WARRIOR TALK NEWS

Equipping The Insurgent - Battle Belt Load Bearing Kit

I am often asked what is the best "gear", and what a student should get.  The answer of course, depends on many things.  In this instance we will discuss methods of carrying personal fighting gear in the field.  Specifically that which supports your primary weapon, and immediate survival such magazines, secondary weapons, first aid, survival gear, etc. Some call this "second line" gear.  "First line" gear would be what you carry in your pockets for example.

While first line gear can be a constant and is not dependant on environment, second line gear is very much situational.  Consider three circumastances that while similar, have stark contrasts.

1).  Operating in an urban area, mounted or on foot, in a low profile/covert manner. This is typified by the "sneaky bag" type bags and folding stocked SBRs.

2). Operating in a rural area - out of a vehicle with very limited "boots on the ground" time.  This is what you see in news footage of US and NATO troops, as well as the typical American SWAT unit. Here you will see some sort of chest rig or tactical vest unit with or without armor (usually with). 

3). Operating in a rural area - on foot with extended "boots on the ground" time. Images of the Rhodesian Light Infantry and US troops in Vietman come immediately to mind. Gear here is centered around an "Alice" type, or Battle Belt type of carry.

There are variations on this theme of course but we will keep the discussion to these three lest we lose track of the point of the discussion.

Equipment specially sourced for a specific one of these situations can be pressed into service in other environments, but not as well as more specialized kit. For example, a "sneaky" type bag and an SBR-SMG shine in the covert urban world, but would be unsatisfactory in an environment requiring extensive hiking or running and the need for a rifle. Similarly a chest rig may be great for riding around in a Hummer, but not feel as good when one must walk ten miles with their gear.  Compromises can be made of course, but they are just that...compromises.  And all compromises lead to lessened performance.  

We have written extensively about the covert bags.  I currently use such a bag in its "Terrorist Interdiction Bag" form. But this does not work well for field use awy from the urban world.  Again, the covert bag is a compromise for covertness, and not efficiency or load carrying.  At warriortalk we have also discussed the very popular chest rig.  If most of the time is to be spent in a vehicle, the chest rig is great.  But it will be found lacking on a several miles long march through rocks and trees.

We will discuss the "Battle Belt", or "War Belt".  This has its lineage in the old G.I. LBE circa 1956. It revolves around a belt that carries most of the important gear, aided by suspenders to share the load.  Any additional kit is carried in a rucksack. The main advantage of this over other forms of carry is that, sitting lower on the hips, it tends to be more balanced and the end-user can configure it to his needs easier than a chest rig.

One complaint of the Battle Belt is that it is not as comfortable in vehicle mounted operations.  The counter is that a chest rig is not as comfortable in dismounted operations.  In the end, each man must choose what area must take precedence over the other.

This is the rig I have been using for the past two years.  I have run it in every rifle or tactics class as well as in my desert training runs.  It is simple, light, and when coupled with a suitably sized ruck sack, quite balanced and functional.

It is based on the High Speed Gear Suregrip Belt coupled with a set of HSGI Suspenders, and carries three "Double Tacos" on the left side with both rifle and pistol magazines, and one "Taco" on the right side for an additional support side reload.

The belt also carries a knife.  In this case the Swiss SIG Bayonet, although any knife can be used. I also use the TSD Combat Systems/Blade-Tech Holster.  On the right and left kidney area I have a Blow Out Kit in a HSGI pouch, and a Field Survival Kit in a similar HSGI pouch.  At the six o'clock, I have an old style HSGI Dump Pouch.  They have redesigned it as the HSGI Mag Net and made it better.

If you want a short cut to a really good War Belt based LBE, this is what I would suggest.

 

 

 

 

 

Hands on with the FS2000

by Chris Upchurch, Suarez International Director of Marketing

I have to admit, it took a while for me to really warm up to the FS2000. When one came in for Gabe back in August, my first thought was ‘wow, what a space-gun looking thing’. I handled it a bit and it seemed very odd and unfamiliar. It just has such a different layout and different controls that it was way outside my previous experience. As much as we make of the difference between, say, an AK and and AR, they both use basically the same layout. By comparison a bullpup, particularly one like the FS2000, is pretty out there.

A few weeks after my initial encounter with the FS2000 we were out shooting some video on the SIG 556 rifles. Gabe also brought along his FS2000 and I had a chance to shoot it. It still seemed a bit strange, but I have to say it shot nicely and handled well. Gabe was pretty enthusiastic about the rifle. This really made me take another look at the concept.

Towards the end of September we got some FS2000s in stock at OST. I’d been thinking more and more about it, and Tom made me a pretty good deal on it, so I decided to buy one. At this point I was thinking that this would be a bit of a specialty rifle for things like CQB and vehicle operations where its short overall length would really be an advantage.

That weekend was the Guerrilla Sniper II class. Gabe brought his FS2000 along, topped with an ACOG and fed some 75 grain match ammo. Using this configuration both he and I got hits out to 500 yards. This using a rifle that’s shorter than many SBRs. At this point I was starting to broaden my thinking about this little rifle and appreciate its capabilities.

The following Monday, I picked up my own FS2000. Shooting it would have to wait a bit until I picked up some .223 ammunition, but I immediately began doing some dry work with it.

While the obvious feature of a bullpup is it’s short overall length, the thing that really grabs you when you pick up an FS2000 is how well balanced it is. It balances right at the handgrip, making it exceedingly easy to shift it from shoulder to shoulder. You can even shoulder the FS2000 one handed, which really opens up some interesting possibilities when getting off the X.

The FS2000 is very compact. Despite having a 17.4“ barrel, it’s roughly the same length as a SBR with a 10” barrel. This makes it exceedingly well suited to CQB, vehicular operations, and other situations involving confined spaces. I’ve practiced clearing my house several times with the FS2000, something it is exceedingly well suited for. It has the capabilities of an SBR, without all the NFA paperwork. In tight places that are a problem for a full length rifle it eliminates the difficulty. I’ve also played with this a bit from the inside of my car. It’s manageable even in a mid-size sedan. 

Despite it’s rather different control setup, conceptually the FS2000 runs much like the AK. To load, mag in, run the bolt (make sure you give the mag a tug to ensure it’s seated). There is no last-round bolt hold-open, so you’ll get a click instead of a bang when the mag runs dry. Mag out (just hit the mag release with the top of your index finger as you grab the mag) new mag in, run the bolt.

One of the most important things that training with (and teaching for) Suarez International has taught me is the vital importance of complete ambidexterity. It’s gotten to a point where not being able to run a weapon on either side is really a deal breaker for me. Most bullpup systems don’t work particularly well from the support side shoulder. There are ways to adapt to this, but they’re not really what you’d call optimal. The FS2000 is an exception to the general rule. With it’s forward ejection system, it works equally well from either side.

The charging handle is on the left side, so it’s very easy to run when you’re shooting from the right shoulder. Running it on the left shoulder is no problem, it’s like a mirror image of how we run the AK charging handle. The mag release is located just forward of the magwell and is completely ambidextrous. The magwell location takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, mag changes are very natural. The bottom inch or so of the magwell is beveled into a funnel, making it very easy to guide a mag in.

Perhaps the most unusual of the controls is the safety. It’s a plate at the base of the trigger that pivots right and left. The design is rather clever, allowing you to push or pull from either side. To take the rifle off safe, you push with your right finger or pull with your left. To put the safety back on, pull with the right or push with the left. This definitely does take some getting used to.

