How do the Military use blank rounds during mock battles and Excercises?

While using Blanks, usually the person in charge over that particular lane of the training will let you know if you were hit to simulate a downed soldier in battle, other wise it is simply to help you learn to communicate, and maneuver during the noise of a fire fight.

Troops also use a laser system so they can know when someone was hit. This system isn't used ALL the time, and can be inaccurate. (Wine Wine spoke more in detail about the MILES gear)

there is one more way soldiers simulate shooting while training. There are modified bolts for their weapons that decrease muzzle velocity and allow the weapon to fire a modified bullet that carries a plastic ballistic with paint in it. When the ballistic hits it leaves a paint spot on its victim. This gives a visual indicator that someone has been hit and hurts like all hell as well.

All 3 ways of training help in its own way, wether to use the indicator of the laser system to simulate a downed vehicle, or just a noisy blank to make a loud chaotic environment for the soldier to maneuver through. these tools are combined with things such as mortar simulators, as well as machine gun simulators, all to make training as real as possible, and as chaotic as possible. Remember that for training, you don't necessarily NEED or even WANT a real projectile all of the time, the idea is to get what is called muscle memory. Muscle memory allows a soldier to simply react to a situation without much thought, allowing them to think about other aspects of whats going on and make that soldier a more effective fighter.

My Team Leader and I were unstoppable during training events. Our company was conducting a 1 month field exercise, at the end of this exercise, we make our way through a mock village (built out of loads of shipping containers transformed into buildings). By the time our squad hit the main part of the town for our objective it was JUST my team leader and I left. With about half of the company left as OpFor him and I silenced our radio, and proceeded to clear out the remainder of the OpFor. It took us about 3 to 3 1/2 hours of careful movements, but one at a time we cleared out the entire area without speaking so much as a single word. We were back to back through the whole thing, and without talking, managed to clear out 50-60 people who were in this area. Him and I had spent COUNTLESS hours training side by side, and I watched him go from being a fellow team member on my team to the team leader, all of this time spent training allowed the two of us to KNOW what the other was going to do, and through a system of elbowing and nudging that took us YEARS to develop we were able to do what our entire squad was unable to, and without speaking a single word. Mind you that this would be impractical in actual combat, but the idea is the muscle memory, the reflex reaction that allowed us to do this without talking, AND to STILL have communication.

The MILES laser engagement system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Integrated_Laser_Engagement_System

Firing the blank makes the laser attached to the rifle (or other weapons system) fire. The laser detectors worn by the target sense the laser fired and emit an alarm for a hit/kill.

We have these systems for aircraft and vehicles also. A rifle MILES laser will not "kill" a tank. But a MILES equipped anti-tank weapon will.

Skunk is fast on the draw today. 10points.......

Both sides have a laser detector and on their rifles have a laser beam and if the beam hits the detector it recognises the hit
Chetak