By Chris Upchurch, Suarez International Staff Instructor
Recently I “assisted” Randy Harris with the Advanced AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting class. I put assisted in quotation marks because I didn’t do all that much. I was mainly the demo dummy and an extra set of eyes during some drills.
This class was part of Red, White and Blue September, a 4 day block of AR focused instruction. It also included the regular AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting on Thursdayand Friday class and the AR15/M4 Armorer class on Friday night. I couldn’t make it out to help with the Thursday-Friday class, but I did show up in time for the Armorer class (if you want to hear about AR15/M4 Rifle Gunfighting you can read my AAR of the class from last May). I believe this is the first time the advanced version of the AR class has been offered.
Much like with the AR class last May, I came out to this one as part of my quest to become more comfortable with the AR platform. I’m primarily an AK guy, but as an instructor I really need to be able to run both.
The AR I brought is a BCM upper with a 16" lightweight barrel and mid-length gas system on a Palmetto State Armory stripped lower I put together. It’s most unusual feature is probably the fixed Sully Stock, which I really like. It’s very solid and is the same length as my AKs. It’s also fitted with Magpul handguards, a US Palm battlegrip, a Surefire G2 flashlight, and an EOTech on a LaRue mount. I fed it with PMags carried either in a Dale Fricke kydex belt pouch or a Sneakybag. My pistol was my EDC gun: a Glock 17 with the slide worked over by TSD for an RMR in a Seraphim holster.
The rest of the class mostly shot 5.56mm ARs (including a very nice LaRue upper on a Spikes lower). One student had an Armalite AR–10 in .308. Support gear ranged from belt pouches, to a TIB, to a plate carrier (sans plates). There was one 1911, but the rest of the students carried Glocks.
Saturday Morning
Some of the students in the class were holdovers from the Thursday-Friday class, but not all, so after the safety brief Randy started out with some dry work to make sure everyone was on the same page.
We started with the standing position, mounting the gun from different ready positions and practicing reloads. Then Randy had folks switch over to the left shoulder (everyone in the class normally shot right-handed) and mount and reload the gun over there. Suarez International is big on ambidexterous shooting and Randy always emphasizes it right from the start in his rifle classes. As usual, this is where things start getting interesting for people who don’t have mags accessible to both hands.
We moved on to the kneeling position and worked reloads from both sides. It’s not enough to be able to shoot from various positions, you need to be able to run the gun from these positions as well. Rounding out the position shooting, we did some work in prone. Randy also went over Spetsnaz prone and had the students try it out.
Next up Randy had the students work on addressing targets in any direction. Kneeling and particularly prone limit your mobility and in real life you are not guaranteed that threats will only come from “downrange”. You need to be able to adapt the position to shoot in any direction in case someone pops out from beside or behind you. From kneeling this is mostly a matter of switching shoulders and twisting your torso, or perhaps dropping one knee and raising the other as you pivot. From prone you may have to roll over on your back and shoot from supine.
To further emphasize ambidexterity, Randy had us do the slalom drill. The students line up with 2–3 yards between each person slaloms through the line, treating each student as a corner to be pied, switching shoulders as they go.
Randy talked about some non-traditional sighting measures: the “Caveman EOTech” and shooting over the top of your optic. In the caveman EOTech you use the front sight tower, rather than the sight itself, as an aiming tool. At close ranges you can look over the rear sight and superimpose the front sight tower on the target and make good hits without taking the time to line up the sights. The equivalent for folks with optics is to look over the top of your optical sight and use the sight itself as a reference point just below your line of sight. He had the students try these out using a handy post.
These really come into play once you start moving. Randy went through the standard S.I. get off the X lecture, talking about why we need to move, and why we like to move to the forward oblique angles.
Finally, Randy had the students practice one-handed reloads. Rifles are fundamentally two-handed tools, but we need to be able to run them one handed in the event we get shot in the arm.
With this, we broke for lunch at a local Subway.
Saturday Afternoon
After lunch we moved out to the range and started by making sure everyone was sighted in. Those who had been in the Thursday-Friday class were pretty well dialed in, but the new students needed some work. I thought my EOTech was pretty well dialed in, but I popped off a few rounds at one of the targets’ heads to make sure.
After getting everyone’s sights dialed in we promptly moved up to a range where the sights were irrelevant. We did some snap shooting using the Caveman EOTech/aiming over the optic methods. Getting used to aiming over the optic took some work for some folks, but after a little while everyone was getting good hits.
We moved back to 25 yards and did some work from both standing and kneeling, then moved back to 50 and shot standing, kneeling and prone. Once everyone was comfortable in the three positions Randy had us moving between them, shooting a pair from standing followed by a pair from kneeling, or starting kneeling and going to prone. Eventually we worked up to shooting two from standing, two from kneeling, two from prone, doing a proactive reload, then shooting two from prone, two from kneeling and two from standing.
