Over the years I have served with joint units and trained with other services as time allowed.  I have been trying to get an offical weapons qual with every branch I serve or trained with.  Well after a few years of work, I have managed to complete at least one course of fire with a higher than Expert score in every branch, including the Coast Guard.

Yesterday I shot Expert on the Marine pistol course.  I have now offically qualified with a weapon on a course of fire in every branch of service of the US of A.  For those of you that are wondering, the Air Force has the hardest pistol course of fire by far, the USCG has a pretty practical one and it really applies to what they do with a gun.  The Marine one is pretty good and you get to run thru it enough that you get pretty familiar with the weapon, it is not as combat oriented as the AF course,oddly enough.  

The Marines had everyone qual'd except one guy and he retried twice.  They take a lot of pride in following the training and scoring well and nobody wanted to be the lowest score or nonqual. I liked that sense of pride a lot, I have seen AF classes with 12 people who fail to qual and could care less.

Oh, the AF course requires you to draw from the holster and fire, reload and continue to fire, complete anti-bodyarmor drills and a gas mask portion.  The target has no scoring rings and you are required to make solid center mass hits without the aid of target features. Distances vary as well.  It is scored using an overlay.  

...and everyone laughs at the AF REMFs'. I am one, and I still do! The pistol qual sucks the fatty...

If the lowest possible score to achieve an Expert rating was 345, I scored 365.  On the AF courses I have cleaned both the rifle and pistol variations, meaning  I shot a perfect score and not a 36 out of 40.  I didn't slide by on any of the courses with a lowball score.

In the real world there are NRA classifications higher than Expert as well.   From lowest to highest they are Marksman, Sharpshooter, Expert, Master and High Master.  Which is why reporters sound like complete retards when they call people expert/marksman.  I'd prefer my sharpshooters be masters, but that is just me.  

Back in the old days 1980 when I was in basic for the A.F. The only thing we got to shoot was a .22 version of an M16. I got a marksmanship ribbon. That was supposed to be the top grade at the time. The rifle training was a joke. I wish we had gotten to do more.

The current pistol course is a throw back, a couple of years ago a much better course was inacted in which you had to fire from non-standard positions, shoot one handed from both strong and weak side and from behind cover.  The new course was put on hold because of allot of complaints from the fleet, about it being too hard logistically and time wise.  Most pistol ranges are run by the unit vice having a unit at the rifle range, the common complaint was the new course put too much of a time strain and required modification of the ranges to conduct the course hence wasn't practical when most units were deploying at the cyclic rate.  Overall it was a much better course and hopefully one day it will return.  

By the way, I know most units don't do it,  you are suppose to draw from a fastened holster for most of the course and at the 25 you are suppose to make a condition 1 and re holster if you want to take a rest from the 25 meter off hand.  But seems most OICs and RSOs are a little hesitant to do this, too much chance of a ND into someones leg, so they don't follow the actual order.

The highest score of the day was fired by an Air Force shooter, he fired a 391/400.  The high score for the Marines was a 384/400 by their commander.  The Marine commander shoots quite a bit and he is a big fan of leading by example. The worst score of the day was four points under minimum.  

Theres a few quals for pistol for the Army.  My favorite is 40 shots at a target marked 3/4/5 with 5 being the inner portion.  I shot a 196/200, which means that I missed the inner ring only 4 times.

Quoted: The pistol qual sucks the fatty...

No it doesn't.

Yeah, the I've heard the AF had the hardest pistol quals, but we had ridiculous rifle quals.  Even the cops who carried a rifle on a daily basis only shot the equivalent of an Army Alt-C once a year and one "special rifle course" with automatic, night fire and gas mask (all at 25 yards) once a year.  I only shot at pop-ups twice the whole time I was in-once in tech school and once at an ABGD school.

ETA:  But I still qualified expert the first time I shot in the Army Guard-altho anybody on here who's seen me shoot probably wouldn't believe it.