One change I made to the rifle was to substitute a tri-rail handguard for the plastic handguard that comes with the gun. One of the big reasons I did this was to allow for a light mount. I intend to use this as a house gun (among other things) and in this role a rifle really needs a light. The railed handguard also allows for a vertical foregrip. On most conventional rifles I’m not a big fan of the VFG, because of the way it interferes with the floating support hand. On the FS2000, however, there’s really only one place your hand can go, given the short fore-end. Since the FS2000 doesn’t have a magwell in front of the handgrip, the VFG effectively replaces it in some of our weapon manipulations.

With a big pile of ammo in-hand I headed out to the range to put this rifle through its paces. I didn’t have an optic on the rifle yet, so I was working with the iron sights. It comes with a picatinny rail mounted front sight and a small flip-up rear. I shot at 100 yards and found I was a couple of inches high, so I figured it was zeroed at a closer distance. When I stepped up to 50, everything was dead on, no adjustments necessary.

The flip-up rear sight is definitely intended only as a back up. With it’s full picatinny rail this is a rifle that’s clearly intended to run an optic. While it’s performance at the GS class clearly shows this gun is capable of reaching out quite a ways, it’s mainly going to be a CQB gun for me, so I’d decided to mount a red dot on it. I had an Aimpoint Micro lying round, which I teamed up with an American Defense QD mount. This arrangement provides a cowitness with the back-up irons just below the center of the optic. I prefer this kind of optic mounted forward, so I put it just behind the front sight (Gabe, on the other hand, prefers it mounted to the rear, and on pictures of his rifle you’ll see it mounted just in front of the rear sight).

Moving up to about 5 yards, went to work on some point shooting. The front sight assembly works well for Caveman EOTech, and the picatinny rail provides a nice reference point for shooting while looking over the top of the gun. Where it really gets interesting is when you rotate the gun over about 30 degrees. The edge of the receiver is a nice straight line running parallel to the bore. It makes an excellent aiming rail, similar to aiming down the edge of the slide with a handgun. This is particularly nice since the gun tends to roll over like this when shooting one handed. It also provides a great point shooting reference when the top rail is occupied by an optic. In a way, it’s kind of like the offset optic mounts some gun gamers use on their rifles, except these are ambidextrous. The FS2000 is exceptionally well suited to point shooting.

Combine this point shooting ability, excellent balance, and ambidexterity and I think the FS2000 may be the ultimate rifle for the SI close-range rifle curriculum. It handles GOTX angles that are challenging for other rifles with ease. When getting off the X on the rearward lines (5 o’clock and 7 o’clock), it’s easy to roll the rifle over a bit and shoot at some pretty extreme angles. Taking the forward angle on the support side, the gun is so well balanced that you can fire the first few shots one handed with the stock on your primary side shoulder. As the angle gets more extreme, the excellent balance makes this one of the easiest guns to swap shoulders with. I can’t wait to take this gun to Roger Phillips Long Gun Point Shooting Progressions class. I think it may be the ultimate LGPSP gun.

Given its short overall length, the FS2000 really shines in confined spaces, like buildings and vehicles. That said, unlike an SBR this is not just a specialized CQB tool. As Gabe and I proved at the GS class, the FS2000 can do anything a full size 5.56mm rifle can do, including reaching out to extended ranges. This is an extremely versatile rifle, capable of filling a lot of different roles.

 

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Rifle Optics

By Lew Johnson, Suarez International Staff Instructor

We talked about what a Rifle is and it’s value.  Anything we can mount from our shoulder is going to be a superior battle platform to get fast, accurate shots on the threat.  Most of us want to optimize our rifle(s) to get the best performance possible, do we not?

Humankind always strives to do things faster, better, with efficiency.  Let’s make indexing and follow through on the threat faster.  Place an aiming device on our rifle.  SWEET! Faster Threat acquisition, faster follow through, faster accurate rounds into the Threat and a quicker solution to the threat problem.

I will not name nor advocate any specific manufacture or their product.  My intention is to hopefully enlighten you in regards to the use of optics to improve your marksmanship and rifle handling skill sets.

Just to date myself a bit, I remember when we had training on the Occluded Sight.  A black tube mounted on the carrying handle M16), had a “red dot”, the forward end of the tube was closed. The red dot appeared on a black background.  To use the system we had to keep both eyes open. “Binocular “ vision required.  The left eye would superimpose the target onto the visual plane of the right eye, placing the red on the target. (Right hand shooter, dominant right eye). Took a lot of mounting and dry fire to acquire the correct cheek weld and head angle.  But it was effective.

Then came the advent of “Red Dots”, Holographic Sights (Heads up Weapon Systems, HWS), Reflex Sights, etc.  These systems, and the particular unit/model does depend on your pocket depth, do improve your ability to put those rounds where they need to go. 

We do need a little understanding of some of the products, basically the flat neutral plane, zero magnification to some units that have 0 – 4+ magnification ability. 

With red dot, reflex sight or a holographic sight you do not need to have your eye aligned with the sight tube, or sight axis, and eye relief is no longer an issue. You can be looking through the sight from a position that would be useless for iron sights (reticle in focus with the target, no need for perfect eye-to-weapon alignment, and retention of full field of view, both eyes open) these type of sights are faster on target and are often said to allow for improved "situational awareness”.  The shooter no longer needs to focus with one eye on a front sight while the target appears out of focus. Also the shooter does not need to find the correct eye relief while sighting down the sight tube at a magnified focal plane/target in a close quarters battle situation.

Iron sights, those items that come with our bare bones bullet launcher, when running a system especially using batteries, is a must.  These need to be set up to co-witness through the unit or on the primary side for a “roll over” indexing/sighting technique. As with the plans of mice and men, things sometimes go awry.  Gotta have Plan B.

But let us not discount a system that provides us a magnification capability and a wide range of reticle style, when the situation presents itself.  As mentioned there is the eye relief distance that needs to be considered and mastered for quick follow through.  But such a sighting system allows us the ability to get a better precision shot from 300 meters/yards, maybe even greater, to the CQB ranges by dialing the power ring down. 

Even though I know some shooters who prefer iron sights, when it is dark so is your sighting ability is literally non-existent.  Essentially, some type of optic should be considered a required piece of equipment. The type of optic needs to be the one you can afford and the one you train with to provide the best solution to solve your problem before it solves you.

We CAN NOT bring back the dead, we CAN protect the living. 

 

Lew Johnson is a former Special Forces soldier with over 20 years of service in the U.S. Army. He served as a military small arms and infantry tactics instructor, Special Forces Engineer Sergeant, Weapons Sergeant, Operations Sergeant, and Intelligence Sergeant. He has made numerous overseas deployments, including as part of a Special Forces Anti-Terrorist/Counter-Terrorist unit. As a Sheriff's Deputy he was a Patrol Rifle Instructor, building clearing tactics instructor, and active shooter interdiction instructor. Lew served on the SWAT team, as a SWAT sniper, and sniper team leader. He joined Suarez International as a specialist instructor in 2012 and will be teaching various courses based on his background and experiences in special operations.

 

Team Tactics in Kingman

This weekend I attended Gabe’s three-day Team Tactics course in Kingman, Arizona. This is actually my second exposure to this curriculum; I took it from Eric Pfleger up in Anaconda, Montana last July (the Arizona desert was quite a contrast from the high country of Montana).

For the most part, I carried my new SIG 556R, though I also brought my FS2000. I fed both out of a HSGI battle belt equipped with TACOs (one of the nice things about the TACO mag pouches is that their universality makes it easy to switch between rifles that take different magazines). For a secondary, I had my TSD Glock in the Blade Tech WRS holster. I also carried a Camelbak water bladder to help keep myself hydrated (this is Arizona, even in November it’s still dry as hell).

