As mentioned there are a host of entry requirements and shooting and Force Pro type tasks are a big part of them.

I think we've made some massive leaps forward on this subject, and I believe we've made some big leaps in making sure soldiers have good individual equipment - this would extend to crew served systems as well. CL V availability for shooting in theater was never a problem - I got everything I asked for.

The one negative comment I might make was that often a small unit might over-respond to an incident. In other words they'd fall back to the drills they'd learned in training which might not have considered the adverse effects of their actions. Another way to say it is that they might omit the step of positively identifying the source of enemy fire in getting out of an IED ambush kill zone. The sad part of this is if the IED was placed in such a way that the trigger man was never in any danger the SDZ of today's modern small arms in an urban environment populated by a host of civilians and friendlies who might not populate a BFT can make for some serious and unintended consequences.

While we have the resources to train good battle drills, we must also train leaders to direct and control fires, and most importantly decide when to deviate from a drill so that we kill the people we need to kill and save the people we need to save.

Best regards, Rob