Paintball for military training

[Wings]

I have to give a briefing for my senior air force class. I can brief just about anything so of course my first thoughts turned to paintball. We've played as a detachment several times before and the detachment has its own collection of tippmann 98's along with a few, usually broken, spiders.

I'm looking for input from people who have served or are serving in the military as to pro's/con's of using paintball as a way of teaching LOAC, teamwork, leadership, etc as well as from a recruiting/retention standpoint to college level Air Force ROTC cadets with emphasis on the senior class.

I also need 4 sources to use, only 2 of which are allowed to be web sources. In order for me to count this as interviews, and thus non-web (interviews can be done through email, etc) I need at least your rank, branch of service, and current status (active, retired, reserve, etc). If you don't feel comfortable posting that information (though I think most of you are) you can PM it to me or PM me for my email address.

I'm going to be collecting as much info as I can over the next week to put my briefing together and i'll try to make a copy of it availible here for anyone who helped out if theres any interest.

Thanks

[Snake]

Good to hear that you're using paintball. My father used to be a ROTC Instructor at Dartmouth College a few years back. I'm not sure if he ever used paintball (He used the MILES gear, I was OPFOR for a weekend once ) but I can get you his email address and you can ask him.

[Pyro]

I'm an Army veteran, former 82nd Airborne Infantry. During my enlistment I was a fire team leader and a squad leader (just a touch of my back ground for you).

I think paintball is a very effective training tool if used correctly. The one problem that I see is may cause some "troops" to develop bad habits, mostly regarding cover, concealment, and distance of engagement. We all know that there is a lot of "cover" out there that will stop paintballs but will barely even slow down small arms fire. Also, the distance of engagement is way off. I believe in the concept of how you train is how you will perform, and if you allow yourself to develop bad habits (such as finding cover that a paintball can't penetrate but small arms fire could) you can find yourself very dead. I know that when I am playing (paintball), I take a lot more chances then I would ever do if it were live rounds.

All that being said, and being probably pretty obvious to most, I think if used correctly it (paintball) can be a great tool in teaching unit cohesion, and developing "shoot, move, and communicate" drills, especially in the CQB environment.