FTX Day 1

For you non-military types out there, FTX = Field Training eXercise. You might note right here and now that by long-standing tradition, the band does NOT do field training exercises. Instead we are content to meet indoors and play music together, travel to far-flung corners of our state and even the globe to perform, and generally be as non-Army as possible.

I knew something was up when they recently issued the latest-and-greatest field gear.

Yep, this year we get to play Army "for real" ... sort of. Today we, the so-called "Senior Staff" (based mostly on our age difference from the rest of the band members) showed up at Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center and started our training. Indoors, in a small group. I guess that was just comfortable for us. But hey! We did eat MRE's for lunch! That counts as field training, right?

Anyway the small group started with some high-level and very abbreviated classes that upper-level folks are at least suppsed to sound knowledgeable about when the topics come up in passing conversation, so that was good.

We also drove around the post to see the sights, including: shooting range, hidden land navigation markers (will come in handy later this week), herd of elk, "the best airborne training tower in the Army," a bald eagle, and high school football players here for a week-long camp. Would have been EXHAUSTING except that tour took place from inside our unit's van. I'm not complaining, really.

The evening finished off with an introduction to the EST 2000, an electronic, indoor shooting simulator that some have called "XBOX on steroids." Basically it's a movie theater that 10 people at a time can shoot at with M16's, M203's, M240's, M-9's, and just about any other M-whatever you can think of. The system detects which weapon hits where, and interacts with the "users" in various ways. The compressed air system gives a "kick" that is supposed to be semi-realistic to what the real weapons feel like. The characters on the screen (actually I only saw the Turkey Shoot simulation) can be killed. And after the session it plays back, showing where each shot actually hit. Some of the support staff "played" on the system for several hours while those too old to stay down in the prone, supported position for that long went off to have a meeting.

Actually that meeting ended up being fairly productive. We took care of some issues, discussed upcoming calendar items, and fortunately ended up with some pretty good belly laughs.

All in all, not a bad start. Not bad at all. Tomorrow will be much more field-intensive, with land navigation, EST training, platoon leadership, and best of all ... MORE MRE's!