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ArmyGrunt

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Bit offtopic but anyways:

Soldier skill test in Lombardia 2009 is over. Results were pretty interesting. Reservists took 2nd and 3rd place among professionals, reservists and all that. At least in 3rd place was gained by (Finnish) conscript reservists. Muahuahuahua!!! :p

Pretty wicked eh. And all were reservist officers. Which makes it double wicked!

2nd team was RAID TEAM OBERFRANKEN A... Switzerland maybe? They have always been quite tough in these kind contests.

And winner is named ECOLE MILITAIRE INTERARMES... From where is that? anyone cares to guess.

Can't get it in English, but anyways here is da link about subject.

http://www.unucilombardia.org/unucilombardia/mainlombardia.htm

Edited by Second

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RAID Team Oberfranken is a german reservist unit, that is especially training for military competitions.

RAID Team Oberfranken

ECOLE MILITAIRE INTERARMES is a french reservist unit, sacre bleu :pet7:

Those competitions are show-offs as the reservist units only train for that events while the regular units have to do some other stuff to do during the day. Don´t overrate things like that.

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RAID Team Oberfranken is a german reservist unit, that is especially training for military competitions.

RAID Team Oberfranken

ECOLE MILITAIRE INTERARMES is a french reservist unit, sacre bleu :pet7:

Those competitions are show-offs as the reservist units only train for that events while the regular units have to do some other stuff to do during the day. Don´t overrate things like that.

Well reservists have to work and stuff in their civilian life!? So i really can't see them being in different level: both have regular jobs and they have to train out side their jobs, being lazy doesn't cut it. Yes regular troops are enough fed up with military things so they are more prone to go boozing than training.

Key word for success is motivation and quality of individuals and organization in whole. Switzerland has been said to possess good organization for gathering&preparing able&willing guys to competitions and they usually are quite successful.

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Well reservists have to work and stuff in their civilian life!? So i really can't see them being in different level: both have regular jobs and they have to train out side their jobs, being lazy doesn't cut it. Yes regular troops are enough fed up with military things so they are more prone to go boozing than training.

I guess you got me wrong. RAID Team Oberfranken is specifically formed for international competitions and has handpicked members while most of the usual reservist organizations have a broad spectrum of ex-military members. Those guys specifically train for the competitions and are therefore a highlight among other reservist troops who simply don´t have the consistent level of personel.

As the outlines of military competitions are fixed before the happening they can specifically train for the scenarios, while regular military duty for regular units concentrates on the education for combat scenarios that they are sent to.

The gap between reservists and active duty military is very obvious when reservists are reactivated and sent to actual scenarios. I´ve been to missions where voluntary reservists joined the team and more than once endangered the whole team. I´m not saying that all of them are like that but the german system at last is very shabby when it comes to such as the ranking of reservists is achieved by participating in maneuvers over years. You can happen to have an high-ranked reservist on your tank without any proper combat experience, little to no pre-mission preparation who thinks that he´s the boss just because of the virtual rank he has. My experiences with most of them were rather mixed tbh. Some of them didn´t even hesitate to insist on proper boot-polishing in the desert. At some point you just ignore them as good as possible and do your own thing.

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The gap between reservists and active duty military is very obvious when reservists are reactivated and sent to actual scenarios. I´ve been to missions where voluntary reservists joined the team and more than once endangered the whole team. I´m not saying that all of them are like that but the german system at last is very shabby when it comes to such as the ranking of reservists is achieved by participating in maneuvers over years. You can happen to have an high-ranked reservist on your tank without any proper combat experience, little to no pre-mission preparation who thinks that he´s the boss just because of the virtual rank he has. My experiences with most of them were rather mixed tbh. Some of them didn´t even hesitate to insist on proper boot-polishing in the desert. At some point you just ignore them as good as possible and do your own thing.

Funny thing as reservists here are speaking is same tone about regular troops, who are 20 years old kids. Not enough life experience, insecure, the usual. Of course reservists might have pretty few deployment under their belts, while these young lads are sent to their first.

Naturally training usually is overlooked. I've circled in quite few training-courses designed of reservists and it's clear that many has hard time to adjust to things, me myself included at start (after several years of break). Skills are more or less rusty, mind-set isn't what it should, no familiar group around every one being strangers. Problems which needs time and practice. And of course problems with those who's rank exceeds their skills, but still as they have higher rank they are capable... Well i have had change to evade that as in voluntary training organization ("national defense training"-organization) we don't usually wear ranks. And it's good thing: Private may instruct Major on how to operate heavy machine gun and they both are happily unaware each of others rank... Hopefully things remains like that in future.

