Engineer BOLC- Bravo Module

Bravo Module is the one everyone looks forward to for one reason: demo.

Land Nav
Before we could get to the cool explosives though we had to pass our land nav training. We spent two sessions out on the course one that went from day into night, and then from night into day. The course is self correcting, meaning if you find a marker, it will tell you the grid coordinate you're currently at(kind of like a "you are here"). It's really impossible to fail. The course is large and very hilly but it's ridiculously easy. Most people (including me) did the entire course without a compass- just using terrain association. Terrain association is a technique where you match up the terrain features on the topographic map with what you see in front of you. The course you do for credit is by yourself and starts before dawn. We were on the course at 0400. You need 5 out of 8 points in 5 hours. Only one officer failed the first attempt and later passed the re-test.

Advanced Rifle Marksmanship
This day was a repeat of basic training. You'll use your M-4's to familiarize yourself with fighting with full kit and a close quarters optic. You'll practice shooting from behind barriers, moving and shooting, and fighting from standing, kneeling and prone positions. Standing in the heat all day in full combat gear isn't the most pleasant experience, but the trigger time was fun.

Demo
When the Army needs more precision than the Air Force can provide from 30,000 ft. they call on the engineers. Part of the combat engineering training here teaches you how to remove obstacles in your way with explosive demolitions.

You'll spend about a week in class learning the calculations for several different types of tasks that require explosives. You'll take a test on safety and a practical hands-on test that proves you can calculate the right number of explosives to remove certain obstacles, and that you can properly set up those charges.

The day immediately following is the demo range. Arguably the most you'll have in BOLC, we spent the better portion of the day blowing up everything from C-4, TNT, dynamite, and charges designed to destroy roads, airfields, steel beams, and wire obstacles. We blew chunks of dirt the size of Volkswagen Beetles ten stories into the air and left craters deep enough to park two full size pickup tucks side by side three trucks deep with a single charge. The afternoon focused on breaching charges and the different type of charges that can be made for different types of doors or walls we need to get through. It's a rush to stand mere feet away from charges you assembled as the explosives turn doors into projectiles. Unfortunately we can't post the videos we took of the training for security reasons so for visual interest imagine the Death Star exploding.

At this point all the common soldier tasks (plus demo) were completed and it was time to move into specific engineer course work.