What type of guns do the armed forces use to practice?

I've been watching alot of military shows and it looks like they're using airsoft guns, but when they shoot it gives off a crack of light. Is this due to the attatchment on the end of the gun? Is it not an airsoft gun? Could they be just firing blanks? Any help would be appreciated.

[Spades of Columbia]

Originally Posted by kennethrodriguez

I've been watching alot of military shows and it looks like they're using airsoft guns, but when they shoot it gives off a crack of light. Is this due to the attatchment on the end of the gun? Is it not an airsoft gun? Could they be just firing blanks? Any help would be appreciated.

Really!?...you think the military would use airsoft guns...even for training? There real guns.

[Excalibur]

Yeah, actually some are using Airsoft to train. I was reading an article on it in Guns and Ammo

[Spades of Columbia]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Yeah, actually some are using Airsoft to train. I was reading an article on it in Guns and Ammo

Maybe ROTC

Just read the article and some do use them...but the guns the guy was talking about is the real guns they train with that make the end of the gun look like a rpg...the airsoft part will soon be a thing of the past once they perfect and get a budget for the ammo that shot a paint burst

[Jcordell]

Well sonny back when I was in the U.S. Army we used M.I.L.E.S. (Laser Tag equipment), real weapons with blanks and blank adapters, smoke grenades and flash-bangs.

P.S. Did I mention that was when men were men and women were still women.

[k9870]

my local police use smith and wesson autos (think 59s) converted to reliably shoot lower powered simunitions, but the service weapon is a usp45

[Reach]

how do you use laser tag systems?

[Swordfish941]

Originally Posted by Checkman

P.S. Did I mention that was when men were men and women were still women.

Those were the days.

[AdAstra2009]

In my ragtag nasty guard unit we seldom use simunition rounds and I don't care about it really, because sim rounds are really unimpressive if you are doing anything other than CQB. During bootcamp the opfor "ambushed" us during FTX and they fired at us with sim rounds from their M4s, it was pathetic -they had to angle their M4s up like Mortars and the sim rounds still fell short of us and they couldn't have been more than 100-150 meters away.
Most of the time though we just put blank fire adapters on our M4s when we are practicing battle drills. We don't bother about "who hits who" because it isn't a game. We just run through the procedures.

I've always wanted to do MILES but everyone I've talked to only has bad things to say about it.

Originally Posted by Swordfish941

Those were the days.

+1

[Nyles]

I've used MILES, I wasn't all that impressed. Simunition, as AdAstra said, REALLY sucks at anything approaching range. HURTS up close though. Mostly we just use blanks, like he said it's more about the drills then who gets who.