I’ve learned some things from playing airsoft. First of all people who play airsoft are so far from being real soldiers its literally laughable. Few have the gear or knowledge to play effectively or realistically so they can win or understand how to and why to work as a team. Let me start off in explaining that with some background information first; I play at a park near where I live in a forest about 4 acres big. We play mostly Attack and defend matches weekly although its really all unofficially organized but allowed by our city’s mayor to play there so it’s still legal to be done. It’s not HUGE but its not CQC for sure although certain areas can be considered so. MP5′s and such are still quite effective here so that causes a lot of people to buy and use a wide range of guns and therefore we have many different types players coming here weekly. Now, some of the players that play here have spent lots of time and(or) money on airsoft and others have not. For the most part as long as you’re good with your gun and it shoots you’re fine. Rule of thumb of course though is that ,unless you’re a sniper role (which you know how to fill), you’re no good unless you have an automatic. Not only because of the firepower but if you have an AEG then it just shows that you know what you really need. It displays that you know something about airsoft and therefore do not come to play with only a spring pistol or rifle (and I’ve seen it done too many times before that way).
Now back to my initial point about how it’s so funny (I’m being SO sarcastic here if it’s not obvious) that many players don’t even understand basic language of military tactics, movement, airsoft lingo and just plain ability to communicate valuable information. This puts crazy strain on whoever is the natural leader of the group to basically baby all this in happening and doing way too many jobs than necessary. On top of the fact they don’t even understand what you’re saying, conversely they don’t know anything about any of that stuff! MOST importantly they don’t understand military tactics, how to cover others who are moving, discipline to keep gun pointed away from team mates and focused on likely locations the enemy is going to appear, or any other BASIC information.Meaning YOU, the one who knows this stuff at least a little bit, MUST BE THE LEADER! You’re now responsible for the whole group and you need to instill confidence, motivation, admiration, and a host of other necessary emotions in your followers to make it clear you’re the leader and they must listen to you usually in about 5 minutes until the other team is moving in to begin the game or you’re going in to start the game. Let alone that majority of them don’t even understand the concept of “shut the hell up the enemy is near by” so we, the defense, get ambushed by the attacking team which makes ZERO sense unless you knew how little they knew. Getting everyone usually killed or getting me, their leader killed very quickly for STUPID things. It’s their faults really and I’m not going to sugar coat that, but still its understandable because WHERE are they going to find this information? I can’t teach them all this information in 5 minutes and I’m not in hell teaching everyone so I can’t get the advantage of knowing this over others on the other team. So their only choice is then to, just like me, find it all on the internet but they don’t know what their looking for and I’m lucky I found what I did on the internet by semi-accident so I know what I know.
In addition what often happens in airsoft is lack of leadership skills and what I’ve mainly experienced is lack of following skills. I hate being the leader playing airsoft honestly because I have to constantly get people to pay attention and do the jobs I assigned them which causes me to have no choice but to make that my sole job instead of taking up point or shooting because I don’t to be walking around with a bunch of loud, ignorant, targets with me in the center of it all and looking like the big brains and power of the group making me public enemy #1. I need to make them at least a little useful but most of them can’t even take a hint! Many are scared and will not move when I say move. They’re frozen unless I make the first move which only makes them rely on me more. I WISH that I could train them, teach them, or even just tell them where to learn all of this but I can’t. How am I going to tell these kids, because I can never get the actually good experienced kids on my squad/team since all the other experienced players are also squad/team leaders, what they need to know or where to learn it all in 5 minutes? I’m not and it just frustrates me and makes me what to split off in to a 4 man, high disciplined and trained force to play the games with. At that point I wouldn’t care if I was the leader or the lowest piece of crap in the whole squad. In that field, mobility is KEY to winning because the enemy is usually in areas only accessible by highly visible easy to cross openings in the forest or tight, hard to find, secret ways though the trees and bushes to get to the enemy.
If you want to know about airsoft, then DO IT. I used airsoftforum.com extensively to learn about important information in airsoft. I also used lots of small articles on how-to wiki and other user content generated sites which help and how-to’s on airsoft I either found from airsoftforum.com or though google searches to expand the information I learned from airsoftforum.com. The greatest thing about reading all the articles on that website is that it lets you know what you don’t know or where you need to practice and improve.
Point of ALL of this complaining and SUPER long post is to explain completely and totally why if you play airsoft you need to be active in learning how they do it in the real military. Please help out your fellow airsofters and tell them the same. I love the game of airsoft and we need to make it all that much more serious. It gets me mad that paintball has PROFESSIONAL teams and leagues but airsoft can barely get a place to even play let alone an organized, serious, professional league.
Yesterday we held a ceremony at Pompano Beach High school to honor those who died on 9-11. It was a small ceremony compared to our future Fallen Heros ceremony, but it was still very meaningful and powerful enough to get the job done. We had a ceremonial flag raising, flag folding with taps playing plus a 21 gun salute(literally 21 guns since our BB guns only shoot once at a time and we can’t use real weapons in a school), and finally the exhibition did a routine to “>
honor those who died on 911. It was a little crazy with all the cadets we had that fell from locking their knees and one even had to get stitches from falling so hard on the ground while in formation.
