Night Operations Course (July 26-27) AAR, by BePrepared

PM Note: Don’t be afraid or intimidated – now is the best time to get out and TRAIN.

I was excited to learn that NC Scout was going to host a Night Operations Course because while I had NODS and had used them, I was also mostly self taught on them. Oh sure, I read the instructions , I could use them and see through them, but honestly I could use a few “pro-moves”. To his credit, Scout says you don’t need to have NODS or Thermal to take this course but if you have your own, why not get it set-up and use it? Scout can (and did) provide NODS and devices to those who did not own any.

I arrived at the Worldwide Headquarters for Brushbeater Training and promptly had to wait, as it was still day time. You can’t learn NV technique in the day time (not well anyway). Day One we met up at 6:00 pm for an equipment check, who has NODs/Thermal, IR lasers, ways to mount them, and did you bring batteries? We also went over the basic timeline of instruction for that evening.

• NODS Familiarization
• IR Laser Zeroing
• Target Engagement
• Mag Changes and Malfunction Drills (under NODS is QUITE different)
• 9 Hole Barricade
• Thermal Detection / Engagement

For the most part the first night went well, aside from the humidity and no breeze outside. We went a bit long and didn’t get to the 9 Hole Barricade… but this is a new course and time management constraints are being measured. (As a former .mil instructor I sympathize, no block of instruction is ever to the exact minute. You are under time or usually overtime.) Some of us had some learning to do for proper weapon manipulation for proper rounds on target (I kept trying to cant the weapon, with rounds ending up not where I thought they should go. It’s a thing.)

As it was getting later and later in the morning (odd to say but true) we went to learning about thermals and target acquisition. There was some real eye opening lessons for some people. In some conditions it really is the Eye of Sauron, but there are ways to beat it. (Come to a Scout Course to learn how.)

On night two, started out on our 9 Hole Barricade from the night before and improved our techniques with aiming and reloading under NODs. After an unannounced visit we were forced to abandon all firing line time for the rest of the evening, nothing serious (in fact, sort of amusing) we just had to stop firing. This cut out our team movement activities for the night, which left more time for vehicle operations.

Those that wanted practice driving under single or dual tubes got the chance to experience it and find the lack of depth perception is a real struggle. At this point it was natural to ease into vehicle ambush techniques, you guessed it, under NODs. It’s quite impressive to see three vehicles of individuals all fan out and cover their sectors, pull the security then mount smoothly back up all without a single beam of light.

All in all a very fun and knowledgeable experience. If you have the time (and you should be making the time for training) slip this course into your schedule. The next iteration may not be like this one, as this is a new class under development. So come back for another for the same reason I need to retake RTO and ARTO, there have been more than a few new commo lessons learned since RUS invaded UKR. Lessons change, adversaries adapt, new rules are established and you need to keep up.