During these drills my EOTech started flaking out. It turned itself off several times and I had to turn it back on between drills. During the standing, kneeling, prone, reload, prone, kneeling, standing drill it started off fine but the dot disappeared during the reload. These problems did serve to reinforce my decision to used fixed back-up iron sights rather than flip up. I have them set up for a lower 1/3 co-witness so all I have to do when the dot isn’t there is drop my head about half an inch. The transition is very quick, much quicker than flipping up sights or using a QD mount. By this point, however, I had enough of the flaky optic and between drills I made use of the QD mount and took it off the rifle entirely.
Back up at 7 yards, we did some failure to stop drills, shooting the body than switching to the head. At this range the body is an easy shot with Caveman EOTech or shooting over the optic, but you need more precision for the headshot, so this drill also tested the ability to switch between sighting methods. During these drills I realized just how long it had been since I’d done much shooting with iron sights that have a rear aperture. I’m much more used to AK or pistol style sights with a rear notch. It took a bit of time to reaccustom myself to the aperture sights.
We worked on ambidextrous shooting, firing from the right shoulder, doing a partial transition (moving the buttstock to the other shoulder but keeping the hands in position) and firing. Then doing full transition (switching hands) and shooting, doing a partial transition back to the other shoulder and firing, then completing the full transition and firing the last shot. We worked this back and forth several times.
Next, we started moving and shooting. First we did the pacing drill, where you walk left and right in front of the target, switching shoulders as appropriate. After everyone had this down, we started getting off the X to the right (3-o’clock).
During some of these drills several times i managed to knock the safety of my rifle on as I swapped my hands during the shoulder transfer. I’m not used to having a safety over there on my AK. I guess I need to do some weapon-specific shoulder transfer practice.
During these drills, the student with the AR–10 suffered a badly stuck case. Initially the extractor slipped off the rim, so he tried to knock if out with another student’s range rod. He didn’t get it out, but in the process he got the extractor back over the case rim, so we were able to bang the stock on the ground and mortar it out.
We went back to getting off the X, to the left this time. Then Randy demonstrated the Pekiti takeoff footwork for getting off the X faster. We practiced this dry quite a bit, then went live with it to both the right and left. Randy also added in an after action drill, checking to see if the guy you just shot is really down, if he has friends (including looking behind you) if you need to reload, and if you have any injuries.
As we did this, the AR–10 suffered another problem: the hammer began sticking back and refused to drop after the first shot. After opening the gun up we figured out that it was hanging up on the disconnector hook, rather than dropping onto the sear when the trigger was reset. At this point the Armalite had suffered extraction problems during the Thursday-Friday class (bad enough that the student borrowed one of Randy’s rifles), the stuck case, and now this trigger group problem. The student just decided to give up on the AR–10 for this class and borrowed Randy’s rifle again.
We wrapped everything up and headed out. Most of the class headed down to a nice steakhouse in Fort Payne for dinner. There was good food, great fellowship, and lots of interesting discussion.
After dinner, I did something rather uncharacteristic of me: I cleaned a gun during a class. With Glocks and AKs I’ve never bothered, but I hadn’t really given this rifle a thorough cleaning since before the Long Gun Point Shooting Progressions last May. Since then it had probably had 800 rounds of Wolf through it. I’d wiped the internals off a bit with a rag on a few occasions (including during the Armorer class on Friday) but never gotten out the solvent and really scrubbed the thing. Clearly the AR does not have to be white-glove clean to run. However, I did have one non-operator induced malfunction during the day when the bolt hung up on the top round of the magazine, so I figured scrubbing it might slicking everything up a bit.
Sunday
We started out the day with some malfunction clearance. Everyone laid their rifles out on the ground pointing downrange and Randy and I set up various malfunctions: empty chamber, unseated magazine, failure to eject (aka: a stovepipe), failure to extract (aka: a double feed) and a spent case stuck between the charging handle and the bolt. The students had to pick up each rifle and fire it twice, clearing the malfunction in the process. The first three can be cleared fairly easily with a tap-rack. The failure to eject requires getting the magazine out, then reloading. The case stuck in the charging handle requires locking the bolt back and briskly closing the charging handle. It’s also a demonstration of why we don’t necessarily want to tap-rack every malfunction on an AR like we do with a pistol, since racking a weapon in this condition will just wedge the case in further. If you get a click but no bang, tap rack. If you just get a mushy trigger, rip the mag out and see what you’ve got.
