Pretty sure I've told this before but a buddy called me last night and we were laughing as we remembered it, so whatever resharing. I finished my time in the Marine Corps as a Combat Instructor teaching newly commissioned Lieutenants and Warrant Officers how to be rifle platoon

leaders, a requirement for all Marine officers. They spent six months of classroom and field exercises at "The Basic School" before they go on to their specific job training. It SUCKS all around. But as an instructor, the field ops could be fun sometimes. Depending on who the

Captain in charge of a given cycle was (or how that op was structured) when we were charged with being OPFOR (notional enemies) we could be given strict "adhere to these guidelines and die in place" so the students could see what success looked like (so they could exploit it) or

given a more free hand to conduct our attacks or defenses however we wanted. When we weren't using MILES gear or SIMUNITIONs the Captain or Major assigned to a given group of Lieutenants would act as a referee of sorts. Anyway, we're on this op I think it was FEX 2, where the Lts

had to patrol as a platoon, find and fix a squad of us instructors and defeat us. The Captain gave us the following restrictions: We couldn't use the roads & we had to stay within a certain grid square. Everything else was fair play. We had 8 guys: (1) 240, (1) SAW, & (6) rifles.

The 240 is the most distinct sounding weapon of them all when firing blanks (way louder than the 5.56 blanks for the SAW and rifles). From previous experiences we knew the Lts would generally shy away from the M240 if they heard it in advance of the main push, probably assuming

we would place our most valuable weapon in the spot we could employ it best (a fair assumption). So we would in fact find the best possible position to place the 240, set it up, camoflage it, and stage the main effort with it, along with the SAW. What we did next is what makes me

giggle. So a blank cartridge has less powder than a regular cartridge as it's not propelling a projectile. This also means the sound is quieter. However... if you take a 5.56 blank, open the crimping, and add the powder from two more blanks, and carefully recrimp it, the sound

is very similar to that of the 240 firing blanks. We called these "superblanks" and mostly knew about them because grunts are fucking stupid and we would make superblanks to fire cleaning rods into trees (it's totally awesome). Anyway, you probably know where this is going.

In a piece of terrain we expected the Lt's to probe two guys, both with M-16s were posted, covered by the crest of a hill to facilitate their retrograde. They each had 10 or so superblanks. When the Lt's patrol came in view, as expected, they each took turns firing their M-16s on

burst, in rapid succession. The noise and speed of firing sounded like a 240 firing (somewhat slowly). The patrol sought cover, searched for the machine gun team, and wisely (they thought) sought a new avenue of approach. The "machine gun team" couldn't safely exfiltrate to us,

so they stayed in place and pushed us radio updates of their direction/speed of travel. As the platoon moved into view, well dispersed but still vulnerable, we let them close to within 100m and opened up with a 240, a SAW, and 4 rifles. They made a valiant stand at assaulting

through the ambush, and I think we notionally lost half our squad before the Captain called ENDEX, but the platoon of Lieutenants was absolutely eviscerated. In the ensuing backbrief, the platoon leader was perplexed and then very angry when he learned we'd deceived him into

believing we had a machine gun when we didn't. The Captain made it into a great learning point about deception as a weapon of war and the reminder that "the enemy gets a vote" in choosing terrain to fight on. It probably was a good lesson, but honestly I don't care about that. I

was too busy waiting until the Lieutenants all left and we could all burst out fucking dying of laughter, because you haven't lived until you've seen a Lt (slated for combat arms) nearly cry over the bad guys not following the rules in a war game. Anyway, exercises are a really

good place to test ideas and see them crash and burn in front of you and I think training that fails magnificently is probably more valuable than training that is textbook perfect.

Anyway, tags. @iAmTheWarax @MichaelStahlke @AbraxasSpa @arawnsley @chadgarland @APHClarkson @DGisSERIOUS @evo_kositz @DisneyCPT @TomHeartsTanks @alexhiniker @IsraHazel @IwriteOK @kateejamieson @sgtjanedoe @katebarstool @luke_j_obrien @ItsMarieMcCurdy @AuntTed @AramShabanian