So I'm reading this article on American Rifleman entitled 'Marksmanship Matters'. These highlights from the Army standards and training manual really stood out for me:
  • Regular Army light infantryman should fire about 1,200 rounds a year.
  • Guard and Reserve colleague should expend 660 rounds.
  • “plain vanilla” soldiers shoot 490 rounds for active and 294 for Guard/Reserve.
Really? That's all Army troops shoot in live fire practice per year? I probably shoot about 300 rounds every month (not counting .22lr) and I know other members here go through way more. Yet regular Army troops shoot an average of only 100 rounds a month??

This also kinda shocked me: 'According to First Army standards we are to—ideally—train a rifleman going to war with 58 rounds of ammunition— 18 to zero and 40 to qualify on the ‘pop-up target range’.'
Seriously? We've been at war for 10 years and we are sending people into the sandbox that ill prepared? I was in the Chair Force during peace time and I shot more than 58 rounds during yearly qualifications. I just assumed the Army, due to its primary mission, would be doing tons of live fire training and burning through ammo. What the hell? Maybe we should have used all that bailout money to buy training ammo for our troops rather than bailing out Wall Street bankers...

Here's the article: http://www.americanrifleman.org/arti...nship-matters/

Kinda sad.