Encampment Packing Lists

[NC Hokie]

What is the Battle Stations that's on the permission forms? My cadets keep asking me about it.

Sadly its something that we ask for every year and have yet to be granted access to.

The new Battlestations 21 is the new culmination of Recruit training - a virtual reality simulator of a ship named the U.S.S. Trayer which puts recruits through an onboard-ship attack/disaster scenario similar to what happened to the U.S.S. Cole, including several hundred thousands gallons of salt water, real fire, and areas of the ship that are askew in the same way as if the ship had been attacked.

I did something similar to this in NJROTC and it ROCKED!  The second year I went, the Master Chief running the simulator figured he'd go easy on the "kids" and pull his punches (so to speak).  He seemed upset when we had the ship stabilized within 30 minutes and sent us back in.  I don't know what all he did but we were on the bottom within 20 minutes.

[BGNightfall]

When I went through RTC they were still putting the finishing touches on Battlestations 21, and unfortunately my division did not get the opportunity to run it.  Instead we ran the old Battlestations, which I suppose I can talk about a bit now, since it has gone the way of the dinosaurs and the Winter Working Blue uniform. 

For our Battlestations we spent the entire night running around between places like the firing range, the combat pool, the old battle stations building, and several others.  My good friend, who has been with me every step of the way since boot camp, got bashed in the face with the stretcher during Mass Casualties and needed stitches to finish.  She missed the swimming drills but was with us through the rest of the night. 

I also remember vividly the bomb drills with our masks on... I couldn't see my hand in front of my face between the smoke in the air and my lack of glasses.  So my previously mentioned friend guided me through the whole exercise by the hand. 

The whole of the night was not really a pass/fail, or a right the ship or not kind of drill, it was more of a training exercise so that we could go through the motions effectively.

[jimmydeanno]

What is the Battle Stations that's on the permission forms? My cadets keep asking me about it.

Sadly its something that we ask for every year and have yet to be granted access to.

The new Battlestations 21 is the new culmination of Recruit training - a virtual reality simulator of a ship named the U.S.S. Trayer which puts recruits through an onboard-ship attack/disaster scenario similar to what happened to the U.S.S. Cole, including several hundred thousands gallons of salt water, real fire, and areas of the ship that are askew in the same way as if the ship had been attacked.

I did something similar to this in NJROTC and it ROCKED!  The second year I went, the Master Chief running the simulator figured he'd go easy on the "kids" and pull his punches (so to speak).  He seemed upset when we had the ship stabilized within 30 minutes and sent us back in.  I don't know what all he did but we were on the bottom within 20 minutes.

I took my last squadron to the damage control facility at Norfolk NAS.  They had a blast.  The guys taught the cadets how to shore up hatches, patch holes, fix burst pipes, etc.  Then they went into the room that fills with water and they had to stop all the holes.  Did I mention they had a blast?  I think it's funny when cadets do things and the instructors say, "You guys did this better than most of the guys sent here for training..."

[MIKE]

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