Most of the students in the class brought ARs of one sort or another, though there was a strong minority of AKs. At the start of class there were a pair of M14s in use, but one shooter shortly switched to a much lighter AR. There were two students with SIG 556s (a SWAT and a Patrol) and one SCAR 16.

Friday

We began the class on Friday morning with the usual admin stuff: waivers, introductions, safety and medical briefings, etc.

Gabe explained that this class would be taught from the context of the guerrilla or insurgent fighter. He led the class on a discussion of the guerrilla fighter, using exmaples from history, including Francis Marion, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Cuban Revolution, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and others. The lack of reinforcements and logistical support have a big impact on tactics and training, and understanding this context is important for what we will be doing over the next three days.

We moved on to some dry work. This class involves a lot of moving around people with loaded guns. We choreograph things so that students should never end up in each other’s line of fire, we need some additional layers of redundancy. These are built around some specific applications of the four rules of gun safety.

The general rule is that you don’t put your finger on the trigger until your gun is aligned with the target and you have decided to shoot. In this class, you need to maintain a situational awareness of your teammates and other things that are going on around you, so students are often pointed in and shooting, they have to take a quick glance to the side or rear to keep an eye on their teammates. When your cheek comes off the stock, your finger needs to come off the trigger (even if the gun is on target and you’ve decided to shoot). If you aren’t looking at the target you shouldn’t be shooting it.

We had everyone unload their rifles and divest themselves of all loaded magazines, then worked this dry. The students point in with their finger on the trigger, then look right, left, or behind them on command. We did quite a few reps of this to really ingrain that finger coming off the trigger when your cheek leaves the stock.

The other general rule is that you don’t let your muzzle cover anything you aren’t willing to destroy. This implicitly assumes that the world downrange is static, and the only variable is where your muzzle is pointing. In a dynamic class like this, your muzzle may be minding it’s own business pointing downrange when something you don’t want to destroy tries to move in front of it. In that case it’s your job to avert that muzzle and prevent it from sweeping your teammates.

To practice this dry we had everyone line up shoulder to shoulder and point in. Gabe walked down the line in front of them and they averted their muzzles as he went past. When he was satisfied with this, he started sending students from one end of the line, walking down to the other end, forcing the students in line to avert their muzzle for each one walking past. We continued this drill in kneeling, then in prone. No matter what position you’re in, you have to get the muzzle pointed in a safe direction if a buddy walks in front of you. After quite a while, Gabe was finally satisfied with the state of everybody’s muzzle aversion.

When you’re operating by yourself, tactical communication isn’t really an issue (if you have communication problems when you’re the only one there, consult a psychologist). Introduce another person, and all of a sudden things get a lot more complicated. Two people acting together without good communication or coordination can be less effective than a single person acting alone, because they get in each other’s way. We need some communications.

The first level of communication happens long before the fight: the SOP. Having a set of standard operating procedures, preplanned and practiced responses for different situations, is far more effective than trying to work everything out in the moment. A really well trained and practiced team can work through even very complex problems without any verbal communications or even hand signals, just based on SOPs and keying off what their teammates are doing. Conversely a scratch team that’s never worked together before, even if the individual operators are very skilled, is going to require a lot more on the spot communication to keep everyone coordinated.

On a verbal level, we have a very simple set of commands that covers the most common eventualities in a team tactics setting. First, what if one team member runs out of ammo or encounters a malfunction? It’s very important to let your teammate know this, so they don’t do anything expecting you will be supplying covering fire. If we yell “I’m out of ammo” or “reloading” or anything similar, we may clue in our enemy that now would be a good time to make their move, since one of our guns is down. Instead, we use “Checking!” to indicate that we’ve got a problem and can’t supply covering fire at the moment. In response, our teammate yells “Covering!” indicating that they’re providing covering fire while we fix our problem.

Everybody paired up and we did some dry reloading drills, yelling “Checking!” and “Covering!” as appropriate.

One of the big advantages to having more than one guy in a gunfight is that one can provide covering fire to the other, particularly when moving. In order to do this effectively, the team members have to coordinate their fire and movement. The team member who wants to move yells, “Moving!” Importantly, he doesn’t just immediately set out; he waits for a response from his teammate. The teammate yells back “Covering!”, indicating that he’s ready to provide covering fire. Why “Moving!” and “Covering!” rather than “Moving!” and “Move!”, as you might have seen on some DVDs from a competing training organization? “Moving” and “Move” sound too similar, especially on a battlefield where part of the word may be obliterated by the sound of gunfire.

The moving team member gets up and begins to move. This should not be a long trip: generally 3–5 steps, or to the next good piece of cover in about that distance. The longer you’re up the more time the enemy has to get a bead on you and the more ammo your buddy has to expend covering you. When he gets there, the teammate yells, “Set!”, indicating that he’s in position. Generally, the sequence then repeats itself with the other teammate moving while the first provides covering fire.

Each pair of students did the bounding drill dry moving up the range, then moving back down. Since we had not just the range, but also a pretty wide swath of desert on either side, Gabe had the students head off into the weeds and do a bounding drill through some more realistic terrain.

After lunch, we worked the bounding drill live. The range was big enough (and we had enough instructors) to run two pairs of students at a time. Gabe would start the drill by popping off a few rounds from his FS2000 to signify enemy contact. The pair of students would split, to establish a bit of separation, and start putting fire on the enemy. One would call out “Moving!” When the second replied “Covering!” the first would move up about 5 yards. Then they reversed roles and the second student bounded forward. We did about 50 yards of this, then called it to a halt.

One of the big keys to this is to pace your cadence of fire. If you empty your magazine in the first ten seconds, there’s no way you ammo load is going to last even 50 yards, much less some of the longer distances we’d be doing later. The object here is to keep the enemy’s head down. One round every couple of seconds is going to do a pretty good job discouraging him from putting his head up.

After everyone had a chance to do the drill, we ran it again, this time moving up 100 yards instead of just 50. One of the questions that came up was when to reload. We’d like to avoid having to do an emergency reload because our gun went dry, especially because it could happen at a time when our buddy is relying on us to provide covering fire. You’re not going to be able to count rounds in the middle of a fight, but you should be able to figure out whether you’re in the top or bottom half of the magazine. If you’re in the bottom half, think about reloading at the next opportunity. When we’re moving forward, we’d rather not reload on the move, because we’re moving into unknown territory we may discover another enemy at close range that needs to be dealt with immediately. So it’s better to reload before advancing. When moving to the rear, we’re moving away from the enemy and less likely to suddenly encounter an threat, so reloading on the move is less of an issue. The increased movement speed it gives us is also more valuable, since we’re probably withdrawing for a reason.

After everyone had a chance to work the drill while moving up 100 yards, we did it again, this time moving up 100 yards and then moving back to the starting point, keeping fire on the target the whole way. As I mentioned, we had quite a few students with ARs, and during these drills we had a couple them malfunction. The students had some difficulty clearing these, which is a problem, since every second you spend fixing your rifle costs your buddy ammo. Dale’s an AR guy, so he did a lecture on how to deal with AR malfunctions.

We ran the 100 yard drill up and back again, and by this point everything was going pretty smoothly. There was a lot of improvement in communication from the first drills we ran this morning. We had a really good batch of students and the ability to run two pairs at once meant we were working well ahead of schedule.

Everyone had demonstrated a pretty good grasp on the basic concepts in the two-man bounding drill, so we moved up to doing this with teams bounding past each other. We put together three man teams and paired the teams up to do a bounding drill with a total of six guys.

