St. Micheals Medical Team said:
Are you guys buying these PMags for work or for your own off time shooting?
A little from column A, a little from Column B. Personally, I just want some for use in Trg and possible future deployment.
St. Micheals Medical Team said:
If you still work for the CF, why are you putting down the money?
Reserves. No budget. Old weapons and EIS that falls apart. All of are C7s are older than most of the troops using them.
Besides; before I deployed, I dropped about $1000 on tactical kit (chest rig, rails, fore grips, dump pouch, drop leg, etc) and although I was only there for 3 weeks, I used every piece of kit, and am confident that those pieces of kit aided me every day I used them, especially when I really needed them... like in 4+ hour fire fights.
Now that I'm back, and am thinking of another deployment, or perhaps a career change that will put me back into the same type of situation, and I've learned more about what is out there, and how it would have benefited me in combat, I've greatly increased the amount of kit I would like which is beyond the Army's budget/knowledge.
Here's how I see it; When I finished college (for General metal machining and CNC) and started working in a machine shop, tools were provided. The tools were adequate for the most basic of operations and were fine when I was learning how to do things. Then after a while, while looking around, learning more about my trade, talking to other certified machinists with real world experience, I realized that the "issued" tools were garbage. Cheapest on the market. They broke, they bent, they weren't accurate when they needed to be and they were constantly being replaced with more crap that was just as useless.
I had always wondered why the other machinists had their own tool chests full of pretty much the same stuff but higher quality, as well as stuff I had never seen before... then I started to notice that they were working more quickly and efficiently than me... Why? 'cause, besides the TI and experience, they had the right tools for the job and they lost very little, if any, time to broken tools.
I thought about this, and even used Statistical Process Control to estimate time and cost loss for damaged tools; it turns out that I was less than half as effective than my equally trained and educated counterparts in the shop who had their own tools (more than 75% less effective than the "old boys"... but thats just time in.). With this knowledge in mind, I started using a large chunk of my pay check on "good" tools. By the time I left that job, I had invested around $5000 in tools (about 3/4 of other machinists annual tool budget)... I didn't consider this a "loss" or a bad move, cause the next job I got paid 3 times as much, and required employees to come equipped with their own tools... and even had an "tool allowance" for replacements.
Where am I going with this? Most, if not all, technical professionals, in just about any trade, will opt to use their own tools and even go as far as to buy their own out of pocket. Why? 'cause they're professionals... they know what they need to get the job done. They work with the equipment every day and know what works best. How does this equate to the military? We're supposed to be "professional soldiers". Most soldiers can figure out what works best, but unfortunately, we're stuck with the "issued kit' which can sometimes be sub-par. Don't get me wrong, for some people, the issued kit works great.. some people can make it work for them. But most soldiers would probably prefer to use kit that they know, for sure, works for them. Professionals make their tools work for them... they don't work for their tools.
Anyway, I could go on for hours about why we should have the option to use the kit that we feel works best for us, and even how to facilitate this idea, but it will only move this topic even more off course and I'm just sick of pushing the big rock up the steep hill (the whole issue). There's more than enough threads on these forums about all the "it would be nice", and "we should have, but don't" as well as the "why don't we use this, it's better than what we have." Unfortunately, it's like trying to explain the importance of the mission in Afghanistan to a pot smoking, tree hugging, birkinstock wearin', granola eating, hippy, Taleban supporting NDP leader... You could show every aspect of it, and it'll still be ignored.
I'm not bitter, I'm just misunderstood.
[/Sarcasm]