Next up was transitions to pistol. If you’re carrying a pistol and are within effective pistol range (varies depending on how good a shooter you are) going to pistol is going to be faster than reloading and empty gun or fixing many malfunctions. Most of the guys in the class were running two point slings, but one was running a single point. For the two-point sling guys I demoed the standard S.I. over the head transition and the students practiced it dry until they had it down.
We loaded up a mags with two rounds and practiced shooting the rifle dry then transitioning. It’s very important to actually shoot the rifle dry for two reasons: first, it gives you the stimulus (the rifle not working) that we want you to react to with a transition. Second, it means we don’t have to apply the safety before transitioning. The safety on an AR will not engage when the hammer is forward. Where is the hammer going to be if your gun malfunctions? In a majority of cases its going to be forward. I don’t want anyone out there in a real gunfight standing there trying to engage a safety that’s not going to go on when they should be transitioning to pistol. Finally, in the even the student fails to engage the safety on a hot weapon before transitioning, there’s a chance some bit of gear is going to get inside the trigger guard and the gun will go off. One of our competitors recently had a student shoot themselves in just this way.
We moved on to using the gun as an impact weapon. This is one area where the AR class differs a bit form our AK classes. With an AK, using the buttstock is a major part of our impact weapon drills. In an AR, the stock contains a critical part of the gun’s operating system, so we don’t want to risk damaging it. With the AR we do a lot more work with the muzzle end of the gun. Randy showed us some simple strikes, including how to throw the buttstock and protect it by throwing and elbow along with the stock. After practicing these a bit, he had us work on some weapon retention techniques if someone grabs your gun by the muzzle. Lastly, we practiced blocking incoming contact weapon strikes and counterattacking with the muzzle.
We’d gotten off the X to the right and left (3 and 9 o’clock) yesterday. Today we added in the forward and rearward obliques. We worked our way around the clock face (the 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 o’clock directions) practicing moving off the X and shooting. The rearward angles add a bit of complication, but the basic principles were the same as what we did yesterday.
I had bought some new batteries and put them in my EOTech this morning. That got the scope working initially, but the reticule quickly dimmed and eventually I was taking more time trying to pick up the dim dot than I would have shooting with irons. I decided I was done with thins thing. I popped the sight off and went back to irons for the rest of the class.
Until now, we’d done all our engagements facing directly towards the adversary. In the real world, bad guys may pop up to the left, right, or rear as well. We practiced from a standing position with the targets off our left shoulder, behind us, and off our right shoulder. In standing we got off the X and shot on the move. We did the same thing from kneeling. Here, you lack the mobility you’ve got in standing so it’s just a matter of getting the gun on target as quickly as possible and shooting the threat.
We moved back to about 25 yards to shoot from prone (so we didn’t send rounds over the berm. For targets to the left and right we didn’t truly have the shooters turn 90 degrees, since that would be a safety hazard (unlike standing and kneeling you can’t really face someone and avert your muzzle in prone). Instead we had them pointing slightly forward of the line. For a target behind you when prone we did this one at a time, with all the spectators on the one side of the shooter so they could swing their rifle round safely and shoot from supine.
After spending most of the morning blasting away at close range targets, Randy wanted to exercise their accuracy shooting a bit, so we put up a set of three steel targets and moved out to 50 yards. Before the drill he was dinking around a bit with his pistol (an iron sighted Gen 4 G17) and asked if I had my RMRed Glock. I drew it and banged all three steel targets with one shot each (something I don’t think any of the students did with their rifles on the first try). RMRed pistols are just spectacular. After that bit of fun, Randy had the students shoot from standing, kneeling, and prone, and moving between them, much as we did yesterday.
At this point we ventured into the team portion of the program. We have entire classes dedicated to team tactics, but we like to throw a bit of this stuff into the intermediate and advanced rifle classes as well. This is not necessarily because we expect our students to form fire teams and fight as light infantry. It’s more a method of adding a additional elements they have to think about. Up to this point, the students have only had to think about running their rifles and moving. In the team drills you have to be aware of where you are in relation to your teammates, what they’re doing, what you should be doing, communicating, managing your ammo supply, etc. How well you’re able to run your rifle when you can dedicate your full attention to doing that isn’t really a very good test of how well you can run your rifle in a fight. Being able to run your rifle while you’ve got a bunch of other stuff to think about is.
We started off with a basic peel drill. The students lined up in a file facing one of the targets (a file runs up and down range, with each man behind the other, a line runs across the range, with each man beside the other). The first student fired four rounds at the target, brought his rifle up to high-noon ready, turned and walked to the back of the file. He taps the second man in the file on the shoulder as he goes by as a signal to start shooting. As each man moves to the back the entire file migrates up range. We shot this drill a couple of times, then moved on to a variation. Instead of going to the back of the file the students lined up across the range in prone and, once the last man was back at the line, everyone opened up on the targets. This sort of simulates breaking contact with a hostile force, then ambushing them.
