Mounted Combat Patrol Live Fire

A Mounted Combat Patrol is a group of armed vehicles. We have been doing mock MCP's since our arrival here, but today we actually fired the machine guns on the trucks while patrolling.

Usually I drive or serve as one of the dismount riders in the back of the truck. Today I was the Patrol Leader for this exercise. We ran the course one time with blank ammunition, then we did it with live ammunition. Basically I talked a lot on the radios. We drove a course of 6 checkpoints and engaged pop up targets with the machine guns and at one point with our dismounts during this exercise. We had to call all checkpoints, give contact and situation reports on the enemy. Later we suffered a simulated casualty so I had to call the 9 line MEDEVAC request. Last we had a simulated IED strike and had to perform a hasty recovery (tow one vehicle with another) Not much time for photos today since I had one radio set in each ear, but I was glad to see the team communicate well, cooperate and accomplish the mission well. Our gunners did a good job hitting the targets. The Observing safety NCOs on the range gave us good marks for our efforts. It was especially good that there were no safety issues. A good day of training.