With this many guys on the range at once, communication becomes paramount. You can’t just have everybody out there talking to everybody. We assigned a team leader for each team, so they had a team leader and two shooters. For this drill, the team leader’s only job was to coordinate within their team and between teams. Their rifle was to remain slung the whole time. Perhaps the most difficult part of their job, after doing the two-man drills, was to distinguish their communication between with he other team leader from their communication with the members of their teams.

We ran the six-man team bounding drill a couple of times. As the students did it more we got the kinks worked out and by the end of the day they were doing it like pros. This was a good place to wrap things up for the day.

Saturday

We started off the second day with some hand signals. Thus far we’d been relying primarily on verbal communication, backed up by seeing (and in the case of gunfire, hearing) that your team member was doing what he was supposed to. Hand signals can be very useful when you want to be sneaky and quiet. They can also come in quite handy as an adjunct to verbal communication once the fight starts and gunfire is drowning out anything anyone says.

For a permanent team that trains a lot, you can set up all sorts of complicated hand signals, but for a scratch team like we were working with in this class, simpler is better. Point at a guy and then point to a spot and it’s pretty clear the team leader wants him there. Thumbs up means you’re good. Point to your eyes and point to a spot and you want team members to direct their attention (and rifles) to that spot. We leavened these with a smattering of more specialized signals for halt, freeze, rally point, and enemy.

To go with the hand signals, we talked a bit about patrolling formations. You aren’t going to go bound a couple of miles without any enemy in sight, but you need some sort of structured formation that you can move. For confined liner spaces (streets, roads, etc.) a column works best. Rather than having everyone directly in line, it’s better to stagger then a yard or so to the right or left.

For wider areas, the wedge works well and allows you to bring a lot more firepower forward quickly. The diamond is a bit more compact and controllable, and works really well with four or five guys. Since we’d be operating in four or five man teams for most of the rest of class, this was by far the most common formation.

We also talked about sectors of responsibility when moving in a formation. The point man actually has the smallest sector of responsibility, just what is directly ahead of the team, but he the greatest number of responsibilities. He ‘drives’ the team (in response to orders from the team leader), designates rally points as he passes, calls a halts or freeze in response for what he sees, etc. Other team members are assigned sectors depending on where they are in the formation: right, left, or rear.

 

 

We grouped the students into 4–5 man teams and sent them out to patrol both on and off the range. They got some practice moving in the different formations an using the various hand signals.

When they got back, we talked a bit about camouflage. The students had a variety of camo patterns on so Gabe had some examples to work with. Rather than camoflage, several students were wearing shirts and pants in browns, tans, and greens. These aren’t quite as good as camo patterns at hiding you out in the weeds, but they can be surprisingly close. Where they really shine is that you can dump your rifle and LBE and walk into a hotel or nice restaurant and not get a second look. In the insurgent fighter context, this can be as useful as being able to go unseen out in the wilderness. Gabe coined the acronym HEAT camoflage (Hippy EArth Tone) to describe this kind of setup.

Gabe sent a few downrange: one in Woodland MARPAT, one in Multicam, and two in HEAT camo. Even out at 300 yards, when they were standing up or walking along the bare dirt of the range, they were pretty obvious. When they kneeled or went prone, even on the bare range, it was a lot harder. Coming back they moved off to the right or left of the range, into some vegetation (sparse brush from hip to shoulder height). There they were still visible when moving, and fairly evident when standing, but everyone practically disappeared when they dropped down.

The MARPAT woodland was a bit dark for the environment. Some parts of the background it blended pretty well, but on others it was fairly obvious. The Multicam was probably the best overall. The two guys in HEAT camo did almost as well as the multicam, save for one guy’s very light colored (slightly off white) hat. Faces and hands could be quite visible, as where shadows on the front of their body when they leaned over while kneeling.

After lunch, we brought the patrolling formations together with some of the more tactical movement we’d been doing the previous day. If you’re in a diamond or wedge and you spot an enemy (for the moment we’ll assume that you spotted them before they spotted you), and you intended to shoot them and take their stuff, you need to get your more of your firepower up front where it can be deployed against the enemy. Gabe showed how to go from a diamond formation to a line, bringing everybody up to be ready to shoot. After you’re done sending lead downrange, you don’t just want to run away in one big confused gaggle, so he talked about how to peel guys off from the line one at a time to head for the rally point.

We had the teams students work these drills dry quite a bit. Once they had it down, we got ready to go live. Before we went live Gabe talked a bit about synchronizing team members’ fire. We want everyone’s initial rounds to arrive as close to simultaneously as possible. In the Guerrilla Sniper class we have some methods involving a countdown that (with a good team) can get multiple rifles so closely synchronized it sounds like a single shot. That’s probably overkill for this sort of situation, but we’d still like everyone’s shots to arrive in, say, half a second. The easiest way to do this is to make sure everybody’s on target and on trigger, then have the team leader fire the first shot, with everyone else firing as soon as he does. Done well, this results in the team leader’s initial shot, followed about a quarter second later by everyone else’s.

With these principles explained, we ran the movement to a hasty ambush drill live fire a couple of times for each team. Most of the teams were really hitting on all cylinders at this point and by the second time through they were all executing it really well.

Up until this point we were assuming that we saw the enemy first, but that’s not always going to be the case. Sometimes he’s going to spot you first, or you’ll both spot each other at the same time. We ran the drill again, reacting to an unexpected contact without time to set up even a hasty ambush. In this scenario, rather than synchronized fire, guys start shooting as soon as they’re up on the line parallel with the other team members. So initially you have the point man shooting and he’s joined by other team members as they move up parallel to him.

We also added a bit to the drill after the withdrawal. Rather than just heading back to the rally point, they buttonhooked around and got ready to ambush their pursuers. We ran this live a couple of times.

Getting everyone on line works pretty well in an open area from something like the diamond or wedge formations. From a column, particularly in the confined space like an alley or road, it can be difficult to get your guys up on line to shoot. An alternative in this situation is the Australian Peel or the center peel. You encounter an unexpected and superior force while traveling in a staggered column. Everyone gets off the X a bit further in whatever direction they were staggered, so you now have two files of people with an open corridor down the center. The point man opens up and shoots (usually a mag dump), then when he’s empty, he turns and runs down the center between the two files and takes position at the back of one of the files. The next guy in line (say, the front guy on the right file) opens up and empties his magazine at the enemy. He turns and runs down the center and the guy at the front of the left file starts shooting. When he’s done, he runs down the center of the file and the next guy on the right file opens up, etc. You can keep this going for several iterations (as long as you have ammo) withdrawing while using fire to discourage pursuit).

We ran the peel drill dry several times, then did it live at half speed. That wrapped things up for the day. We adjourned to our hotel rooms, then rendezvoused for a group dinner at a local Chili’s. As usual, the fellowship with like-minded individuals was the highlight of the class.

Sunday

Sunday morning we started off with the peel drill again. We ran it dry a couple of times to ensure that everyone remembered what we’d been doing yesterday, then ran it live at full speed.

After finishing up with the peel, Gabe talked for a bit about ambushes. The simplest is the linear ambush. You line your guys up alongside of the enemy’s intended route of travel and, when the adversary is in position, you let him have it. The L-shaped ambush is a bit more sophisticated. It includes putting part of your force astride the enemy’s line of travel as a blocking force (the short leg of the L) with the rest of your unit spread out parallel to the enemy’s line of travel (the long leg of the L). This requires a much higher degree of coordination, in order to ensure that the folks on the short and long legs of the L aren’t shooting at each other. To keep things simpler and safer in this class, we’d stick with liner ambushes.

The students ran through some movement to linear ambush drills live on the range. This was fairly similar to some of the stuff we were doing yesterday, but we wanted to make sure everyone had it down before moving on to the next, even more challenging, exercise.

