Jump-qualified SWAT team? Why?

[blues]

Greenville's only about an hour away...wait, I think I hear them spooling up...

[BigD]

Side note: I wouldn't call training with Jared Reston "run of the mill".

To be clear, I don’t think he himself is run-of-the-mill. I know his story and he’s certainly a bad ass. But I can’t imagine he does anything on a flat range that you can’t get from any number of other folks.

Even if he was better than Stoeger/Leathem/PatMac and Southnsrc combined, a day of range work is incongruous to jumping.

[TGS]

Pardon me for not being clearer. I was thinking more along the lines of the El Paso County Sheriff's department




Autocorrect?

Totally hear you on a local tactical team. Fast roping is easily articulable for many tactical teams, particularly those in urban areas and those teams who are assigned to pre-designated disaster response systems.

Regarding BORTAC and freefall, I'm going to guess they don't have the capability even though it could be articulated.

Freefall takes quite a bit of training, HALO even more so, and doing it at night as a team takes a lot of constant training, much moreso than recreational jumping. Super perishable skill. Extremely expensive to keep up. For those reasons, I'm going to guess they don't have the capability, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did indeed have at least 1 team certified.

[TGS]

To be clear, I don’t think he himself is run-of-the-mill. I know his story and he’s certainly a bad ass. But I can’t imagine he does anything on a flat range that you can’t get from any number of other folks.

So if they got some pistol training from any number of other folks, would you also be critical of such?

It's range training.....for a tactical team. Reston is qualified to give good quality training for such. I guess I don't get the beef with that part.

[GJM]

Pretty low budget operation using a Cessna 182.

[BigD]

So if they got some pistol training from any number of other folks, would you also be critical of such?

It's range training.....for a tactical team. Reston is qualified to give good quality training for such. I guess I don't get the beef with that part.

I added the sentence below to my post above after you had quoted it.

Even if he was better than Stoeger/Leathem/PatMac and Southnsrc combined, a day of range work is incongruous to jumping.

If you are there to learn how to fall out of planes, then do that. You don’t need to church it up or try to make the course more high speed.

The articles pretty poorly written (I could give two shits about which plate carrier he used when he took the PT test and how many deployments he carried that plate carrier on) and I didn’t study it depth anyway so I’m not sure about the grant angle. Maybe the company is going to get rich with all that FEMA trailer money.

But with the plug for the open enrollment course that’s available from the same company, I get the feeling the open enrollment is the main effort. The range day fits in with the Wlater Mittys that are going to pay for a Airborne style experience.

I’m a former JM that’s jumped the SF10 a couple dozen times. It is an improvement over the MC1, but I wouldn’t pay for a static line course with a round chute when any drop zone in the world can teach you to freefall with a square chute.

[okie john]

If you need to get somewhere and can't set down a bird, drive there, or boat there......then learn how to fast rope and save a ton of money, lower risk, and have a skill that's much more applicable for various situations.

The citizens in that county should raise hell.

This. Operating a fixed-wing aircraft is cheaper than rotary wing, but you lose a LOT of precision even on a good day. It gets worse if the jumpers don't jump frequently, or if your jumpmasters and the people setting up your drop zones aren't proficient. You end up cutting down trees to recover people and gear, so in a disaster scenario you're pretty much begging to make things worse. And doing it at night? NFW. Just no.

If you simply must put jumpers on the ground, then find a jump-qualified National Guard unit and task them with it.


Okie John

[Drang]

I could maybe see a state or federal agency using jump-qualified LEOs, but very little use for smaller agencies.
FWIW.

[TGS]

It is an improvement over the MC1, but I wouldn’t pay for a static line course with a round chute when any drop zone in the world can teach you to freefall with a square chute.

This is the biggest thing that makes this a waste of tax money.

Even if they could articulate a use for being jump qualified, static line round chute won't fulfill it anyway.

_________________________________


As for 182s being cheap to operate, sure, they are comparatively.

It's still a lot of money for no legitimate use.

[HCM]

Totally hear you on a local tactical team. Fast roping is easily articulable for many tactical teams, particularly those in urban areas and those teams who are assigned to pre-designated disaster response systems.

Regarding BORTAC and freefall, I'm going to guess they don't have the capability even though it could be articulated.

Freefall takes quite a bit of training, HALO even more so, and doing it at night as a team takes a lot of constant training, much moreso than recreational jumping. Super perishable skill. Extremely expensive to keep up. For those reasons, I'm going to guess they don't have the capability, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did indeed have at least 1 team certified.

About BORTAC, there are sector level BORTAC teams and then there is the national BORTAC team kinda like FBI SWAT regional SWAT teams vs HRT. Jumping is something I could see part of a national team being capable of doing but they would just go to .MIL schools.