Shoup Airlines

WOCistan

Back to the FLX (Day 4), it’s still hot and humid. Big surprise there, I know. But today we get to have a little fun.

Since the Iraq war, fighting doctrine has turned more towards urban terrain, moving away from the open fields of WWII and triple canopy jungles of Vietnam. These days we train using MOUT (Military Ops on Urban Terrain), meaning we practice on little “villages” consisting of houses, vehicles and non-combatants/insurgents. In basic terms, you take several squads of infantrymen and clear each house one by one looking for booby traps and insurgents. It can be extremely difficult making the split decision between friend or foe as you enter a house while kicking furniture out of the way and clearing the rest of the room as 3 more of your squad mates follow in behind you. Throw in stairs and multiple rooms and things escalate quickly.

We affectionately named our village, “WOCistan.” You can blame it on the heat. In the end, it always ends up becoming a grown up version of Cowboys and Indians with the smell of cordite in the air and both sides claiming they killed the other first. What got interesting this time around were the TACs and their smoke grenades and simulated artillery rounds.

This first video shows how insane it can get when you enter a house:

The large boom you hear in this one is a simulated artie round going off on top of that metal container they are stacking on. As the group starts to run for the house listen for the automatic weapon that unloads on them and then look at the far left corner of the house. That would be yours truly playing OpFor and hitting every single one of them. Of course, they denied it.