Do military pilots actually need training in small arms, or is it just a meme born from fiction?
No. Pilots are valuable assets so we humor them by giving them special equipment in case they survive being shot down.
>>64418491these days they do train to shoot rifles and have rifles with them on the aircraft/ejection seati think combat pilots flying over hostile areas always carried atleast a pistol in most air forces
>>64418551But if you issue them hand weapons, wouldn't that mean they have been trained to use them?
>>64418573Yes, and yes. Pilots are provided a pistol as an emergency survival tool, not as an offensive weapon.
only if they plan on crashing a lot
>>64418491On occasion.
>>64418573Are you a fucking retard or something? Everyone, including clerks, surgeons, IT fags etc... get training on how to fire a rifle and pistol, and in many cases have to qualify on them yearly.
>>64418594Emergency "survival" tool.
Navy Pilot hereI would prefer that we be able to shoot a pistol in the case they we have to eject and also just in principle Navy OCS doesn’t even do weapon quals anymore so we have to find some third party and pay out of pocket to do pistol and rifle quals now
>>64418738Not in the USAF.
>>64418845Who was the last navy pilot shot down? Owen Wilson?
>>64418869Wow
>>64418845That sounds just plain ridiculous.
>>64418845>>64418867Over in my country, all soldiers will need to complete basic military training, regardless of the position. What's the reasoning behind this?
>>64418491Yes, the last thing you need is for your pilots to get shot before ever entering a plane.
>>64418491Yes, they get shot down.I forget the scenario but I heard of a case in the Vietnam war where a US Mil Helicopter pilot was shot down. He was an expert shot with the 1911 and fought off a bunch of Viet Cong until rescue came because his crew was injured and couldn't be moved.
>>64419195Well, apparently not:>>64418845
>>64418926USAF basic only covers rifle qual.Anyone who actually gets issued a pistol does have to train
>>64418491Unlikely to need to use them, but they get a fallback just in case they crash or gotta bail over enemy territory/absolutely nowhere, which isn't super common, but it HAS actually happened a few times.When that happens, they are not expected to play Naked Snake, but rather to avoid enemies and/or dangerous animals at all costs, and to try to make it back to friendly lines or civilization. The guns are for if they have no choice and have to use them.>>64418573Yes? Wouldn't do them nearly as much good if they didn't.
>>64418491They are issued small arms to be able to defend themselves while escaping and evading. Hambleton, for example (the inspiration for the film Bat 21), killed at least one enemy soldier on the ground after being shot down. Because they are issued the weapons, they need to be trained to use them. picrel: The Bridges at Toko-ri (1954)
Under the rank system where pilots were officers, wouldn't carrying a handgun have been considered part of an officer's appearance?
>>64418491It almost looks like a shitty tec-9.
>>64418491No.>>64418551>>64418594The most important survival equipment a pilot has is the Advanced Bellyflop Glide Vehicle.
>>64418869Kek>I was going to make a Behind Enemy Lines reference fuck you>>64418884KEK!
>>64418491Shamfuru dispray! Fito pilotu should commito kamikaze if no more fly! No shame famiri and Empuru! Banzaaaai!!!
>>64419565Good /k/ino.>Where do we get such men?
>>64418491during blackhawk down delta guys talk about how littlebird pilots from the 160th Soar provided air support by hovering 20 feet above the crash site and shooting their mp5s out of the window.
>>64418559Most pilots need only pistol qualifications, Navy pilots need none, even if flying over hostile territory.
>>64418491They are given a gun in case they are shot down, giving them basic training with that gun is a good idea.They are trained to run and hide but if you are boxed in it might be better to shoot your way out than surrender and end up in an ISIS video.
I heard stories that some USN pilots at the Battle off Samar flew past the Japanese ships after running out of ammo and starting firing at them with their handguns. Probably just a story but one I'd like to believe was true.