For the next drill we had everyone line up shoulder to shoulder, facing downrange. Much like with the peel drill, the fellow on the left end of the line fired, then moved down to the right end of the line. The difference here is he was moving across the range, rather than down it. Once they had this down, we combined the two drills. They started out in a file, the first man shot and moved back to form the start of a line going across the range. As students shot they moved back from the file and took up a position on the right end of the line. Once the last man was in the line, the first one fired, then moved back to form a file behind the last guy. Keeping this up they moved back and to the right alternating between a file and a line.
Up until this point these had clearly been team drills, rather than actual team tactics. While they were modeled on tactics one might actually use (like the Australian peel) the spacing was way too close and things were very structured and staged. Now we moved on to somewhat more tactically realistic exercises.
First up was the Columbian special forces drill. The students started out at about 60 yards and fired a shot at a steel gong from prone. Once they hit it, they moved up to a piece of cover a bit further down range (the range outhouse) performed a proactive reload, and fired six shots at a paper target. They continued moving downrange to various pieces of cover, firing six shots from each. The magazine they loaded back at the outhouse had around 26 rounds in it, so they ran out while firing the six shots from the closest piece of cover and had to transition to pistol. When they fired their six shots from the closes piece of cover, they fire the pistol at the steel gong to end the drill. Then we counted the number of holes in the paper target. Everyone had at least 28 holes in the paper.
Back to the team drills, Randy had the students practice bounding and bumping. Both of these are ways that two elements (whether they be individuals or teams) can move forward with one always covering the other. In bounding, the shooters leapfrog past each other. So if there are two shooters and four pieces of cover (A, B, C, & D), the first shooter moves to A, then the second shooter moves to B while the first shooter covers him from A. The first shooter moves to A to C while the second covers him from B. The second shooter moves from B to D while the first shooter covers him from C, and so on. In bumping, the first shooter goes when the second shooter gets to his piece of cover. So, the first shooter would move to A and cover the second shooter while he moves up to A. When the second shooter gets there he provides cover fire from A while the first shooter moves to B. The first shooter provides cover fire from B while the second shooter moves up. When the second shooter gets to B he provides cover fire from there while the first shooter moves up to C, and so on.
Both of these require proper communication to make sure people are moving at the right times and there’s always at least one gun up and firing, even when someone needs to reload. To get everyone accustomed to this, we ran bumping and bounding drills just moving down the firing line about 7 yards from the target. One student would engage the first target while the second bounded past him to the second target. The other student would bound past him to the third target, and so on.
Once the students had been introduced to bumping and bounding, we went back and shot the Columbian SF drill in pairs. First the students bumped downrange, alternating pieces of cover (the cover was set up so there was no danger of anyone getting in their partner’s line of fire). Then they did the same thing bounding.
Finally, we moved back up to the targets and had the students work some one-handed reloads. This is awkward and slow and nobody is ever going to be quick and elegant with it. However, it’s important to have done it at least once, if only so you know it’s possible and won’t just give up if your arm is injured and your rifle stops working. For a bit of added torture, Randy also had them also do the one-handed reloads lying on their backs, as if whatever injured your arm also dropped you to the ground.
This finished up the class. Randy handed out the certificates and we went our separate ways.
Conclusion
As usual, Randy did a great job with this class. The advanced rifle classes really push the curriculum about as far as it can go, particularly when you’ve got a good group of students.
My rifle ran reliably, with only one non-operator induced malfunction. The other 5.56mm ARs did the same. The only troublesome one was the Armalite AR–10 in .308. It probably helped that most of these rifles got taken apart and lubed during the armorer course on Friday night.
Unfortunately, my optic was not as reliable as my rifle. I originally bought this EOTech about four years ago, but I only ran it for about a year before I swapped it out for an Aimpoint Micro. It’s been sitting on the shelf ever since. When I got this AR earlier this year I pulled it out and put it on the rifle. It’s given me nothing but trouble ever since. I’ll be calling EOTech customer service and seeing what they can do for me (at this point the optic is out of warranty). I guess this was a good chance to polish up my iron sighted shooting skills. As I mentioned earlier, the flaky optic did serve to confirm my preference for fixed, rather than flip-up, BUIS (at least on rifles with non-magnified optics where you can set it up for a lower 1/3 cowitness). The transition to irons when I realized I couldn’t see the dot was very quick.
Overall, this was a great course and Randy did a great job teaching it. While S.I. is best known for our AK stuff, we’ve also got a cadre of instructors who really know the AR well and a curriculum that teaches you to run the rifle and employ it to it’s fullest extent.
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