This is from the comment section from the article about shooting the AR15 at 1,000 yards. The commenter offered some insight into the Army’s marksmanship levels and attitude. I have offered the commenter a chance to elaborate and post more on the subject. hopefully this will be expanded and he will come back to share his thoughts and experience in greater detail in more posts. Below is the original post from Jose
Original post Jose was speaking about here
http://looserounds.com/2013/06/10/ar15-at-1000-yards-can-a-rack-grade-ar15-and-m855-make-1000-yard-hits/
Good on you Shawn. I’ve coached the last three consecutive All Army Small Arms champions. Before that I taught SDM for s number of years, still conduct the occasional course.
I’m not a distinguished rifleman (yet) but I’ve produced a number of them.
The M16A4 and M4 are woefully misunderstood by nearly all Soldiers. There are less than 200 Soldiers in the Army that I would consider “Riflemen” even the “multiple tours, combat arms NCO” is not a guarantee of any real skill at arms AT ALL. Soldiers are universally poorly skilled with their rifles. It’s appalling. But for such Soldiers, first you’d have to admit you have a problem. If they “qualify expert” they believe *that* somehow equals skill. I’d call that “familiarity.” 40/40 is easy, nothing to brag about, and is a ridiculously low standard. Most Soldiers never achieve even that embarrassingly low standard. If an NCO can’t get all of his squad to shoot “expert” he’s untrained.
My point is that most (but I’d wager closer to all) the criticism you may have received from Soldiers ought to be dismissed out of hand. They really are overconfident amateurs. Even in “Special Forces” units, that’s no guarantee of skill at arms.
That about sums it up. If I offended someone, good. Outshoot me.
The thing is that the M16/M4 is an EXCELLENT weapon and there are excellent 5.56mm cartridges. A Soldier doesn’t have to be a superhero to shoot really well with it either. We trained many female Soldiers that had no problem striking a steel silhouette target, 14″ wide and 40″ tall, at 760 meters, with iron sights on her M16A2. I can drop names, ranks, class dates. With the M4 and ACOG, SDM Students routinely hit the same target at 800 to 830 meters – 1st round hits.
In our SDM classes, we spent so much time at 500 and 600 on the KD range, that 300 was a welcomed and easy target engagement for them. Yet in units many Soldiers will not engage the 3 exposures of the 300 meter target, preferring to save those three rounds for the closer targets when they miss the first shot, so they can re-engage the ‘easy’ targets. They’re all easy!
I want to share a couple of things, there’s somebody out there reading this that will heed this advice, I promise it can make you a dramatically better shooter.
When shooting for precision with rack grade Army M16’s or M4’s there is one method that works. DO NOT EVER USE A SLING OF ANY KIND TO “LOCK IN” “SNAP IN” OR OTHERWISE PULL ON THE SLING SWIVEL. The AR in a rack grade condition does not have a free floating barrel. The upper receiver is made of a zinc and aluminium alloy, the barrel is hard steel. Pulling on the sling is like making a giant torque wrench, moving the strike if the round several inches just at 100 yards! Any weight or pressure on the handguards moves the barrel.
Don’t touch the handguards or use a sling if you want the most out of a rack grade rifle.
Use the magazine, preferably a 30 rounder, as a monpod. Place the palm of your non firing hand (not your fingers) on the flat front face of the magwell. Spread your elbows and get nice and low and stable. The non firing palm exerts firm rearward pressure on the rifle.
There’s more to it, but that’s the biggest challenge you’re having now. Great job on the test
Enjoy.
