Inside ‘Combat Arms’ at Tyndall Air Force Base

View Video Here: http://www.wjhg.com/nicolewantstoknow/headlines/58655112.html

This isn’t your typical classroom…and these aren’t your typical students; they are the brave airmen who defend our freedom.

“A typical day for us, our classes usually begin at 8 or 9 a.m. that’s going to be our classroom portion, and then we’ll meet up at the range,” said Staff Sergeant Jody Tidwell, Combat Arms Instructor.

“We’ll do a safety briefing, put on all our gear, eye protection, ear protection, eye protection, helmet, and then we get right into firing.”

“Combat Arms are basically Air Force personnel that have been specifically trained to repair ground services firearms, pistols, rifles, shotguns, etc.”

In other words—

“We train our students how to operate and repair weapons.”

“Weapon safety is of the utmost importance”, said Tidwell. “We have four basic weapon safety rules: #1–treat all weapons as if they are loaded, so at all times you should treat it with respect it deserves; #2– know what your target is;  what is beyond your target; #3– Don’t point weapons at anything you are not willing to shoot; #4– Please keep your finger off the trigger until such time you are ready to shoot.”

“Today we are having our military personnel fire M9 AFQC. M9 is of course our pistol, AFQC stands for: Air Force Qualifications Course, the baseline of our course training. They will be firing a total of 90 rounds, 45 for practice, and 45 for evaluation and what we’re looking for is if the members can safely handle the weapon, safely clear it out, load it, fire it, reload it, and if necessary perform immediate action so they can get back in the fight.”

I was honored to spend a few hours with Staff Sergeants Robert Henderson and Jody Tidwell—they were kind enough to show me a thing or two about operating these powerful machines. Tuesday, I got to operate an M9, M4 Carbine, M249, Remington M870 and an M240 Bravo.

Not only are these men full of courage–they are full of pride.

“I love what I do. Me, personally….we live in a very violent culture, I know that society has a lot of issues, what we do in Combat Arms is provide people with the tools to survive a violent confrontation, that without this training they might not otherwise do so…”