It’s stuff like this. This is a screenshot from a popular website for Soldiers studying for promotion and monthly/quarterly boards. As you can imagine, lazy Senior NCOs who sit on those boards also use this unofficial site to harvest questions, rather than the actual official, doctrinal publications. Apparently, it’s been like this for years. It isn’t going to get any better unless switched-on Soldiers take the time to learn it correctly and pass that information on to their peers and subordinates.
If you want the latest on small arms for either general knowledge or to prepare for a board, visit www.armyadp.com/weapons-tc-3-22.9 to review questions derived from TC 3-22.9.
I’d like to thank SFC Steffan for bringing this issue to my attention.
I too would like to thank SFC Steffan. A true mentor.
He is a true warrior and small arms expert. His knowledge of the M4 and its mechanics surpasses all but the best.
HE makes me regret my choice in MOS and is the epitome of what a DS should be.
I dont claim him as a true Scout. he did a NG convert from 19K so he is more DAT than Scout.
He has been officially banned from Fiddler’s Green regardless.
It should say “Scary black-assault rifle”! Is that better?? Lol
Yeah these commercial sites are the absolute worst. The original information is cut and pasted from original sources (but NEVER updated) and then associated with junk metadata by people (often foreigners) paid for volume not accuracy.
One place where a line leader can train their organizations about this is unit training, from team & section to LDP. First, brief the trainer that commercially-sourced content should be used as a last resort, and A
attributed (either verbally or on the PowerPoint slides). Second, at the rehearsal (we all do those, right?), look for telltale signs of .com-sourced content in the form of screen grabs (ever seen a USAA ad on a DoD web site?). If observing training where this is evident, bring it up in the AAR.
How will this pay off? I’ve seen unit leaders long acclimated to using outdated or incorrect commercially-sourced, improperly-attributed content get absolutely incinerated by G (and J) Level entities who weren’t having it.
Lastly, this is partly a symptom of uneven allocation of resources. Young troops do INCREDIBLE stuff on their phones but phones aren’t allowed onto the Enterprise. Ensure up and coming troops get time and access (both to hardware and network directories) so they can do good research (and learn basic Knowledge Management). Yeah it would be great if every E-4 would take it upon themself to purchase a decent computer with an Office license and configure it for access but we ain’t there yet.
This concludes my TED Talk.
Yeah, you had me up until you started talking about E4s purchasing computers specifically for enterprise access. ALL DoD sites, including the DoD’s Microsoft Teams server, requires acceptance of the standard DoD warning banner. Specifically, you MUST consent to monitoring of your private equipment, and arguably all equipment connected to your router, to access any sites. Expecting that an E4, or any soldier should do this (surrendering their 4th Amendment protections for the sake of the job, especially when DoD-owned hardware should be available) is unconscionable.
And it ends with General Officers going on CNN and talking shit like “full semi-automatic”.
I thought the interweb was supposed to make us all smarter?
Sadly, its made everyone more ignorant than they were before. There’s a quote going around about how we have all this information easily available, and yet the people are still ignorant.
Our instructors were reminding us constantly that one should never, ever assume a US Army soldier knows much about the weapons he is required to use, much less how to handle them in any tactical situation. We had active duty guys in classes because of the fact they get so little practical training and the opportunity to practice in the Army.