I left in the parts where Max talks about his tactical training because I highly recommend as many of you as can, attend his training. Unfortunately I have not been able to, up to this point, but I am trying to find time to attend, and recommend you do also.
Max Velocity Blog
I wrote the post ‘Buddy Position Awareness‘ on July 28 2015. I’m going to revisit that topic here, particularly in light of the comments I made on a student review yesterday:
If you have been reading the blog lately, you will have seen my post on the development of the Rifle Skills and Combat Team Tactics Classes (‘Adjustments to the Rifle Skills / Combat Team Tactics Lineup‘). We have also scheduled a number of the Combat Rifle Skills classes for those who want a shallower learning curve. We have moved zeroing entirely to the optional Rifle Skills day prior to Combat Team Tactics. This has freed up training time on the Friday of CTT. We have made some adjustments to that square range day to introduce some of the visual concepts early, so that they are not first encountered on the Saturday morning, as part of the introduction to fire and movement. This is done in a somewhat ‘monkey see, monkey do’ format on the square range, to put visuals of safe distances, angles, spacing and such into the mind of the student, so that when they are taken through explanations and rehearsal on the tactical ranges the following day, they have a better reference point. This is working very well so far. We had limited time this past class for this pre-concept training, because we still had to do some check zero, but for future classes the absence of zeroing has been made clear (unless you show up for RS) and we will have more time available.
If you haven’t been paying attention, the CTT class has been dropped from $600 to $500 (3 days), and RS from $200 to $100 (1 day), to allow students to complete the full 4 days of training for the same price as the previous 3 day CTT class. Don’t tell me I never give you incentives to train!
I am going to partially re-post the ‘Buddy Position Awareness‘ post below. Before I do, here is some additional comment:
We have been developing and improving the Combat Team Tactics class over the last three years. It went from a 2 day ‘CRCD” class, to a 3 day CTT class, to the option of making it a 4 day RS/CTT class. We often have to deal with the tendency of students to have past training scars from other ‘tactical’ training classes, and a general theme is the need to move people on from square range focused training to realistic combat training. This is something that we are working hard to achieve with the most effect possible. Does this mean I don’t like square ranges? Of course not, I have two! The point is that the square range should properly be viewed as a part of the progression to live field firing. Much training, in particular the stuff that can be viewed all over YouTube, is both unrealistic and dives into a rabbit hole because it has nowhere to go beyond the square range itself.
This amuses me, along the same lines of dealing with the obvious ‘You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know’ (DKWYDK) comments that I see. It amuses me because the training progression and focus that we work so hard on at MVT actually makes things safer for you to operate in a live fire / combat environment, whereas the focus on the pure (usually close range) target shooting of a square range environment makes it more dangerous. In fact, if this country does ever go to a full collapse shooting war, I’m going to get into a low crawl and simply crawl the hell out of it! It beggars belief the amount of friendly and not so friendly fire casualties that will likely be generated, and people shooting their own families and teams, as everyone is running aimlessly round in a panic.
I’m pulling a video out of the original post and putting it here, by way of an example of this chaos even among trained soldiers on deployment. This is the best example I could find on YouTube. Watch the video below for the first few seconds, and realize how close it came to a friendly fire incident, as the soldier runs across from right to left. After that, there is no safety angle as the helmet cam guy fires over the top of his buddies taking cover behind the low wall. Be prepared for random acts in combat! Unless you have effectively trained in a realistic live fire training environment, which develops an understanding of real world safety angles, you will make mistakes like this. This training should also be backed by solid rehearsal and drills in react to contact.
There a various things we tell students at MVT training. Among them:
•Scan, all the time. Scan means actually scan.
•Get your head out of your weapon.
•It’s not about you, it’s about your buddies.
•It’s not about your personal relationship with Ivan, but knowing where your buddies are first.
•Break that tunnel vision.
What does this even mean? Well if you focus only on square range training, including competition style training, or shot timers, or whatever, then it is all about you, and your target. It is about that personal relationship between you and Ivan (the target). I’ve even heard of training so naval gazing that it is all about filming the shooter and reviewing second by second technique.
Here’s the thing – you only have to shoot SO WELL. There is a limit of accuracy, a balance of speed and effect on target versus perfect technique. Yes, don’t conflate this with an argument about poor shooting being better, because it is not. It is about practical accuracy balanced with the need for relevant training, building situational awareness. If I get rounds on target to protect my team, that accuracy is good enough. If I have no awareness of where my buddies are as this firefight commences, and I put rounds into them instead of the target, as everyone runs around in a disorganized panic, then that is a fail. So it is a balance between individual proficiency and the awareness and ability to operate within and with a team. I’m not making these comments in an unlimited theoretical training time vacuum: Most people have limited training time, and thus the focus on training to become the ultimate-AR-driving-wizard is probably not as useful as spending your time learning how to get rounds effectively on target, take cover, and not kill your buddies while doing so – because if you put rounds into your friends or family, there is no undoing that. That is why you can learn good skills on the square range, but you must progress beyond it to learn the team tactics. Or, your ‘team’ will die, either by enemy or friendly fire, probably both.
