Student Review: CTT Day 1 / Night Firing September: Diz

I showed up a day early for Citizen Close Combat (C3) and went through the first day of Combat Team Tactics (CTT) again, and then rocked out on the NODF (Night Firing) class.

I wanted to mention this because I think the first day of the CTT is so important that it’s worth taking again, or if you did the older two-day CRCD, it’s worth coming through again for that alone.

We got to break in the new range, which was cool.  If you look at some of the pics you’ll get a pretty good idea of what we were doing.  Zero check, mag changes, malf drills, ready up drills, and then into the RTR drill.  I want to stress that this is something that we should all be doing on a continuous basis for sustainment training.  Doesn’t matter who you are or how many classes you’ve had, we ALL need sustainment training to keep our skills fresh.  I went through this course in June, and then refreshed it in Sept.  What was interesting was my zero was changing so I checked a few things, and low and behold, my mount was loose.  So after 6 classes and few thousand rounds, my mount had come loose.  As this is the most continuous training I have ever done, this was new territory for me.  But I can tell you, this will now become a part of my pre-combat checks.  FWIW.

All in all, a great day at the range.  It was also a good time for me to work out any kinks before the C3 class, so I’m glad I went, cuz there was zero time for this shit in that class!

After a short break for chow and gear prep, we met back at the old square range for NOD-F.  Everyone was pretty squared away (way to go team!) so we finished zeroing our lasers most ricky tic.  Then we went into the same drills from earlier in the day, but now in the darkness.  We did ready ups, RTR’s, then moved into 2 and 4-man team drills.  This segued nicely right into rehearsals for the night raid.  When we had our shit tight, we prepped for the night assault.

The scenario is a notorious gang (NT-14) have been raiding the surrounding farmsteads, and your group has been asked to help solve the problem.  A local farmer has agreed to show you where their camp is at, but refuses to participate in the raid, since he doesn’t know diddly anyway.  Good enough.  He transports you in a farm vehicle to a drop off point and then points the way to the camp.  Once you have the location, he boogies off.  Now you patrol under NV to the jump off spot.  Once there, you get on line and prepare to assault through the objective.  On signal you open fire and hose down the entire camp.  Then you assault through, by fire team, with fire and maneuver.  Security rounds go into any kickers and floppers.  Consolidate.  Check on your mates.  Reload, redistribute ammo.  Any wounded?  No, good.  Let’s get out of here.

After the exercise, you get a good critique.  Good job guys.  This was a switched on bunch of guys,  Glad I got to tag along.

Man I just gotta say, again, operating under NV is really something else.  You just gotta practice it, like anything else.  Doing it live fire with NV is a real kick.  It’s not the all-seeing eye of Mordor, but it is pretty cool.  The second time through was much smoother for me.  Imagine that.

If you have the time and opportunity to do this class, it’s well worth the missed sleep and being a little (more) tired the next day.

Diz sends.