[The Westerner]

Gritty, have you any knowledge of stepped up training of those who will deploy these weapons? If you say they are not as well trained as in the past, has the new Defense Sec made changes? I have begun to hear bombing practice at a nearby location to me. In the 80’s, the booms were frequent. Under Clinton, only heard them prior to raids on aspirin factories.
Under Obama hardly at all. I’m hoping Trump is undoing the mess. Thanks in advance. TW

[Gritty]

I have no personal information on what is currently being done. If you are near a gunnery range, you would not necessarily hear the training munitions go off unless you were very close as most training munitions have very small explosive charges rather than hundreds of pounds of high explosives. Units being deployed would have their training stepped up from normal prior to overseas deployment.

However, manually dropping "dumb" bombs is a complicated and finely tuned skill just like competition shooting. You have to practice constantly to stay proficient. As training time is always limited, most effort would normally go to those most likely to be employed. In the case of modern munitions, it would be the "smart" ones. Pilot proficiency would tend to lag in the older and less likely to use gunnery skills.