This is the reason, precisely, that I harp on about this, and many who have not progressed beyond the square range simply do not understand it. I am trying to explain it here, in this post.
Consider these conceptual points, which may help you understand this:
On a square range, you are already on a firing line. Other firers are to the left and right of you, and the targets are downrange. It is safe. No other firer is within an acceptable safety angle from the muzzle of any other firer’s rifle.
When we teach you team tactics, and we have a 4 man team reacting to effective enemy fire (i.e. an Ivan target exposure) , we are teaching you drills to move from whatever formation you were walking in, to create an immediate firing line, just like on the square range. Thus, as you react, no one firer is within an unsafe angle from any other firers muzzle. Whatever direction the contact comes from, front, left, right, rear, you are adapting into a safe firing line to engage the target(s). This happens when you conduct individual and team RTR drills.
Other safety training, such as active muzzle awareness, how to move with the weapon, “Don’t go faster than you can go,” “Don’t be in a hurry to rush to your death,” “identify cover before you move to it,” head-body-weapon, and other team drills that are taught, are all to reinforce the awareness of what is safe and what is not safe: until you are sure where your buddies are (scan-head-body-weapon) you are not bringing your rifle up to engage the target. This is why we need to break that square range indoctrination of me-target-me-target.
If we are going to maneuver in the face of the enemy, either towards, away (break contact) or to the flank, then we now have to move that firing line. For this, we teach fire and movement (maneuver). Think about this as simply moving segments of the firing line, whether those segments are individuals or buddy pairs, in such as way that we maneuver to where we want to go, while suppressing the enemy, and while never moving into an unsafe position relative to the safety angle of other firer’s muzzles.
Now imagine this: 4 firers lined up on a square range, facing the targets. Maybe quite close, perhaps the firing line is 10 yards from the targets. Imagine there are 10 targets lined up in front of them, running from #1 on the left, thru #10 to the right. The shooters are only 10 yards from the targets and 5 yards from each other, so #1 is off to the left, #10 off to the right, and #5 is directly front in the center of the 4 man line. It’s safe to say that the 4 man line can probably engage #5, and targets to the left and right of #5, without causing any safety angle problems. Those targets are pretty much directly front. Now, if we call target #1, we have a problem. The left shooter can engage, by swiveling (head-body-weapon) to the left and engaging #1. When the other firers do their scan-head, before they even move their body, they will realize that the angle to the left, for them to shoot at #1, is too steep, and that they will be unsafely muzzling firers to their left (i.e. those firers would be at an unsafe angle to their muzzle if they engaged the target). In this case, the only solution is for the line to angle to the left, to create a new firing line aligned on Target #1. If target #10 were called, you get the opposite.
If a buddy engages a target and has not immediately called distance-direction-description, and you are trying to identify it, then you can easily see how he is oriented by looking at the direction of his barrel, and the angle of his shoulders, and thus know what position is safe relative to him before you can even think about bringing your weapon up towards a target you have not even seen yet. Whether you immediately see the target or not, and you want to bring your weapon up, but a buddy is in the way, you have to push left/right/up in order to move him out of your safety angle, and thus allow your weapon to come up.
All of the above seems very obvious, but it is not for those who have been conditioned to the me-target-me-target mindset of much of the shooting sports world. You have to also consider that on a tactical range there is much going on, stress inoculation is part of the objective, and the formation is moving relative to the targets and the ground, and thus it is easy for new shooters to become sucked into the target, tunnel vision, and lose the ability to scan. That what the safety cadre are there for!
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Buddy Awareness & Scanning
There is plenty of talk out there about ‘training,’ but unless you are incorporating professional live fire training into your overall training plan, you will probably not understand, in a practical sense, what I am discussing here. In the same way that it is easy to talk about ‘shoot, move and communicate’ on the internet, but harder to actually conduct it for real. You need to be building real ‘operant conditioning’ via the right training.
Buddy awareness and scanning, seems so simple. However, on training classes we spend a deal of time drilling this into people, and first drilling bad habits out of them. Unfortunately some of these bad habits come from individual focused training on basic shooting and weapons manipulation on the square range. When it’s all about ‘driving your AR’ and your INDIVIDUAL shooting skills, scans can become notional, robotic. This is one of the chief problems with training when it never makes it off the square range: it is an individual sport, not a team activity. This causes big problems when trying to operate as a team in a live fire environment.
