My active and reserve military service has given me many interesting skills that a typical civilian would not be able to acquire. For example, combat shooting or being able to shoot an assault rifle.
In my two and a half years of National Service in a combat vocation, I was trained to use an M16 rifle as well as M203, Ultimax 100 as well as the standard fragmentation and smoke grenades. My reservist stint allowed me to pick up skills in the SAR21 too.
The thing about learning how an assault rifle works is that you are able to differentiate realistic vs. fake scenes in movies where firearms are used.
In a typical action movie, the bad guys go around spraying their weapons indiscriminately and usually they fire from the hip position. In reality, your military training teaches you the following:
1. To shoot and hit the target, you need to AIM
2. Aiming requires a stationary position, preferably supported
3. Breathing can screw up your aim
4. Hitting anything beyond 100m using an assault rifle without a scope is difficult
5. Automatic fire is the most inaccurate firing mode and you run out of ammunition very quickly
6. Unless you have a full-pack full of magazines and rounds, RAMBO style of shooting is for the movies. Even Machine Guns (GPMG)s are fired in controlled bursts for maximum efficiency and not sprayed indiscriminately.
That's why there are not many realistic war movies. The ones that are reasonably close are films such as "Saving Private Ryan", "The Thin Red Line", "Full Metal Jacket". "Band of Brothers" series is also quite accurate in depicting real war.
One of the ironies that I can never understand is that I love war films and tv shows but absolutely abhor my stints in the Singapore Armed Forces as a conscript. Perhaps it's because I know how hard it is to be a real soldier and like to watch war movies comfortably in air-conditioned hall with plush carpeting and excellent THX/Dhoby Digital sound systems and going through how realistic a scene is in my mind.
When I play Counter-Strike type of game called SoldierFront, the tactical moves associated with the computer game is also realistic, i.e. check for blind spots before clearing a room. Using grenades to clear the room prior to assaulting it. However, nothing beats the real thing, and while such games trains up one's tactical awareness, all this goes out the door in real training as you are physically tired and mentally drained while you are trying to do FIBUA or clearing fortified positions and foxholes on top of a hill.
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