U.S. military unit in Afghanistan ordered to patrol with unloaded weapons

[rdmapes]

All,
An interesting article on one of the tracker sites. Jihadwatch. org is dedicated to exposing the "Islamist threat". A lot of interesting news and an eye opener for those who like to thing everything will be OK if we just talk to them and be nice. Articles cover anything regarding Islam, e.g. treatment of Jews, Christians, terrorism in general. It appears that a service member reported that some patrols are done without having a round chambered. In the article NATO would not comment, which makes sense. But, I have read other weird stories about how the Command is experimenting with tactics.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/us-military-unit-in-afghanistan-ordered-to-patrol-with-unloaded-weapons.html

Original article: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37125

I called the VTANG IG and Family Readiness Center about this report to see if they could find any info. I did receive a call from Cmd Sgt Major , forgot the name. But, he commented that our troops lock and load outside the wire. However he said that he would push the question up the chain.

Check out the article and call your Congressman or VTANG to ask that the story be confirmed as fact or maybe something misreported. Just passing this along as things like this cannot be taken lightly.

Ron

[cedarman]

I wonder if the "service member" who reported patrolling without a round chambered are US Army, or other NATO command troops.
Even though the concept has good intentions (reduce the likelyhood of shooting unarmed civilians if the soldier has to take the time to chamber the first round - thereby giving him/her the extra second to evaluated the situation), it sounds like a VERY bad idea for personnel safety - especially considering many machine guns fire several rounds per second!!  That extra second to chamber a round give EACH enemy shooting a couple extra chances to wound or kill before our US/Afghan/NATO soldier get a chance to defend themselves.

[PotterFXFD]

  When our troops are in another land and possible in harms way,

LOCK AND LOAD, AND COME HOME SAFE.

[Mike Raburn]

I am sorta on the fence about LOCKED.....yes timing to save a life and yet you have HORRIBLE tragic accidents.

In the Navy a few years back I was on a sub tender.
We drew security patrols when we had subs on us in foreign ports. South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand. Heck in Hong Kong we had SOVIET ships next to us. Yeah, I am that old.
We were not allowed to be "locked" and I am so thankful of that..... for explicit reasons.

But that was a totally different situation..

Heck, when I was on Adak I was assigned to the Island Defense force.
We had rifles assigned to us and we kept them in our barracks, you know, just in case the Russians attacked......
We had one clip of rounds too.
BARRACKS + rifles + ammo do not mix!
There were 3 kids dead due to that.

Again, a different situation.