Shooting for excellence: Drill sergeants relearn skills to become better trainers

By Ms. Jennifer Stride (Jackson)September 18, 2015

Aiming for excellence
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Take aim
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Brace yourself
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Own the night
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Evaluation time
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Proper position
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Front sight adjustment
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Honing her skills
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A team of the Army's crack marksmanship trainers has spent the past two weeks on Fort Jackson, requiring drill sergeants to re-examine and relearn their basic shooting skills so they can better train their Soldiers.

The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit from Fort Benning, Georgia, worked with 27 drill sergeants -- at Fort Jackson's request -- responding to an Armywide deficiency in current marksmanship training.

"They're breaking the bad habits and re-establishing and developing those fundamentals again," said Sgt. Heather Marie Jacques, a drill instructor taking the course. "Hopefully, I'll keep 'expert' and go on to teach that to my privates -- teach them how to take their time -- and keep improving."

That was the intent of the retraining -- retraining the trainers who will work with Soldiers who may, in turn, train those who come after them.

"The impact is tremendous," said Lt. Col. Bret Tecklenburg, commander of the Army Marksmanship Unit. "You look at each one of these drill sergeants, and you know there are probably several dozen (trainees) in each of their cycles, so hundreds throughout the year -- thousands over the few years that they're here -- so it's awesome."

Tecklenburg said that "the Army -- and, specifically, the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Maj. Gen. (Austin) Miller, the commanding general there -- identified that the Army has a training-deficiency problem for marksmanship.

"We don't shoot well as an Army, and it's not because we don't have quality NCOs, quality guns or quality bullets. It's because for years -- really generations -- we've failed to teach NCOs how to properly train marksmanship."

The course was open to Soldiers in any military occupational specialty.

By the time the course ends today, each student will have sent roughly 1,200 rounds down range, using both the M9 pistol and the M4 rifle. The course was available mostly to non-commissioned officers -- as opposed to officers -- only because they do the training.

"Here we are running a level 1 -- a (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) course for two weeks, mainly because that's what they teach the privates," said Staff Sgt. Christopher Toepfer, operations officer for the marksmanship unit. "They will be able to certify level 1."

Before the students at Fort Jackson were in-processed, they sent 18 rounds down range to group and zero -- attempting to group their shots close together on the target.

Then they completed an automated record fire qualification, shooting at pop-up targets with no help from the instructors.

The intent was for the instructors to get a base line of the students' skill levels and their understanding of marksmanship.

"The effort is to properly train NCOs … to teach them how to properly train marksmanship, so they can teach their trainees, who will become our soldiers and future NCOs, so they can, in turn, teach the next generation properly," Tecklenburg said.

After in-processing, each trainer was assigned four students for a full day of classroom instruction on the fundamentals of marksmanship: positions, ballistics, iron sights and close-quarters optics.

"The NCOs we have teaching the course are incredibly proficient and skilled at what they do," Tecklenburg said. "On the flip side, I'd like to beat the drum for the Maneuver Center of Excellence" and Maj. Gen. Miller, who's pushing "to get this (training) going and out to the Army."

On day two, the students engaged in virtual training, using the Engagement Skills Trainer. They learned the proper use of EST as part of integrated weapons-training strategy -- a tool to enhance marksmanship.

The rest of the course took place at Argentan Range. Students fired M9 pistols and M4 rifles in prone and kneeling positions, both during day and night shoots.

"We teach night because we're going to fight at night, and we have to train it," Toepfer said. "We've found there's a lack of night training in the Army.

"There's not a lot of people that have an understanding of how to train at night and what to train at night."

Instructors taught minute-of-angle and trajectory-of-rounds fundamentals while students shot at targets placed at 25, 100, 200 and 300 meters using iron sights.

"You need to know the math, so that you can adjust for distance," said Staff Sgt. Brandon Welch, an AMU instructor. "We try to ask questions in answers to their questions, so they will use critical thinking to find answers."

Staff Sgt. John Quick, a drill instructor taking the course, said he hadn't "shot iron sights in years -- so I had to relearn it. I didn't know minute-of-angle before this, so I've learned something new."

Additionally, students were taught sight alignment and trigger control using the M9 pistol.

"A little error on the M9 at three meters will be enormous at a farther distance," Welch said. "We need to concentrate on the fundamentals."

Drill sergeant Sgt. Tierra Hopkins also attended the training.

"When I came to the course, I wiped out what I thought I already knew, and I started from basics from everything they taught me," she said.

"I ended up applying it -- proper position, how to hold a weapon, how to look through your front sight post, and pretty much getting all your rounds in center mass."

Many of the drill being trained said the course was teaching them the "whys" of everything -- minute of angle, the drift of the round as they're firing off of the sights. Now they can tell the soldiers why they're missing if they are aiming center mass.

The course is to end with qualifications in which the students will be required to attain a minimum score of 70 percent on the shooting gates and 80 percent on the instructor gates.

Normally, AMU runs a five-week course at Fort Benning -- the Marksmanship Master Trainer course.

The course has four levels: Basic Rifle Marksmanship, Short-Range Marksmanship (zero to 50 meters), Mid-Range Marksmanship (300 to 600 meters) and Unit Training Management, in which students learn how to build and resource a marksmanship program for their units.

The five week course consists of six steps: Preliminary Marksmanship Instruction, virtual training, fundamentals, pre-qualify, qualify and combat.

"It would have been preferable to fully do the full-blown five weeks (at Fort Jackson) because it's longer lasting and has a broader impact," Tecklenburg said.

But that would have taken the drill sergeants away from trainees, and Fort Jackson range facilities don't support the mid-range course. Sending students to Fort Benning for the longer course would be costly.