Army Reserve Repeats Training Success with West Point Cadets
(August 4, 2003)--
The Army Reserve Small Arms Readiness Group (SARG) reported today that for the second consecutive year, 100% of the incoming cadet class at the US Military Academy at West Point qualified with their M16 rifle. This duplicates the historic performance achieved in the summer of 2002 and demonstrates the repeatability, reliability, and predictability of the Army Reserve Weapons Training Strategy.
The 2003 results represent an improvement over the historic achievements of the previous year in that more cadets were trained (1,234 vs. 1,115), an entire day was saved from the training cycle of each company (total 4 days), and a new record was set for the first time 'GO' rate (87.4%). In addition, the average qualification score for the incoming cadet class improved with over 46.8% of the cadets scoring sharpshooter or better. It is important to note that a large percentage of these cadets had never previously fired a rifle.
These results were achieved at live fire following small arms marksmanship instruction using the LMTS-based USAR Weapons Training Strategy. Instructors from the 98 th Division (Institutional Training) and the SARG conducted the training.