>>64420742A US pilot once shot down a zero with his pistol. He got shot down and ejected. Since Nips used to shred parachuting pilots he pretended to be dead. A zero began circling him to check if he was really dead so in a desperate moment he whipped out his gun and unloaded. Since Nip planes had no armor he must’ve scored a lucky hit and took out the pilot as the Japanese fighter began to fall down.
>>64418491During the Battle of Bataan in WW2 all american planes ended up getting shot down or knocked out, so the pilots and ground crew were all forced to fight as infantry. They ended up accidentally saving the day when their quiet sector of the front got attacked by a Japanese battalion, and the airmen were so awful at combat that they managed to trick the Japs into thinking that the Americans were just pretending to be retarded as part of an elaborate rule, so the offensive was halted long enough for US armor to be brought in, killing the Japs to the last man.https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-PI/USA-P-PI-17.html
>>64420804>Since Nip planes had no armor he must’ve scored a lucky hit and took out the pilot as the Japanese fighter began to fall down.They do have armor depending on model. Early Zero's had none and later they recieved armor behind the pilot and armor glass right infront of him.None however give armor directly above, to the side or below the pilot.
>>64418491The US Air Force stopped issuing survival kits by the midpoint of the Vietnam War, because they found that pilots either got rescued within an hour of crashing or they didn't get rescued at all. It turns out six weeks of survival training won't let you evade someone who has lived in the jungle his entire life.
>>64419850You understand how that's different though, right?
>>64421001That's just plain retarded. The pistol exists for self-defence not just against enemies, but also wild animals. Even if the pilots need an hour to be picked up, they might still need to use a gun within that hour.>>64421007How exactly is it different?
>>64418738I'm a medical officer in the US Army. I was prior enlisted, as were about 10% of my peers in BOLC, the initial entry training for medical officers. The rifle qual rate for our training company was about 15% on first try (half of those being prior enlisted), 25% by the end of the day. This had no effect whatsoever on graduation of the training, and to my knowledge is also irrelevant for promotion and recomissioning.So, uhh, it's not exactly a standard that many of us are held to.
>>64421227Oh, and they didn't even bother having us fire the pistols, much less train anyone to pass qual. Assembly, disassembly, and functions checking were all the formal training we received in pistols.
>>64419850I have no reason to doubt this greentext, there are videos, or at least used to be on youtube of kiowa pilots doing crazy shit in iraq and afghanistan
>>64418491Nobody can work as a military pilot without basic military skills. Without them, you can't board a plane or a helicopter if an enemy manages to get in between you and the vehicle. Not even PMCs would take you in without basic skills.
I would assume that everyone in the armed forces would at least get some basic arms training.I mean a cook will probably never fight in a battle but he should know how to shoot an M17/M18 at least
>>64418845>pay out of pocket to do pistol and rifle quals nowWe call that a range trip
>>64418869>>64418884
>>64419565Is it worth a watch? It's one of the Korean War films I've even heard of, and I've meant to try and track it down for years.By worth a watch, I should preface by saying I'm not so autistic I need it to be a 1:1 depiction of actual air or ground combat tactics of the Korean War. I mean that, if I enjoyed war films in the vein of A Bridge Too Far, will I enjoy this?
>>64419782It’s really good for G1 jacket porn too. >>64421636Yes. I am also a big ABTF fan. I enjoyed The Bridges at Toko-ri. The final bombing run scene is actually very visually and technically impressive for a film from that era.
>>64420589I think it's more of a wink and a nod that they give you a pistol and don't officially conduct a suicide training course.
>>64418491Are you the same retard who posted in /m/ about how Gundam pilots didn't need to know how to operate firearms?
>>64418551pilots survive being shot down all the time
>>64422104>suicide via pistolHell no, I have seen so many suicides go wrong I would be taking a grenade for that.
>>64422131You call me a retard, yet in this very thread we have proof that they wouldn't have needed to have qualified for firearms at all.
