I cannot remember working the pits at Ft Dix 50 years ago, but I know I did it later at Ft Wainwright AK.

The link has a photo from Camp Pendleton.

https://www.marinecorpstimes.c...ge-coming-to-an-end/

Are the days of pulling pits at the rifle range coming to an end?

By: Shawn Snow   16 hours ago

As a shooter on rifle range qualification day, have you ever seen your target come up crooked, barely hanging onto the stand, and wonder, “What the heck are the Marines doing in the rifle pits?”

Pulling pits at the rifle range might be most Marines' least favorite task. It requires constantly raising and lowering targets just to see them fall off the rickety stands, and quickly patching them up with pasties to give the shooter a clean canvas ... just to watch them fall off again.

It’s a frustrating, tedious task.

There’s the fact you have to rely on another Marine in the pit to accurately score your shots — and that one-point difference between the marksmen pizza box badge and sharpshooter can save a a lot of scorn before the next chance to qualify.

There’s the shooter who probably missed the target entirely during the last course of fire, leaving the scorer staring at the target for an eternity, seeking a nonexistent shot hole.

There’s always the Marine who shoots on the wrong target — those must just be bonus points to help a buddy who is about to fail on the range.

The Corps' entire rifle range qualification process is rife with human error and inefficiencies that can impact Marines' scores on the range.

Well, the Corps finally is looking to remedy this. In a request for information posted on the government’s business opportunities portal, the Corps is in the hunt for an automatic scoring system for its ranges.

In the posting the Corps said that the purpose of the new scoring system is to “reduce the amount of labor necessary to conduct KD [known distance] training/qualification. By eliminating the need for target operators in the pits, the labor overhead associated with KD training is greatly reduced.”

“During marksmanship training the KDAS [known distance automated scoring] will be required to accurately show the shooter where they hit the target, to provide feedback that will assist the shooter in developing their shooting skills," the RFI stated.

And the Corps is looking for a complete system that will streamline the scoring process and ease the rifle range qualification process.

According to the RFI, the Corps wants new scoring platform display systems for coaches and shooters.

For marksman coaches on the range, a new display unit will allow the coach to view and track the shots of four shooter lanes at once.

Shooters will have a display unit that will let them track their individual shot placement and score as well.

A single control system will be able to communicate wirelessly and control up to 100 targets at once, according to the RFI. That means no more Marines in the pits manually pulling targets up and down.

The new scoring system is intended to reduce “the amount of time shooters need to spend on the range, freeing them up to perform other work,” the RFI reads.

So maybe the days of showing up to the range at dawn also are coming to an end?

Responses to the Corps’ request for information regarding the new scoring system are due by Jan 11.

I never really minded doing it. Especially after bootcamp when I could joke around with my friends.

One of those random memories I have from bootcamp that most people don't get is one of the drill instructors sitting us all down the day before live fire began and reminding us that it was against the Corps values to cheat, but that we were pulling targets for our brothers and if by the time they got to the 500 yard line they were a shot or two away from qualifying we should all remember that we were issued 5.56mm inksticks that could easily put a hole in a piece of paper.

More and more ranges around the country are switching to E-targets, or electronic targets. They work really well and are quite responsive and accurate.

Our local range has gone ETs this year and starting in January, all matches will be on ETs.

I'm considering getting my own for my personal use at a small local range near me.

As antiquated as it may be, there are reportedly some additional benefits to working the pits.

In several wartime memoirs, it's mentioned by Marines that working the pits allowed them to be exposed to the sound of gunfire traveling closely overhead. This later proved to be useful when they entered combat to allow them to easily differentiate between someone shooting and someone shooting at them, because they'd already had experience with that.

It doesn't sound like what most people would expect (or what it sounds like in movies).

I've only worked the pits a handful of times, but yeah it's interesting hearing bullets wiz (safely) over your head.

It wasn't fun but it wasn't hard.

That said I'm sure technology has been developed that gives more responsive and accurate scoring to the shooter - heck the Swiss rifle ranges have been doing it for awhile, with electronic scoring at each station.

quote:

Originally posted by Pale Horse:
I never really minded doing it. Especially after bootcamp when I could joke around with my friends.

One of those random memories I have from bootcamp that most people don't get is one of the drill instructors sitting us all down the day before live fire began and reminding us that it was against the Corps values to cheat, but that we were pulling targets for our brothers and if by the time they got to the 500 yard line they were a shot or two away from qualifying we should all remember that we were issued 5.56mm inksticks that could easily put a hole in a piece of paper.

The good ol' Skillcraft 5.56 simulator:

https://www.officedepot.com/a/...llpoint-Pens-Medium/

Took the Foreign Weapons Course at Quantico few years back. We still did the Pits. I think it is a pretty good system.

quote:

There’s the shooter who probably missed the target entirely during the last course of fire, leaving the scorer staring at the target for an eternity, seeking a nonexistent shot hole.

