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BMT and fake rifles

I was reading this article about basic military training’s new “BEAST” program and noticed the photo of the trainees with their fake rifles. Anyone have any thoughts about this? ... [P]eople only learn bad habits from dragging around fake guns.

— Shrike

Carrying a blue rifle for a couple of weeks won’t teach you a thing. It was really easy to see the people that had been to [combat survival training] before deploying and the ones who hadn’t when I was in Iraq. The entire [base] is in weapons status green, and what do I see, an airman carrying his M16 with a magazine inserted in the weapon, indoors. I asked him if he knew we were in green, he gave me a puzzled look, then went outside and cleared his weapon.

— blacksheep1208

The AF needs to make the commitment and get the job done. Screwing around with the fake rifles is lip service. It looks like an effort to implement a program. Really, it is a low-cost, test-the-waters program while they hope that the push for this goes away in time. Then they won’t have a heavy investment that will be thrown out.

— Bummed

Boos for the boots

I think that the people responsible for the airman battle uniforms have failed us. Your uniform is something that you take pride in and think of as an honor to wear. Well, how can we when we are the laughingstock of the armed forces?

— FoReal808

Whoever came up with an idea for a green boot was an idiot in my personal opinion. I understand that some of you sit in an office all day and worry about how your boots look, but to the real Air Force (the flight line), all we care about is fixing and flying airplanes, and the occasional smoke break.

— Sgt Skilcraft