>>64422233no, you've been proven wrong multiple times on /m/ and here on /k/ you loser
>>64422322Yet here we have a word straight from the devil's mouth: >>64418845
>>64422104Scott O’Grady mentions that, while shot down over Yugoslavia, he remembered the story of a crashed pilot who shot himself only for rescuers to arrive at the crash site only hours later. O’Grady had a pistol, but he says remembering this example motivated him to stay alive, to not give in to despair.
>>64422104>>64422178A pilot's training costs so much time and resources that suicide would be the last thing they'd aim at with giving them a weapon.
>>64421182because they were off handing machine guns from an aircraft that vibrates more than a dildo store. if they hit planet earth it was a fucking miracle
>>64420572Navy pilots absolutely do need qualifications when flying over hostile territory.
>>64422822Well nobody wants someone captured and tortued to death on al jazeera either like>>64418812It's not a pick from a list of good choices in the first place.
>>64421237Other med o here, when did you go to BOLC?
>>64418722there's a crazy firefight story about soar in panama over rooftopssoar pilots shoot because they damn well need to sometimes
>>64423830Desu, I think SOAR are the underrated special forces unit.I'm also heavily biased, I read pic related once in middle school and then reread it in college, both coinciding with formative junctures for my tastes in other areas.
>>64420860Not just Bataan, after their last plane was destroyed the Marine Aviators of VMF-211 at Wake fought on with small arms captured from the first landing attempt and went out with a last stand around a pair of 3" AA guns leveled at the invaders."Every Marine a rifleman"
A Marine harrier pilot was awarded the Silver Star for repulsing a Taliban attack on foot in 2012
>>64424756QRD? How'd it happen?
>>64423716Not all enemies will kill you and break geneva convention
>>64425272Maj Rob McDonald helped repel an attack on Camp Bastion. >woke up 30 minutes after the attack started>puts on his armor and grabs a pistol>finds an m4, hands off the pistol to someone who didn't have a gun>while he's running around trying to coordinate support he encounters a group of 4 infiltrators. realizes that one of them has a PKM>M4s the PKM gunner then runs away and calls air support on the infiltrators last known position>the air support kills the remaining 3 infiltrators>later Major McDonald approaches a wounded infiltrator and serves up an order of 5.56 with fries and a Dr Pepper "A fifth Taliban fighter was lying wounded on the tarmac nearby when a British quick-reaction force arrived. They wanted to wait for reinforcements before approaching the downed insurgent, who was armed with an AK-47 and grenades, but McDonald had another idea. For the second time that night, he raised his rifle and helped an incel get laid" https://taskandpurpose.com/news/unsung-heroes-harrier-pilot-picked-rifle-ran-combat/
>>64426106>For the second time that night, he raised his rifle and helped an incel get laid
>>64426106>For the second time that night, he raised his rifle and helped an incel get laidDangerously based
>>64426106>he raised his rifle and helped an incel get laid
>>64424756You know I always like to joke about every Marine a rifleman, but when you get shit like this it is pretty cool
>>64426106Oh shit, my friend was there. The dumb fucks detonated their VBIED on their own men while breeching so they came staggering through like zombies and the entire FOB was taking pot shots at them. He was a medic, they just sat on the hescos and popped their M4s.Of course an officer got a silver star for that.
>>64426106The fact that the ground crew literally ran for guns before helping the pilots get into the air is really cool.
>>64426106Giga based.
>>64418491Yes, they need to qualify on a yearly basishttps://thegunzone.com/what-guns-do-military-pilots-carry/
>>64425958If you were a pilot, would you stick around and find out?
>>64418845>Navy OCS doesn’t even do weapon quals anymoreReally? That's way different than when I was in. I mean we weren't really trained per se but you still had regular pistol quals a couple times a year, and definitely were strapped when flying. The PRs handled the pistol and ammo though so you didn't have to make a different stop at the arms locker, so that was convenient. Are you a LAMPs guy or something? Maybe it is different for helos/mpas.
>>64429799If you're fighting a civilized force or army, they're not gonna burn you alive.
