did anyone have this type of drill while in service ?

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dekibg

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This is about candidates for Serbian Gendarmerie, which is a heavily militarized branch of Serbian police. All candidates are current police officers. Watch from 10:15 to 13:40. A lot of live fire coming from above.
This is elimination process for weak ones and also to prepare ones that are accepted for realities of a firefight.
Did anyone experienced this and how does it feel ?
 
In the US military there are loads of red tape bureaucracy when planning literally anything. Officers will use a risk matrix. The goal of the matrix is to reduce risk of death or injury as much as possible. If the level of acceptable risk is low enough, the exercise can get approved. Because of this, realistic live fire exercises rarely get done.

One particular maneuver I had training with was low crawling under barbed wire with live 240 rounds shooting above my head. The low crawl distance was just under 200 meters but seems longer in the dark. Artillery simmunitions were tossed around for "fun" as well.
 
In the old Soviet Union army they conducted a lot of live fire combined forces training. If the officers kept the casualty rate at 10% or below they were considered doing very well. Can you imagine if that was the policy in our military or law enforcement!
 
In the US military there are loads of red tape bureaucracy when planning literally anything. Officers will use a risk matrix. The goal of the matrix is to reduce risk of death or injury as much as possible. If the level of acceptable risk is low enough, the exercise can get approved. Because of this, realistic live fire exercises rarely get done.

One particular maneuver I had training with was low crawling under barbed wire with live 240 rounds shooting above my head. The low crawl distance was just under 200 meters but seems longer in the dark. Artillery simmunitions were tossed around for "fun" as well.

Same experience for me at the Fort Benning School for Boys.
 
In the old Soviet Union army they conducted a lot of live fire combined forces training. If the officers kept the casualty rate at 10% or below they were considered doing very well. Can you imagine if that was the policy in our military or law enforcement!
I highly doubt that.
Sounds like an urban legend to me.
Whatever we think of them, CCCP was a civilized country.
I personally served in Yugoslav Army under socialist regime (while it was still mandatory) but I never had impression that we are disposable.
Officers and NCO’s took great care to insure that we are safe and at the end we go back to our families healthy and alive .
 
I highly doubt that.
Sounds like an urban legend to me.
Whatever we think of them, CCCP was a civilized country.
I personally served in Yugoslav Army under socialist regime (while it was still mandatory) but I never had impression that we are disposable.
Officers and NCO’s took great care to insure that we are safe and at the end we go back to our families healthy and alive .[/QUOT

I'm only repeating what I was told in intelligence briefings about the soviet army. The captain I worked for was a long time intelligence officer who was well read and educated on the soviet military and an avid military history student. He was well versed in soviet tactics, and it was his hobby as well. He also backed up what I was told in those briefings and related how poorly new soviet recruits were treated by their superiors and fellow soldiers. Perhaps in the Yugoslav Army things were different than in the Russian army. As far as the CCCP being a civilized country, please, there so many documented accounts of the brutality practiced by the soviet Russian government against the Warsaw Pact countries and their own citizens who tried to defy the communist government. You do remember the Berlin Wall don't you? Hundreds of people shot down trying to escape the paradise of communism, yes quite civilized. Oh yes the gulags also, another example of civilized society.
 
Being shot at unannounced is scary. Being shot at with advanced warning in a controlled environment, probably less so. I'd still be worried about the ones doing the shooting accidentally shooting me in the OP video. No thanks.

As for the OP, the US Army doesn't shoot that close to troops in training and live fire is carefully executed for teams doing something like a shoot house. In the Army, shooting over their heads in basic training is, well, is quite a bit over their heads. Maybe as high as 30 feet...as in if you stand up during the course and jump really high, you won't be shot. Machine guns are fired from a fixed, elevated position to ensure no one gets shot.

A training plan where the officer suggests live fire over heads, but if anyone stands up they'll die, wouldn't be implemented in the current military.
 
That’s no where near as nuts as the ones posted in the general forum a couple weeks ago.
 
As for the OP, the US Army doesn't shoot that close to troops in training and live fire is carefully executed for teams doing something like a shoot house. In the Army, shooting over their heads in basic training is, well, is quite a bit over their heads. Maybe as high as 30 feet...as in if you stand up during the course and jump really high, you won't be shot. Machine guns are fired from a fixed, elevated position to ensure no one gets shot.

