New group and zero procedure with 5 rounds?

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So i just got back from Ft Sam and during our range time we had to group and zero our weapons, nothing new. But the process for this was not the normal 3 round group and zero but instead a 5 round group and zero. The standard i was told was that you needed to get 3 of you 5 rounds in the 300m target. Never done this in the past 7 years, its always been a 3 round group.

With 5 round i don't think you can get an accurate triangulation, maybe a pentagon but you still cant find the correct point of aim.

I checked and FM 3-22.9 is still the most current FM and there's no mention of 5 rounds for a group.

Just wondering if it was a BIG army thing...or a AMEDDC & S thing.
 
I wonder if it is a way to eliminate flyers. So many Soldiers rarely shoot (ESPECIALLY those in the medical corps), that with a 5-round group, they can ignore the outlier (or two) and still find a group.

I've been a range safety many times, and there are a lot of Soldiers in my medical unit that have a very difficult time making consistent 3-round groups. I've started pulling some of them to the side after they failed to zero to teach them the fundamentals again.

What's your MOS and to which unit are you assigned? If you don't want to answer publicly, send me a PM.
 
Only five does seem strange; I have done zeroing with six before. Thanks to the shoddy basic instruction in marksmanship at Benning we started to institute the "five outa six" rule. You had to zero and confirm with five out of two three round groups, or it was remedial training for you and an extra night and day in the field. Sucked if you were coaching a newer soldier.

To your original post though, it is probably something that was instituted locally in attempt to push soldiers who can't zero and group properly through faster... Though I figured downsizing would have stopped that by now.
 
AMU's BRM lecture notes that were posted on their website a couple years ago were recommending 5 shot groups. I think 5 shots allows you to exclude bad shots and still come up with a reasonable guess as to the center of the group.
 
zero and confirm with five out of two three round groups

This is current standard for Infantry types. These five shots also need to be in a certain area of the target and have to be consecutive. You pull one round and you start all over again.
 
AMU's BRM lecture notes that were posted on their website a couple years ago were recommending 5 shot groups. I think 5 shots allows you to exclude bad shots and still come up with a reasonable guess as to the center of the group.

That would be my guess. Seeing the majority of the military shoots like Ray Charles.

Me: "You call that shot at 10 o'clock"

Cpl Schmoe: "Call? What is call? I thought they were all good."

Me: [thinking]
 
I've found its's easier to find the true center of mass w/ more data. I would use 5 shots as well.
This^^
The goal is to find the "center of mass" of where the gun groups. In a 3 shot group, 1 flyer can throw the center way out. I've seen guys put 10 on the paper before deciding where the center is. The more data the better.
 
This is a bit off topic, but something I learned that helped younger soldiers immensely is drawing a thick horizontal black line with a sharpie right on the x axis of the 25/300 sim target grid. When troops are having problems with sight picture consistency, the issue is very frequently that they can't tell how high up the sillouette they had the front sight post on the previous shot as the post is wider than the sillouette.

A grizzled old E-8 MSG did it for me when an E-2 Obie had issues zeroing and was afraid to even ask questions and thought the paper had to stay virgin; I passed it along to my troops and found it helped a number of them, particularly those with glasses.
 
Yes, drawing a line across the COM of the 25M zeroing target would be similar to the old Canadian Bull, zeroing targets that were used in the 60s & early 70s. Much easier to keep track of elevation on that target.

B

canadianzeroingbulltarg.jpg
 
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