Gabe picked out two targets: a white rock just to the left of the berm at the end of the range, and a lone Yucca tree off about a 45 degree angle from the range. These were widely separated enough that we could have two teams running at the same time. The mission was to move off the range into the desert, patrol a few hundred yards closer to the target, mount a hasty linear ambush and pour a bunch of fire onto the target, then withdraw and patrol back to the starting point.

Each team had a chance to run on one of the objectives before lunch. After lunch, they ran it again on the other objective.

For our final exercise, we split up one of the teams, bringing us up to three teams of six or seven guys each. Because of the larger team we ran these one at a time. The first twist on the exercise, compared to what they’d done before was that instead of mounting a hasty ambush, they would unexpectedly encounter an enemy (signified by a few shots from Gabe’s pistol) and have to react to the contact. Once they’d poured some fire into the target, they would bound back a few hundred yards, keeping the fire up the whole way. The second twist was that Gabe would designate one student as a casualty and the remaining members of the team would have to help him back to the starting point during the exercise.

 

 

We ran this once for each team, and frankly there were some pretty impressive performances during this drill. This was our last exercise and the class really ended on a high note.

Final Thoughts

This was a really great class. We had a very squared away set of students. Combined with the enormous range facility we were really able to blow through the curriculum and do a lot of reps of the more advanced stuff.

The folks with military and LE experience contributed a lot to the class. These were a very sharp group of guys and several of them would make good instructors in their own right.

Gabe did an excellent job adapting the stock curriculum to the great facility and the fairly advanced students that we had in the class. His teaching was top notch, as usual.

This is the second time I’ve been through this class and I am more and more impressed with the curriculum. The Team Tactics class does a great job of taking guys without any previous experience in light infantry small unit tactics and gets them up to a very high level very quickly. I would highly recommend it!

Hippy Earth Tones Camouflage (H.E.A.T. Camo)

Catchy name don't you think? No, TSD is not going to make or sell clothing. Tried that when we sold Woolrich and 5.11 and it is too much drama for what it is worth. The matter at hand arose this last weekend when we held the Small Unit Tactics class in Kingman, AZ.

We had twenty guys attending. Some wore the very popular and effective Multicam camouflage. A couple of guys wore some derivatives of MARPAT, ACU, and various other "Green" camo. And we had several that were wearing civilian outdoor clothing, but in what I would term "muted earth tones". These were various shades of drab green, gray, brown and tan. Nothing blue or red - nothing white or black. And the tans were more brown than sand...so they were not "light".

This is not Urban camo to blend into groups. The objective is to sport a drab colored image based on shades of grey, brown, green, tan. Nothing blue...nothing red...nor any derivatives such as bluish grey or pinkish salmon. The idea is that the clothes blend into the woods/weeds, yet can go into the city as well. The wood/weeds takes precedence over the city in terms of colors.

Patterns would also be contraindicated unless there are plaid plants or stripped trees in your AO.


In any case we had students do a walk back from 100 to 350 yards as the other students watched them for contrast, effectiveness in blending with the area, and how easy it was to see them. Not scientific I suppose, but good enough for what our purposes where.

Anything moving is easy to see as nothing moves like a man. As well, a human head is distinctive and different from anything in nature. But aside from that what the class saw was that the Hippy Earthtones difused light and allowed the wearers to be nearly as "camouflaged" as the multicam wearing guys. Don't believe me? Ask they guys in class that saw what I am writing about.

The advantage of the Hippy Earthtones over the Multicam is this. If it is probable that one may need to go from rural weeds to city streets and back, the multicam would be contraindicated as while it would camouflage well in one zone, it would call attention to the wearer in another. The Hippy Earthtones would work well in both.

Building Trigger Finger Discipline

"Keep your finger off the trigger until you've made a conscious decision to shoot." 

Most of you know this rule.  Simple, right?  It's certainly a simple concept, and it's easy to have good trigger finger discipline in an air-conditioned square range. (I should hope so - working the trigger is mostly all you're doing!) 

But maintaining trigger finger discipline on command…without fail…during stressful situations is harder than most people realize.  It doesn't matter how great a shooter you are – there are plenty of excellent marksmen whose trigger discipline goes in the toilet the moment they are exposed to more stressful situations. 

Imagine participating in a rifle class.  You will be learning new skills and moving in ways that may be unfamiliar to you.  You may be turning and running in different directions, performing actions where your muzzle will not always be pointed downrange.  Dropping to the deck into prone, shooting, jumping up, and running 20 yards before dropping down to do it again – these are athletic activities that tax your ability to maintain discipline and focus.  There is also the increased stress of performing unfamiliar drills during live fire.  And remember that you're surrounded by other people of varying skill levels doing exactly the same thing.  If it's so simple, why do many people have their fingers on the trigger when they don't intend to?

Every skill we practice incorporates trigger finger discipline: drawing from the holster and pointing toward the target; getting up from one firing position to move to another; magazine changes; training with partners in class.  Real situations where the stress of danger can degrade our fine motor skills: a family member inadvertently crosses your firing path, moving through crowds, holstering the pistol after the adrenal dump of a gun fight.  Each of these situations involves your finger going on or off the trigger at the appropriate time.  Perhaps that’s an obvious point, but do you know that you have this skill mastered?

 

Two Trigger Problems

1. Trigger on too soon – i.e. going to the trigger before you intend to (before you have made a conscious decision).  The most obvious example is when drawing the pistol from the holster – the finger goes to the trigger before the gun is oriented towards the target.  Generally this is a beginner problem.

Keep the finger at the natural limit of extension on your draw

2. Trigger off too late – i.e. keeping the finger on the trigger when you shouldn't.  Again the obvious example is holstering the pistol.  This is why we stress holstering reluctantly (slowly) as well as looking to ensure nothing is blocking the mouth of the holster (you can also see that your finger is off the trigger).  There are many other examples – more experienced shooters will run into this one when learning new skills and/or exposed to stress.  In this case, the rule is “Make a conscious decision to get your finger off the trigger when you don't intend to shoot." This should be easy, but we see enough examples in class…so again I ask: if it's so easy why doesn't everyone do it??? 

Look briefly to ensure your holster and trigger are clear

Regardless of our experience level, from time to time we should focus simply on this one basic skill.  Isolate it – break it apart from a compound skill such as drawing and practice it for repetitions just like you would a punch or a trigger pull or a draw stroke. 

Did I mention you need to practice this one even more with your off-hand?  If you can sign your name equally well with both left and right, you get a pass…but, for the majority of us, our off-hand trigger finger is “developmentally disabled."

Actually I take the signature thing back...many of you will have equally poor signatures with both hands.  Just practice it already!

 

Position

Your finger should be in one of two places.  On-trigger is obvious.  

Off-trigger is the one that can be problematic…it should be at the natural limit of extension and nowhere else.  Too many people allow it to float somewhere in space.  Yes, it may be off the trigger, but if you haven’t made a conscious decision to both remove your finger from the trigger and place it exactly where you intend it to go, it's not good enough.   

Resting on the trigger guard isn't good enough.
 

 

Dry Practice Safety

When you practice dry at home, put the ammo in another room.  Check your pistol, rifle, and every training mag you are using to verify they are unloaded.  Verbally stating “clear” for each gun and magazine is a good idea, it may seem silly but it's cheap insurance.  Even better, have someone else verify everything is clear as well.  Hopefully your significant other is cool with that. 

 

General Advice

Most of the drills are very simple.  But that's good because we’re trying to isolate a fundamental skill, and beginners have to start somewhere.  Work them until you have it cold.  Do double or triple the reps on your off-hand side until it starts to catch up.  Even one minute a day will benefit you (and everyone else that you train with).

