Terminators are Real

There I was, observing as one of the younger soldiers adjusted the various remote sighting systems for the guns, staring down the barrel of the .50 cal with it's various electronic eyes all staring at me.

Terminators are real. They are just not quite invented yet. But we're getting frighteningly close.

Right now I am now certified to operate this system, it obeys my commands, and will only kill when I tell it to.

But, if someone claiming to be from the future tells you to come with them if you want to live, I'm a little closer to recommending that you listen.

My wife mentioned to me that I may gotten too technical while describing the course in my last post...

Just in case, a VBIED is modern military-speak for a car bomb. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

They are bad.

I think most of the other technical terms were the names of different guns.

The M-2 is a .50 cal (as in the diameter of the bullet is a 1/2 inch) heavy machine gun. It was designed by John Moses Browning and entered service in 1919. Even our future robot overlords will not be able to significantly improve on it.

The M240B is a 7.62mm general purpose machine gun. Smaller than the M-2, it is meant to be carried or mounted on vehicles. Whatever the situation dictates.

If I remember right, it is pretty much just a Mag 58, which is pretty much just a German MG42 from WWII. It still works just fine.

The Mk46 and Mk48 are smaller machine guns in 5.56mm (the same caliber as our M-4 carbines, the ubiquitous shorter versions of the M-16) and 7.62mm calibers that are easier to carry. There are trade-offs to the smaller size, but they seem to work just fine.

Ounces are pounds and pounds are pain... so smaller can be much better for the guy that has to carry the equipment around. Smaller can often mean a shorter barrel, which will generally translate into slower bullet velocity out of the barrel and inferior terminal ballistics as well.

Weapons are tools. When you have options, pick the one best suited to the task at hand.

As an Air Force guy though, my favorite weapon is still a radio. If the first rule of a gunfight is to bring all of your friends with guns... it's always better to bring all of your friends with guns and bombs and an overhead view of all that is happening.

On the topic of friends, I realized when someone was going home that we never say good bye here. It's not because of sentiment, but because odds are we'll see each other again on some future deployment, exercise, or boondoggle of a trip.

The military with its millions of people is really a very small place. The SOF community is even smaller.

Within every SOF specialty there is a saying that if you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying. If you get caught, you ain't (insert name of specialty that thinks it coined this cliche here).

True to form, the hoarding of Gatorade Health Shakes from the chow hall has begun anew. Karl Marx may have preached about giving according to your abilities and taking only according to your needs, but the distribution of desired goodies from the chow hall is based more on a Social Darwinism.

He who can take the most, the fastest, has the most soonest. Sometimes that is fodder for trading.

Me? I just think a Gatorade Health Shake and a Shock Coffee make a great breakfast.

I do, however, need to take inventory of my kit and evaluate what I am willing to use as for trading and what I'm either accountable for or truly want/need.

There may be some good opportunities for new or new-to-me toys.

My partner was kind enough to donate a pair of flame-resistant ACUs to me. He forgot his ACU name tapes at home, and doesn't plan on paying to have new ones made here since he doesn't really care for the ACUs anyway. He also has a bunch of ACUs back at home already so the new ones he got issued here are of no use to him.

Unfortunately, one thing I can't trade for is a new pair of running shoes. I believe I mentioned earlier that I found a good deal on a the pair I've been looking for and ordered them. Well, the company emailed me back to say they were kidding.

They don't have my size.

Apparenlty finding running shoes sized like snow shoes will be more difficult than I thought. Oh well.