Photo By Sgt. Brian Johnson | Soldiers from the 216th Engineer Battalion qualify on their M2 .50-caliber automatic...... read more read more
FORT KNOX, Ky. - Soldiers from the Chillicothe-based 1194th Engineer Company recently traveled to the firing ranges of this southwestern Kentucky Army base to hone some of their warfighting skills during their regular October drill weekend.
The troops conducted weapons training on the M249 machine gun, the M2 .50-caliber machine gun and the MK19 belt-fed grenade launcher. The M2 and MK19 are crew-served weapons and require a team of two to three Soldiers to operate them properly. On this drill weekend, Soldiers who are assigned these weapons conducted their annual qualifications and other unit members — some who had never before fired the weapons — received familiarization training.
When Soldiers qualify on these types of weapons, they are required to fire at targets ranging from 150 meters to more than three-quarters of a mile.
Capt. Todd Winn, the unit commander said that a weapons qualification like this is important.
“Weapons proficiency is a skill where, if you don’t use the weapon often, you lose the skill and the familiarization with the weapon. In the current world that we live in today, where the National Guard is called upon to help augment the active duty Army components, we cannot afford to not be familiar with the weapons. When called, we have to be able to and willing to respond with a ready unit.”
Spc. Eric Mackey, of Mason, was a new user to some of the weaponry, having been in the National Guard for a very short period of time.
“I learned a lot from these ranges,” Mackey said. “I got a chance to become extremely familiar with the weapons and was able to qualify before the day was complete.”
Winn said that the ranges were run extremely well. A majority of the soldiers who fired their weapons were able to qualify by the end of the day.
| Date Taken: | 10.04.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 04.11.2015 19:55 |
| Story ID: | 159746 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KY, US |
| Hometown: | MASON, KY, US |
| Web Views: | 18 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Locally based Guard unit gets on war footing through training, by SGT Brian Johnson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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