More advanced folks will always benefit from fundamental practice...particularly on the off-hand side.  Advanced people can also make these more challenging both mentally and physically.  Incorporate trigger discipline drills with conscious breathing practice: trigger-off, slowly inhale for 15 seconds, trigger-on, exhale for 15 seconds.  Obviously with the breathing it makes this slow and deliberate practice, which is worthwhile even for advanced gunfighters.  Or practice trigger discipline for one minute each side while balancing on one leg.  Want a workout at the same time? Hold the other leg straight out.  Yeah it looks silly…really silly.  But you're in the privacy of your own home.

An advanced person may already have mastered trigger discipline, but it’s a simple thing you can add to many other skills you should be practicing.  Maximize your time!

 

Simple Training Drills

 

1. Hold the pistol or rifle towards a target, either pointed in or in close contact position.  Make a conscious decision to place the finger at the natural limit of extension.  Then make a conscious decision to place the finger on the trigger.  Do it slowly and deliberately.  Do it fast.  Do it slow and deliberately again.  Repeat 10, 20, or 100 times, whatever you need.  If you're right-handed, do triple the repetitions with your left. 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Hold the gun in close contact position.  As you extend toward the target, consciously decide to go on-trigger (should be on-trigger by the time you reach full extension).  As you pull the gun back to close contact position, consciously decide to go off-trigger (should be off-trigger by the time the pistol is in close contact position). 

 

3. Same drill as #2 but start in Sul position.  You get the idea.  Do it with both pistol and rifle, both left and right sides.

 

4. Start with the rifle in high ready, off-trigger.  Point in, on-trigger.  Back to high ready, off-trigger.  Rinse repeat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. In kneeling position with a rifle, point in to your target, on-trigger.  Imagine you need to look at your partner on your right…if your cheek leaves your stock, you go off-trigger.  Look left, point in, look right, point in…etc.  Do it from other shooting positions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If your cheek comes off the stock, your finger goes off the trigger

 

6. Practice your mag changes, with emphasis on what your trigger finger is doing.  Do it left and right.  This is easy to do or easy to screw up, depending on where your mag release is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the SIG 556, it's easy.  With an AK it's possible to screw it up, so be aware.

 

A Little Harder...

We're still isolating the trigger finger skill, but now we're incorporating some physical and mental stress.  The more repetitions the better, because as you get tired you get more distracted, and it becomes harder to maintain good trigger discipline. 

1. Start with the rifle in patrol ready, finger off-trigger.  Drop into kneeling position, finger on-trigger. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. With the rifle in high ready, off-trigger.  Drop to the squatting position, on-trigger.  Squatting is uncomfortable for you?  Hmmm.  Unless you've got an injury that precludes this position, shut up and practice it.  Out of 20 times, did you get the trigger right every time?  If so, great!  If not...hmm, more practice!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Start with the rifle in patrol ready, off-trigger.  Drop to prone position, go on-trigger once your sights are lined up.  Go off-trigger before you get up.  Do this one 20 times each side.  Do it slow, do it fast.  See if you ever catch yourself on-trigger as you get up or drop down.  Have a partner watch you, or better yet, video tape yourself. 

4. Do some kettlebell swings, pushups, sprints, whatever.  Then do any of the above drills both left and right.

 

5. Have a training partner give you different commands: kneel, prone, get cover behind that tree, change mags, whatever.   Any time you take a firing position, go on-trigger.  Any time you're moving or otherwise not "shooting" (remember, we're dry for this drill), go off-trigger.  Every time your partner catches you with your finger on the trigger when it shouldn't be, you owe him a beer.

 

The rifle is a physical weapon, so even good shooters will benefit from this practice.  These are particularly useful for those preparing for a rifle class. 

Our goal is to make this skill automatic.  To do that, we must be deliberate, both in our conscious decision to get the finger on the trigger, and also to get it off.

You should become so good at this skill that it is very obvious to everyone, fellow students and instructors alike, that your trigger finger is always where it is supposed to be.  Your fellow students will appreciate it, feel safer, and may be inspired to master it as well.  Your instructors will be able to tell at a glance that you've got this one right, and can focus more attention on other things that will make you a more dangerous fighter. 

To repeat the rule, "Keep your finger off the trigger until you've made a conscious decision to shoot."  It takes conscious, disciplined practice to make this skill stick.  If we intend to be skilled gunfighters, we must practice and seek training.  If we are to be safe students and training partners, trigger finger discipline must be mastered.  

On Killing (or not killing)

                                                             

 

A recent thread on a state gun forum I frequent brought this to my mind. The poster had put up a video clip of Gabe from his Force on Force DVD.  The particular part that got the most comments was Gabe saying that as part of your mindset you had to be willing to kill. Of course this brought out the usual responses of being ready to “stop the threat”, not kill. I did not immediately jump on those people. Why? Because that is how I used to think as well. I think using the following couple of experiences from my days as a LEO, you will be able to see why I made the transformation in my thinking from the pc “shoot to stop” to my current mindset of being willing (under justified circumstances) to kill.

We will start with the man with a knife. It was a normal day, which meant I was chasing someone. I did that a lot, drugs, B&E, warrants, robbery, mostly drugs though. I don’t remember exactly what I was chasing this youth for, but as I gained on him, I gave him a shove which sent him face forward into the ground. Well sort of like in the Johnny Cash song, he went down but came up with a knife.  Fortunately for me, as he went down, I had stopped and drawn my Sig 226. Of course I had also planted myself in a good Weaver just like I had learned in the academy and stood and ordered him to drop the knife. Yes, he was well within 21 feet.  For not the first or last time, God was on my side and after a few seconds that seemed like minutes he dropped the knife.  A recurring theme here is that yes, my tactics weren’t the best although I did act as trained, beyond that I did not shoot him, because I didn’t want to kill him. (More about that later.)  Backup arrived, we took him into custody, and the shift went on.  The scenario, and whether I did the right thing by not shooting, nagged at me though.

Another incident that really got me thinking started out with a call of, man with a gun, officer needs assistance. It was wintertime so I sped to the scene as fast as I could on the snow covered roads. (Which was a little faster then I should have been going.) The address was familiar to me as I had been there a number of times for domestic calls before. As I made the 90 degree right turn onto the side road, I slid into the ditch, but somehow hit hard enough to bounce out and end up pretty much in front of the scene.  Upon exiting the cruiser I located the officer I was there to assist standing about 5 feet in front of the all too familiar suspect. The officer was standing in the open, his pistol drawn and pointed at the suspect who was holding a double barrel shotgun in what we would call low ready, pointed in the general direction of the officer. In my infinite wisdom, I run up and stood next to the officer drawing my own sidearm and pointing in on the suspect. What ensued were a couple of minutes of me talking to the suspect and trying to convince him to lay the gun down. I remember starting to squeeze through the long double action pull of the Sig 9mm when he finally put down the shotgun. Again, bad tactics? Yes, but more than that.

So what do these two incidents have in common with each other besides the obvious tactical issues? If you said an unwillingness to kill on my part, you would be correct. The reason for this could be multifaceted, but mostly came down to two things. First, the constant drumbeat from the department and my trainers of liability, and by extension shoot to stop the threat. The other thing has to do with the certain moral and ethical viewpoints that we individually hold. Some might say, what is the problem, both situations worked out okay. Yes, they did, but not because of what I did right, but more because of luck or God’s blessings. Surely the department was happy with the outcome. Let’s face it; shootings are nothing but problems as far as they are concerned. In both cases it would have been easy to justify taking the shot, and these days I would. What changed? My mindset.