Edited by Second

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You can happen to have an high-ranked reservist on your tank without any proper combat experience, little to no pre-mission preparation who thinks that he´s the boss just because of the virtual rank he has.

Though this would be a last resort, and depending on deployment / severity of the situation, there's still the VorgV and your immediate superiors. During my active time we had an OLt d.R. being put in charge of our platoon for the duration of a 2-week exercise, well so it was planned. This gentleman was a Banker in RL and actually a nice guy to talk to, lets just say the military was not where he belonged. He made some decisions that eventually put him back into the role of an observer.

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After some of these experiences we resorted to simply ignoring their orders as they would have exposed us to a high risk while conflicting with ROE´s and endangering a whole lot of vehicles that were driving behind us. There was a word going around that we accept any Diszi up to 1000US$ as our own security and the security of our detail was more important than the ego-tripping of military weekend-warriors.

Problem within critical situations is that you mostly don´t have the time to conduct extensive communications with superiors that are out of reach. That´s when you take it on your helmet and override orders.

Example: We were on convoi duty as FuFü slightly ahead of a 2km convoi towards Mogadishu when armed persons showed up on the road in a little village where the road was blocked with a vehicle wreck. The reservist OLt who was riding ontop of the Fuchs got frenzy and ordered us to open fire on persons pointing weapons towards us which was a clear violation of ROE´s and would have led to an uncontrollable situation for us and the convoi behind us. The Olt was screaming into intercom and was totally freaking out because I didn´t open fire with the MG3. I simply refused to obey because it´s pretty natural that locals run around with weapons and roadblocks consiting of car-wrecks are also something you see pretty often and are no problem to push aside/run over. So after internal communication with the vehicle-crew we closed the hatches, brought up the shielding and simply went straight through as we always did.

No problem at all. When we had a technical halt soon after we explained the situation to HQ at Belet and the OLt was just a simple passenger after that. It was his first trip on a convoi to Mogadishu from where he shipped out soon after.

There were other incidents comparable to this one, some of them even funny but in general I haven´t made that good experiences with reservists who join combat troops for a few weeks only and hop in like superheros to add chilli to their life while lacking the basics of the mission background.

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Ah so you did get in. Nice job!

Incredible that someone remembers me talking about stuff like that probably over 3 years ago, thank you. :)

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@ Balschoiw

i doubt there would have been any disciplinary consequences for the crew. If his orders were in ROE violation, anyway.

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Oh...I got a Diszi for my sandy shoe-polish afterall, so the german tradition to follow rules literally actually struck me. I didn´t give a f**** though.

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I'm in the process of joining the British army I'll be going in as an infantryman, right now I'm just waiting for my training date in sunny Catterick.

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I trained as a 11M Mechanized Infantryman at Ft. Benning Ga.

My training unit was the very last one to use the old steel pots helmets..

I did nothing special besides alot of FTX's waiting for the Russians or East Germans to o start a war.

In 1992, I was a member of the 8th Battalion 40th Armor Reserve Unit in Tucson, Arizona until coming down with diabetes complications.

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1 year conscript, 2 years South-Lebanon. About 15kgs ago. ;)

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I served 8 years in the Flashpoint/ArmA community, that's worth 1 Fallujah right? ;)

Honestly dude. That is a total insult. Men DIED in Fallujah, and though it may be in jest, I'd be a bit more respectful.

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Honestly dude. That is a total insult. Men DIED in Fallujah, and though it may be in jest, I'd be a bit more respectful.

You can't expect every little battle and disaster to be a holy subject since even the big ones are made light of. Chill.

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Served in the Finnish Defence Forces @ Karelia Brigade / South-Finland's Signal Battallion / HQ Company / 1st Platoon / 3rd Squad as a Military Police (rank Private) in 2008.

Now im a Reservist since few months ago.

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Balschoiw, why don't you stay in the hole you had to dig yourself after your little "mishap" some years ago and spare us your stories. Nobody will believe them anyways!

Why I come up with this? It's simple. Your comments about "virtual ranks" and "reserve superheros" force me to point out how reliable your comments really are.

Have a nice day and start to dig again!

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What do you want ? Proof ?

Send me a PM and you get your personal proof.

In the meantime you can check out the Unosom II forum, my nick Schakal.

Unosom II forum

Edited by Balschoiw

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I was an azimuth operator for this outdated piece of shit:

granitemdnikehercules60.jpg

The only good thing about being in the Airforce is that you train with WW2 weapons.

I am serious. My first target practice was with a M1 Garand and a Bren MG.

We used the G3 for guard duty.

:)

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Was sergeant in a finnish recon/sissi group for the coastal rangers 2000-2001.

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