Reply #1: This has been going on for about a year, at least... [View All]

[Shipwack]

When I volunteered for the augmentation force, I was scheduled to go through this. Fortunately, when it was decided that I would be sent to Bahrain (a relatively safe country), saner minds prevailed(!) and I got to skip those reindeer games.

The two guys that were there before me weren't so lucky, and while they got to have "fun" in Texas doing training that was ultimately useless, they were issued a rifle and body army, which made air travel a major pain in the butt.

These sailors aren't necessarily being put in the field (in theory at least; reality could be different). The idea is to put them behind the front lines, doing things like manning communication stations, etc, which frees up the professional ground pounders to do what they were trained to do. Since things are so fluid in Iraq and Afghanistan (to use an understatement), they are given some combat training, just in case...