>>64429799We were taught in land survival during GWOT that if you got splashed, if you were uncut to immediately whip out your hog to prove you weren't some kind of IDF guy. Lol I was never sure if that was actual advice or if they were just fucking with us
>>64421596Nah. I joined the USN in '84 and they skipped my company for some reason.
A lot of the time pilots go down in bumfuck random locations where the closest enemy is a guy with a rifle, so giving them some ability to take out a bumrushing conscript or rear echelon guy is better than nothing.
>>64430384That comes from the Iraq war IIRC where some SAS guy got captured by Iraqis and he complied with penis inspection day because they thought he was Mossad.
>>64418491>Do military pilots actually need training in small arms, or is it just a meme born from fiction?Everyone in the military needs firearms training because every job in the military has at least a fractional possibility of being in a situation where firearms are needed. Firearms training also isn't that expensive or difficult to do, especially compared to everything else related to aviation training.
>>64430384I got taught that if we ever got captured to crank one out real quick so that if I got moved and the old location got discovered, forensic techs could find my DNA from the splooge as a proof of life.
>>64430907That just sounds kinda crazy to me. What job did you do? Were you ever taught firearm use at any point, or would that have only come with being deployed to a conflict zone?
If a pilot can be recovered by the enemy no small arm they have is likely to make a difference.They are going to have at least a squad of armed infantry on them.Suicide directly or from trying to fight back is all the gun is likely to accomplish. Which can be better than being taken alive by some enemies. Maybe criminaly using it against civilians to steal supplies or a vehicle for escape.Back when most of the world was undeveloped wilderness the concept was to hunt or kill animals.
>>64431825The pilot can also be recovered by their own men after a few hours of being downed, or they might be able to make it back to their own by avoiding capture. Even if there was no hope of rescue or making back to their own lines, having a simple gun is still a better thing to have than having no small arms at all.
>>64430935Nah, there's no need for many roles. If it happens, like commandos infiltrating a base to sabotage it, people in non-combat roles either hide or just surrender if discovered.
>>64418491Most NCO's and officers have to pistol qual.
>>64433550Then the pictures of dead airmen killed while cowering in a broom closet make it back to the US and Airman Timmy's congressman throws a huge shitfit and calls the DoD in for answers.During the Tet offensive anybody who could carry a gun was sent out to the base perimeter. An admin clerk at Bien Hoa Airbase was killed clearing a building that had been taken by the VC, and at Tan Son Nhut there was an Army comm unit filled with pogs that was hanging out waiting to be rotated back to the US that was sent out to the line.More recently in Afghanistan there was an Air Force weatherman that singlehandedly stopped an insider attack with his M9. In WW1 Col Raynal Bolling was the vice chief of the Army Air Service when his command car got ambushed by stormtroopers, and he managed to kill two of them with his service revolver before he died.I can provide dozens of more examples if anyone cares, but predicating who gets a weapon based solely on who gets shot at the most is a poor idea that would embolden adversaries and give them a huge opportunity to act on a better initiative./effortpost over.
>>64431411
>>64430933Honestly sounds like a sound logic to me.
>>64433766A more recent but kind of hushed up example is an exchange pilot shot up API on NAS Pensacola (i think he was Saudi) and killed several student pilots as there were no weapons to be had and the Pensacola police got lost on base trying to find the building. Clinton pushed through the huge rollback in actually having weapons around for use on stateside bases, and it is not a good look. That shooting sucked but I mean like imagine if they did at that NAS Kingsville or Meridian and trashed the simulators. Those are like single points of failure for entire training pipeline and can only be replaced, one by one, on a multi-year time frame for each, if BAE even still has the capability make new build Goshawk sims, which is by no means assured. Not good
>>64436265crazy how most terrorism can be avoided by just not allowing arabs into your country
>>64436265To be fair, that situation was more caused by the fact soldiers don't carry weapons outside of duty anyway. It could have happened in any other base's lecture hall as well.