It became evident to me, that to not display the hesitation that could easily get you killed, you have to yourself be willing to kill. Is killing the threat your ultimate goal? No, it is not, but you have to come to grips with the realization that stopping the threat as quickly as possible may very well result in that threats death. You are responsible for defending your life, or more importantly the life of your loved ones. Don’t let someone else slow you down by casing you to constantly be worried about lawyers or legal outcomes. These things need to be thought of ahead of time but have no bearing on that moment of decision when you have to make YOUR life or death choice.

The other problem to tackle may be tougher. If you were brought up as I was, in the church and led to believe the good guys never shoot first, it can be hard to come to grips to what I am advocating here. For me it came down to remembering that the fifth commandment is “Thou shall not murder”, not “Though shall not kill”.  It also may take some reminding to yourself that you indeed are fighting the righteous fight and were put into this position by the other guy, not because you chose to be there. So get over your hesitation, train hard, and remember, you may have to kill to win the fight.

Michael Swisher

Suarez International Staff Instructor

 

FIELD RIFLE POSITIONS - STANDING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you can avoid taking a crucial shot from standing, do so.  It is the least accurate position.  Nonetheless, it should be the most trained for that very reason, and because when the shot must be taken right now, as in the snap shot, the standing will be the only one you can use fast enough. And by fast enough I am not referring to a CQB shooting but rather a shot at someone 100 yards away.

The goal here is not recoil control, or tight arc of target traverse, but rather seeking as much stability as possible for the shot under a self-imposed time interval. If you have time, you generally have other things you can do.  The support hand does not grasp the handguard...it cradles it, allowing for as much bone support as possible.

Here is a perfect Standing Offhand Position by Suarez Staff Instructor Eric Pfleger.  Eric is shown taking shots at 1000 yards on an IPSC steel silohuette.  He did this at a Guerrilla Sniper class not just once, but a number of times in succession.  Notice his position - relaxed, bone support emphasized. 

If there is time, using support for the standing is recommended.  This can range from a vertical support to a shooting partner, or even a shooting stick as the African hunters used.

 

Point Shooting Progressions - Gunfighter Week in Phoenix

Last weekend I attended Roger Phillips’ Point Shooting Progressions class in Phoenix. This PSP class was part of ‘Gunfighter Week’: a four day event that included Close Range Gunfighting taught by Doug Little on Thursday and Friday, followed by PSP on Saturday and Sunday. Almost everyone in the class had taken CRG the previous two days, so they were coming off a class that introduced the fundamental concepts we’d be building on in PSP and provided some material on gunhandling, after action drills, and other concepts that Roger doesn’t really cover in PSP.

While I didn’t plan to shoot a lot, I brought a pair of Glock 17s, one with an RMR, the other with iron sights. They rode in an Archangel II and an Archangel. The vast majority of the class had Glocks, several of them equipped with RMRs. There was also one XD, one M&P, a 1911, and an FNX 9mm. The Glocks were mostly 17s and 19s, though there were a few .40 caliber guns as well.

Saturday

After the usual administrative stuff (waivers, etc.) Roger talked a bit about the background of the PSP class. He went through his 7 concepts: the reactionary curve, the takeoff continuum, the drawstroke continuum, the retention concept, the movement continuum, the sight continuum, and the grip and trigger continuum. He also talked a bit about the Modern Technique and PSP’s relationship to it.

With the background material out of the way, we headed downrange to shoot. We started out with a bit of sighted shooting: the one hole drill. This drill is exactly what it says on the tin, you try to put five shots into a single hole from about five yards. If your marksmanship’s up to it, this means you’re a pretty good shot. This gets everybody warmed up and starts people off with something that they’re comfortable with. Some folks shot a little better than others. Roger had everyone do some dry fire trigger presses, then shot another one-hole drill. There were some noticeable improvements.

Now that we had our one bit of sighted fire for the class out of the way, Roger began moving down the sighting continuum from more precise methods to coarser sighting methods. First up was flash sight picture: focusing on the front sight and getting a real brief sight picture as you break the shot. This is about as far towards point shooting as classical Modern Technique gets (aside from retention). For this drill, Roger also introduced the drawstroke. Since everyone had just been through CRG, they all had a good grounding in the draw and he didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time on that.

Moving into point shooting proper, Roger covered ‘Type II focus’. This has the same basic sight picture as sighted fire, but your focus is on the target, rather than on the front sight. So instead of a sharp front sight and a fuzzy, out of focus target, you have a fuzzy front sight and a sharp target.

Next up, Roger talked about aiming down the top of the slide. This is probably one of the most versatile point shooting techniques. It provides better situational awareness than sighted shooting and is good out to 7–10 yards for most people.

For somewhat closer distances, you can just bring the gun up to your line of sight and surround it with the target, what we call metal on meat. This works out to about 5 yards.

Finally, the coarsest method for point shooting is to simply drive the gun to the focal point, without paying any attention to visual feedback from the gun. This is only good to a limited distance, generally 3 yards or so, but it’s very quick and works well even in darkness, when you may not be able to get any visual feedback because you can’t see the gun.

Everyone had a chance to shoot each of the techniques several times. Roger noticed one student as suffering from some rather severe muzzle flip. Part of this was because he as shooting a .40, but a bigger part was because his grip on the gun had some issues. Roger and I showed him how to really bring that second hand into play and encouraged him to grip the gun much harder (part of the grip continuum) and this improved matters considerably.

Roger doesn’t just teach a big heap of sighting methods, he wants students to understand how these different techniques relate to the situation, particularly time and distance, so they’ll instinctively select the best method depending on the situation. To help ingrain this he had everyone start out at 3 yards driving the gun to the focal point. After each string of fire he had everyone take a big step back and shoot again. Very quickly, driving the gun to the focal point gave way to metal on meat. A few yards later we transitioned to shooting over the top of the slide. Out at 10 or 11 yards everyone switched to type II focus, and then a flash sight picture. This drill really helps put everything into context.

During lunch, I brought out my SIG 556R and FS2000. Unfortunately, do to the range rules we couldn’t shoot these on the range that we were on, but people got a chance to handle them. Doug Little was very impressed by the trigger on the SIG.

After lunch, we worked on the retention concept. As the phrase indicates, Roger sees retention as a fluid concept rather than a fixed position. As the opponent closes in, you want to start pulling the gun further and further back to protect it from a gun grab. This is a gradual process as the distance closes rather than just a switch from one position to another.

To start training the concept, Roger had everyone shoot from the midpoint of the drawstroke. This is anywhere from when your elbows left your sides but before you reach full extension. This both brings the gun closer to you and drops it down below your line of sight, decreasing the amount of visual input you have on the gun.

The next step is to bring your elbows all the way in until they touch the sides of your ribcage. This is the part of the drawstroke where your hands come together on the gun. This provides a much more stable firing platform than having your elbows floating out in space, but you get even less visual input on the gun. Roger had everyone do some focal point transition drills, shooting with their elbows on their sides and shifting their point of aim vertically between two different points on the target.

With the skill of adjusting the focal point on the target established, Roger moved on to the drawstroke zipper. As you move through the second half of the drawstroke, from where you hands come together out to full extension, you move your focal point up the midline of the body shooting a vertical string of shots from belly button to neck, capping it off with a headshot.

Our last major subject for the day was some one-handed shooting. Roger started out by explaining the context of the combat crouch, and how it related to the movement skill sets we’d be learning tomorrow.