I specifically remember the berm that held the 240s over our heads was 11 feet above the ground. If memory serves the tallest guys in the platoon were 6' or 6'1 area. Still short enough to stand but really wouldn't want to. I always enjoyed live fire exercises. Nothing really brought my head into focus like swapping out blanks for the real deal.
 
That’s no where near as nuts as the ones posted in the general forum a couple weeks ago.
you mean the one where they walk in circles shooting at targets that are sometimes not covered by another human ?
 
As others have already stated, the scene in the video would never be allowed in this country. It's purely an issue of force protection.

Just to add credibility to what others have already said, one of the only two live fire training scenarios I've seen in the Army was as described above, only it was an M-60 on a fixed mount with no way to swivel or change elevation. We had to craw under barbed wire in the dark. There were sand bagged pits with explosives that detonated every few minutes. This gave soldiers the sound of gunfire and explosions, the sound of projectiles traveling by, the sights of tracers, etc., without risk of injury.
 
I cannot see personnel live firing within a few feet of a service member being allowed anywhere in the US. The previously mentioned fixed machine guns in the infiltration course was close enough. At night the tracers looked very close and scary. The intermittent TNT charges going off from time to time only added to the fun. If you were close, they were enough to lift you off the ground.

Obviously, liability lawyers aren't a big threat in Serbia.
 
I cannot see personnel live firing within a few feet of a service member being allowed anywhere in the US. The previously mentioned fixed machine guns in the infiltration course was close enough. At night the tracers looked very close and scary. The intermittent TNT charges going off from time to time only added to the fun. If you were close, they were enough to lift you off the ground.

Obviously, liability lawyers aren't a big threat in Serbia.

out of curiosity, once you sign up for professional military service in USA, and something happens to you due to negligence (like poorly organized exercise), can your family really sue the US military?
I would imagine that contract is full of remarks that say " no liability for accidental death " in some form ...
 
out of curiosity, once you sign up for professional military service in USA, and something happens to you due to negligence (like poorly organized exercise), can your family really sue the US military?
I would imagine that contract is full of remarks that say " no liability for accidental death " in some form ...

The short answer is "no." Of course, in the United States, anyone can try to sue anyone. But I seem to recall during my enlistment interview, paperwork, etc. it being made very clear, repeatedly, that neither I,nor my family, could sue the military. That said, if a soldier is injured (well, seriously injured) due to negligence on the part of a commander, there could be hell to pay for that commander. Fat lot of good it would due the injured serviceman.
 
One particular maneuver I had training with was low crawling under barbed wire with live 240 rounds shooting above my head. The low crawl distance was just under 200 meters but seems longer in the dark. Artillery simmunitions were tossed around for "fun" as well.


“Night infiltration course” was what they called it.
I remember that at Sand Hill, Fort Benning, back in ‘96.
It was m60s, and as the barrels heated up the rounds began getting lower it seemed.
The night I went thru it we followed a group of ROTC or West Point cadets doing their summer deal. One of them got too close to an artillery simulator and the box it was contained in and had to get medvac’d out. Didn’t delay us at all, I think nowadays they’d have shut down training for a while to evaluate the risks, etc...
 
We did the liw crawl under barb wire with M60's firing. I suspected it was blanks since we were in a training area and not at a range. I seriously doubt they were slinging lead in that area. This was 1983 at Ft. Sill.
 
it was an M-60 on a fixed mount with no way to swivel or change elevation. We had to craw under barbed wire in the dark. There were sand bagged pits with explosives that detonated every few minutes. This gave soldiers the sound of gunfire and explosions, the sound of projectiles traveling by, the sights of tracers, etc., without risk of injury.
We got a burning Jeep, too. :)
 
It maybe just a bravada for youtube.
Very likely. There really isn't much value in this kind of training -- it's kind of like "Hogan's Alley" for cops. Imagine you're a real cop, and someone comes up to you and tells you John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelley and Creepy Karpis are down that alley. What's the LAST thing you want to do? :)
 
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