All that and not a mention of Maggie’s Drawers.

I'm one that can vouch for the incoming fire experience. I was glad to have that info. Plus rifle fire sounds different on the receiving end.

I remember pulling targets at Pendleton in 1960.
They loaned it to the US Navy that day.
The Marines loaned us the guns and ammo also.
The navy never trusted us with guns so to speak.Especially small arms.
Was a fun day and company got to Qualify with only three clips from an M-1.
We all passed that tough course in spite of all the maggie's drawers

I only got to do it a couple times but I really enjoyed working the pits.

Also in bootcamp, I got volunteered to go work the pits during the night fire exercise on the K/D range for another platoon. It included rapid fire and tracers. It was equal parts beautiful and sobering to my 18 year old brain. Knowing that I was only seeing one out of every three rounds and I was seeing a bunch of rounds. I always wondered if I had the balls to pull myself up over top of that berm wall and return fire if I had to.

quote:

I'm considering getting my own for my personal use at a small local range near me

slightly off topic but is there such a system I'd be interested...

Of the list of the million shitty things to do when I was in the Marines, like swabbing decks with hand towels and painting/washing rocks because some bigwig was coming, working the pits was never on that list. It was actually enjoyable thing to do with my brother Marines.

During my summer vacation with Marines in 72, was rotated into the pits like everyone else. Surprised at how large the pasties were or, needed to be in order to see the 500 yd shot.

My first exposure to pit duty was in 1981 or so, at the beginning of competition "career." Since that first time, I've heard hundreds of thousands of round go a few feet over my head or in my vicinity, from 200 yard to 1200 yards downrange from the firing line.

They are all loud, loud enough that we wear hearing protection in the pits. The sound you hear is the sonic boom from the bullet. The heavier the bullet, the louder the sonic boom. When the bullet reaches the impact berm, there is a bit of a noise depending on the condition of the berm. If it's dry, we get a lot of dust and we get an impact noise. If it's wet, we see the clods of dirt flying but the sound is different, more like a clunk. If the shooter is on his or her game, a rabbit hole will form in the impact berm and you won't be able to detect the impact of the bullet. You have to do it by sound alone. This is where I remind new shooters that the shot on their target is the only one they will hear in stereo.

If the bullet is subsonic, it will come in very quietly and we won't detect it unless the berm is dry. Range rules prohibit firing on target if your bullet is not supersonic at the target so we call back to the line and have that shooter removed.

If the bullet hits the spotter on the target, it makes a sound all of its own and you can sometimes see how much the bullet deviates from the trajectory after it hits.

A bullet hitting just short of the protection berm makes its own noise and showers the targets with dirt and rocks.

During a XTC rapid fire event, it gets very noisy in the pits for that minute.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:

quote:

I'm considering getting my own for my personal use at a small local range near me

slightly off topic but is there such a system I'd be interested...

I don't think your question is off topic, after all, we are taking about e-targets.

The one we have at the club and that I'm also considering buying from my own use elsewhere is this one:

https://www.autotrickler.com/shotmarker.html

The Shot Marker is $799.

It's an amazing system.

the CG never had much money so all our ranges were borrowed know distance ranges...so we wound up at local PD ranges next to the sewage plants....or SO ranges out in nowhere with the local deer flies...

with the lack of owned KD ranges the rifle course (for M16 family of rifles) we had to use 25yrd ranges.

someone in the way back figured out to reduce the target and we ran the course at 1000 inches...or 27.7 yards...

so I never pulled the targets in the pits during my career. We stood at the firing line with binoculars or a spotting scope and informed the shooter where his rounds were landing....

those little 223 diameter holes were really hard to see when the shooter got into the black.

I don't recall the Army ever doing this in my time in, 1991-1995 and 2001

It was the fall down OD green targets that registered a hit or fixed targets you had to physically walk out to.

Parris Island, summer of '96. I was in Plt 2132, my buddy was held to 2133 due to a paperwork snafu. We bumped into one other in the pits and got caught saying "hi" to each other.
Next thing I know, we have a Drill Instructor saying how two buddies should be able to catch up, and how nice it would be to do that... and then he put us front and center of the pits and we "sat" (imagine sitting in a chair, but there is no chair to sit on! Squatting with a straight back) and played patty-cake until our respective Drill Instructors found us and hauled our asses back to our targets.
My legs were so fired up I could barely walk. Needless to say, we never acknowledged each other's presence until well after graduation!

Running pits was another evolution of becoming a Marine. While I could see the fleet switching to digital target tracking, I'd hate to see it leave boot camp.