Moving on to the shooting part, we started with some point shoulder. This is a full extension one-handed point shooting position. The biggest difference between this and one handed sighted fire is that with point shooting it’s often easier to allow the gun to cant inboard about 30–45 degrees. This is what we call the ‘half homie’. This is really a much more natural and relaxed one-handed shooting position than holding the gun vertically. With a Glock or other gun with a square slide profile, you can use the edge of the slide as an aiming rail, using the same skills we used to shoot over the top of the gun.

From here, we followed a similar path as the two-handed retention shooting, bringing the gun in to the 3/4 hip position with the elbow unlocked, but not in contact with your body.

After shooting from 3/4, we moved on to 1/2 hip. The half hip position places your elbow against your body, with the forearm and gun held horizontal. This is analogous to shooting just as your hands come together in a two-handed grip. You can adjust how far out the gun projects depending on whether you place the elbow in front of the hip, on the hip, or behind the hip.

Our last drill of the day involved drawing and shooting while facing somewhat uprange. This leads in to some of the shooting and moving stuff we’d be doing tomorrow. We started off facing the 8 o’clock direction, so the target is off everyone’s right shoulder, drawing, and firing, all without moving the feet. Obviously, it’s very important to have good muzzle discipline, keeping it pointed down until the pistol is oriented downrange.

The counterpart to this is starting off facing the 4 o’clock and drawing and shooting. This is a bit harder for a right handed shooter, since you have to go cross body. The safe way to do this is to draw to Sul, rotate the upper body a bit, and point downrange.

This wrapped up an excellent day of training.

Sunday

The second day of PSP really emphasizes movement. You take all the point shooting skills you learned on Day 1 and apply them to shooting during dynamic movement. Roger started out the day with a lecture on movement, talking about the difference between controlled, dynamic, and get out of dodge movement, why we don’t like backpedaling or sidestepping, etc.

We ran a few dry movement drills to demonstrate a few of the aspects that Roger had covered in the discussion. In particular, he had students run the drill two handed, then one handed, in order to show that running one handed can actually reduce the amount of bouncing the gun does because you have only one arm transmitting shocks to the gun instead of two.

Next up was the takeoff, some special footwork to help your initial movement off the X. The ‘takeoff continuum’ is the newest addition to Roger’s seven concepts. At SI, we’ve been teaching the takeoff for quite a while and Roger has really been instrumental in pushing it forward with the enhanced takeoff and the two-footed takeoff. The two-footed takeoff in particular was developed to allow the takeoff on surfaces that don’t provide good traction. The range we were on was essentially a layer of hard dirt, topped my small marble sized gravel and increasingly large numbers of spent cases. Traction was about as bad as you could get without introducing water or ice, so the two-footed takeoff was the order of the day. Everyone worked the takeoff dry, starting with the forward oblique angles, then continuing to the rearward obliques.

Going live, we did what Roger calls the first shot drill. You get off the X and, as the name implies, fire a single shot on the target. When getting off the X there’s a great temptation to just drive the gun out there and pop off that first shot without much in the way of visual verification. By limiting you to only one shot, this drill is designed to get you to have a slight pause to verify that it’s going to go where you want it to. We worked this to both of the forward oblique angles. Rather than doing this in a big line, Roger ran most of the movement drills we did today in pairs. A student on the right end of the range would get off the X to the 11 o’clock, so he’s shooting to his right, while a student on the left side of the range gets off the X to the 1 o’clock, shooting to his left. While this slows down the pace, it allows the students to get much more dynamic and unrestrained in their movement.

The next drill was going straight in. Generally, SI isn’t real big on charging right in on an adversary, since it doesn’t force the opponent to change his point of aim or track you. Nevertheless, there are some circumstances where you need to close very quickly with the adversary.

A variant on going straight in is parallel tracking. It involves taking a step to the side during the takeoff, then closing in parallel to the initial line of force. This has many of the advantages of going straight in, but it does force the opponent to track you. It also puts you in a position to flank the adversary, rather than taking you right into a hand to hand problem.

We moved on to the forward obliques. If the circumstances allow, this is generally our preferred direction to get off the X against a gun armed opponent. One thing that’s a bit different about the way Roger teaches this in the PSP class is that he has everyone start from 10–12 yards. This is farther than you’d really want to use this technique in real life (it’s more of a 7 yards an in skill set). Starting at the greater distance can help refine the skill set, after all if you can do this at 12 yards, you are going to absolutely own it at 6. It also gives students a bit more time to practice point shooting on the move. If you bust off the X at 5 yards, you’ve only got about a second of useful shooting time.

After lunch we picked up with the rearward oblique angles. These are a bit more complicated than the forward angles, just because there’s such a great angle between your direction of travel and the direction that you’re shooting. This is particularly hard when the target is over your support side shoulder (taking the 5 o’clock line for a right handed shooter). If you insist on having the full, normal two-handed grip on the gun, you’re going to get yourself all torqued up and not be able to move effectively.

Roger started by demonstrating the modified grip. Essentially, you allow your support hand grip to slide around the gun. As the angle becomes more extreme, eventually the support hand is gripping the gun from the side or even the front. Combined with the ‘half homie’ and aiming down the corner of the slide you can shoot and get hits even at some fairly extreme angles.

We did some drawing and shooting form this position while stationary first, to get everyone used to shooting this way. Then we did it on the move. We also practiced getting off the X to the other rear oblique (the 7 o’clock line), which is considerably easier since you can just go one-handed.

We can exploit this ability to go one handed further by ‘turning the 5 into the 7’ using the In Quartata. You get off the X by stepping to the side and throwing your support side shoulder back, then take off in the 5 o’clock direction while shooting one-handed. Because this is a technique that’s really only useful for getting off the X to your strong side (there’s not really any reason for a right-handed shooter to turn a 7 o’clock into the 5), so Roger set up a different drill for the shooter on the right side of the range.

The hallway drill involves using the in quartata to get off the X, but we’re assuming you’re in a somewhat confined space (a hotel hallway, or supermarket aisle, for instance) you can only go a few steps. You reverse directions and go back across the hallway, then to one more reverse and cross the hallway a third time. Ideally you should do this with no break or let-up in your cadence of fire.

The in quartata also has a role when fighting in a confined space, such as between two cars in the parking lot. In such a small space we can’t really use our normal GOTX skill set, but the in quartata allows us to quickly get as far off the X as the terrain allows. From here, we can shoot the adversary. In ACRG, we normally teach using this position to shoot from point shoulder, but since this was PSP, Roger had everyone shoot it from more of a sideways half-hip.

We’d done the drawstroke zipper two-handed yesterday. Roger had everyone do it one-handed.

For a final exercise, Roger had everyone do some GOTX drills to the forward obliques from five yards. This is a more realistic distance for this skill set than what Roger had been using earlier, and at this point the students had moved from learning these skills to putting them into practice. Roger intended for the students to get one go in each direction, but the students liked it so much they kept circling back and lining up to do it again, so Roger let them run it a couple of times each.

 

Final Thoughts

This was an excellent class. Roger did an great job, as usual. I first took Point Shooting Progressions two and a half years ago, and he’s definitely evolved the class since then. We had a great group of students with the solid gun safety skills you need to make this class a success.

Gunfighter Week was definitely a great success. I wasn’t able to be there for Doug Little’s Close Range Gunfighting class on Thursday and Friday, but all the students spoke very highly of it (as I would expect from an instructor like Doug). They said he did a great job laying out the basics and teaching CRG in a way that led right into Point Shooting Progressions.

Given the great turnout and how well the students liked the class, Roger and Doug are already talking about doing this again next year. I’d highly recommend it. This was a great pair of classes that will turn anyone into a better gunfighter. This year’s event sold out two months in advance, so if you see it on the schedule, sign up right away.