In H.E.A.T.!

Today was a fun day here at ACST. We got familiar with the HEAT, or Humvee Egress Assistance Trainer. As you can see from the pictures, it's basically a Humvee compartment on a giant rotisserie. It was surprising how disorienting being upside down really is, even though you're still in the same position relative to everything else in the truck. We joked that you'd have to pay for a ride that fun at Disneyland! They rolled us completely around a couple times to get us familiar with how it felt, then they rolled it on it's side so we all got out through the turret. After that we got rolled totally upside down and had to climb out when upside down.

We finished the day with live fire on one of the rifle ranges here. We got to shoot pop-up targets (little green mannequins), so all in all a pretty fun, relatively relaxed day. Looking forwarad to tomorrow when we do night ops and get to play with night vision goggles!

Training Day(s)

Well I find myself in beautiful New Jersey this fine February (never underestimate the drawing power of the Garden State) for Advanced Contingency Skills Training, or ACST. Week 1 of training is over and I must say, it is tougher than I thought it would be, and it is definitely building my confidence. I feel much more prepared to operate "down range" and I still have another week and a half to go! Of course, that confidence is tempered by me wondering why training in 20 degrees and snow will prepare me to operate in 120 degrees and sand...

The class is around 175 students from all over the Air Force going all different places (mostly Iraq and Afghanistan, predictably). Day 1 we got broken down into flights, squads, and fire teams. I got to be a fire team leader, hooray! By mere coincidence, the 2 other guys in my fire team are also from Nellis, but going different places than I. Our flight is interesting, we've got one Staff Sergeant who is Combat Camera by trade, an Oscar-nominated and twice Emmy-winning Public Affairs writer, Communications troops, Civil Engineers, Contractors, a Paralegal, and 4 members of the Air Force Band! It is fascinating to see people with so many diverse specialties coming together and working well doing things they are totally not expected to do every other day in the Air Force.

"So what is it you say you DO here?" I wasn't sure what to expect before arriving here, so I have approached everything with a pretty open mind. The training is not meant to turn us into Army infantry (thank goodness), but to train us how to function out on a convoy or on a patrol and get us out of a fire fight alive, and how to identify threats like IEDs and avoid and properly respond to them. I've learned a ton already, and I still have 8 training days to go!

So far we've learned basic squad tactics, convoy procedures, IED recognition, and yesterday we spent on combat first aid. Next week should be filled with more fun and low-crawling excitement as we go through urban combat and night operations. Honestly though, I'm really looking forward to graduating and getting done with training.

I've posted some pictures that I was able to snap. The first is a Personnelist in my fire team, who is from Romania and just got his citizenship this past Fall, along with our Emmy-winning writer, Sergeant Gyokers (pronounced "Jokers," yes, Jokers). He's a pretty funny guy and can spout off almost as many movie quotes as Patti's family!

The second pic is of the 2 guys in my fire team. One is a Resource Advisor (money guy) and the other (the guy wearing the face mask) is a Personnelist working in the Military Personnel Flight. Both are good Airmen, very motivated and have kept me "alive" so far. The last pic is

The last picture is me in all my "battle rattle." It is really tiring to wear 50 pounds of body armor all day and carry an M-16 everywhere you go (and I mean EVERYwhere!). It will be nice to get down range and only have to carry a pistol with me instead of a rifle!