Question about drills?

What do you do inside drills? The only reason I ask stuff here is because my unit might not respond.

You may have to explain your question a bit more here.

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Do you use like Drill L86? Or how do you drill?

I’m guessing from the reference to the L86 that you’re talking about Arms Drill. Don’t get too excited, almost all of your drill practice will not be carrying weapons. When you join cadets, you will undergo training in static drill and marching drill to a basic standard. If you want to be a “drillie” there are usually more courses you can go on to improve your drill skills.

If you want to go on to do Arms Drill specifically, you will need a Weapons Handling Test on the L98A2 Cadet GP Rifle (we don’t use L86) and then seek out opportunities to do Arms Drill training. You will use Drill Purpose weapons for this. This is usually as part of a wing course, wing team or on a camp like Corps Drill & Ceremonial camp.

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Thank you so much!

The L86A2 is the 5.56mm Light Support Weapon, fitted with a heavy barrel, outrigger and bipod, which was used by the Army, RM and RAF Regt for fire support within the infantry section. It was never used for arms drill by anyone, but the Cadet Forces were authorised to use it for live firing after its replacement in the Regular Forces by the L110 Light Machine Gun.

Old Air Cadets of a certain age will remember when every ATC or CCF unit had drill purpose No4 Lee-Enfield rifles held on squadron premises. These were used for both arms drill and weapons training for live firing, because they could be loaded with 0.303in drill rounds.

Training on both that rifle and the 0.22in No8 rifle was done as part of the First Class cadet syllabus by cadet or adult instructors. I don’t recall any of them being SAAIs of any type, although there was a Range Conducting Officer course for supervising live firing.

Because there doesn’t seem to be a universal issue of the L98A2’s DP rifle (L114?) to squadrons these days (my squadron sadly has none, otherwise we’d have RAF Regt standards of arms drill and marksmanship), arms drill at squadron level is probably one of those great slowly disappearing air cadet activities. :roll_eyes:

So if you get the chance for any type of weapon handling within the Corps, grab it with both hands: even parade drills with the rifle improve your dexterity and arm strength for live firing and fieldcraft.

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I also remember regularly training on No. 8 rifles in the classroom on normal drill nights. In fact, it was one of my teaching practices for Staff Cadet Part 2 (as MoI used to be called).

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Ha ha - as a youg cadet, standing shivering on Sandown Pier, waiting for the Queen Mum to inspect us, we had been told under no circumstances were we to faint going backwards against the railings, as our REAL (non-drill).303’s would fall in the water!!

EDIT - & I think we had bayonets!

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.303 - blank firing ex - point muzzles in the air as the wadding in the blank round could cause a proper injury…

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The L98A1 couldn’t take a blank firing adapter, due to the lack of a flash suppressor, and so we had to aim off when firing blanks. I trust this has all been remedied with the A2?

Correct. Full SBFS is used.

Safe zone was 50m ahead on the A1, so a lot more practical!

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Anyway, back to arms drill…

The A1 has been gone for, what, over a decade now?

Phased in from 2009? That’s when the first A1s started to be removed, at least.

I think you forgot how old you are.

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Don’t know about the L98A1 but we traded our L85A1s in for A2s in around 2005.

I said at least

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Darn lawyers…

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