At MVT, we run live fire training with movement. This means that shooters are not always ‘on line’ – something that is alien to many who have grown up on solely on ranges with no movement. We have specific safety procedures that will not translate well if I try and describe them here in writing. Suffice to say, there are safety angles and procedures that include mantras such as ‘head-body-weapon,’ ways to move (absolutely no pirouetting, ever), safety angles off your muzzle, and active muzzle awareness. The way weapons are carried and movement is conducted is operational safety, i.e. it translates to real situations when you are on patrol, or moving with weapons. Not ‘over safe’ procedures such as seen on many ranges, which actually end up being less safe (such as moving backwards with weapons). Patrol ready, active muzzle awareness, finger outside trigger guard, safety on at all times except when not engaging the enemy.
Buddy awareness:
This is vital. If a target pops up, the important thing is not to engage the target, but to know where your buddies are before engaging the target. You are always scanning and conducting a version of ‘head-body-weapon.’ The weapon part of the mantra applies equally to ‘ready ups’ when bringing the weapon on to target prior to firing, such as with an RTR drill, or equally to active muzzle awareness if you are conducting the manta as part of a move from one piece of cover to another.
When running training and safety, we are always fighting tunnel vision and students being glued to their sights. It is important to pull your head away from the sights every couple of rounds, to locate your buddies and maintain spacial awareness. This is a hard thing for new shooters to grasp. You need to turn your head towards your buddies and yell in their direction when yelling is needed (i.e. MOVE!) otherwise your yell will be lost into the stock of your weapon. Is your buddy moving to the next cover? Is he beating at his weapon because he has not yet grasped the muscle memory to conduct weapon manipulation under stress? Is he writhing on the ground, bleeding? Is he laying there silent?
Imagine you are lined up with your buddies on the firing line on a square range. Weapons will all be aligned facing down the range to the targets. Shoulders will be roughly aligned, assuming we are adapting dynamic shooting positions, and not ‘blading off’ to the targets. You are now ‘on line.’ Now, in a realistic combat environment it would not matter if you and your buddies were a little misaligned, perhaps due to the positions of cover, and the line was not exactly straight. So long as no one was inside the muzzle safety angle of each others weapons, we are good to go. That’s what happens in fire and movement.
Now, take that target away straight down the range and put one up half-left to the firing line. Because the enemy gets a vote, and will try and flank you. Now, everyone’s weapons and shoulders swing (although they wouldn’t swing, like a turret, they would scan and acquire the target and then go ‘head-body-weapon’) to the left by 45 degrees. This may have an impact on the safety angle. If there are two of you, and you are the right hand guy, then when you acquire the target with ‘head’ and scan, then you will also need to note the location of your buddy. As the angle of the target moves more to the flank, it may be that you cannot bring your weapon up to engage, because your buddy would be within the safety angle of your muzzle. This would mean you would have to ‘push right’ or ‘push up’ depending, in order to clear that safety angle and safely acquire the target. In a dynamic situation, it is always important to note your buddies as you acquire a target, keep both eyes open, and also be ready for when they may make an unpredictable movement, perhaps to adjust their position of cover. If they do this, be ready to drop your muzzle. The key is simply to avoid the herd mentality and keep spread out from your buddies, in order to open up the safety angle. Do not, and we do not allow, people to be firing past each others ears!
It is vital to always maintain awareness of where your buddies are, and to keep the scan going throughout the engagement as positions move and the team fires and moves. If you do not have a shot angle that is not going to potentially kill your buddy, then you need to move.
Scanning:
As alluded to above, scanning is a constant activity. You are looking for cover, for the enemy, for your buddies. It is more important to know where your buddies are than it is to get that shot off. We struggle with ‘square-range-isms’ at MVT, otherwise known as re-training the training scars out of people, acquired from tacticool training. We notice the tendency to try and scan with the weapon glued to the eyeball, or to perform that fake-robotic-square-range-scan. Or to not scan at all, or to just take quick tunnel glances, like to the left, to the center, to the right, down a ‘tunnel’ in the trees.
To Scan:
•Lower the weapon out of your face.
•Get your eye out of the optic.
•If you have a magnified optic, it is OK to use it as a monocular to check out an item of interest, but don’t be glued to it.
•Scan by looking THROUGH the vegetation.
•Scan in a ‘S’ near-middle-far left-center-right.
•Cover your sector!
•Look from your buddy on one side to your buddy on the other side, particularly after an engagement. What is their position and are they OK? Does anyone need to move, including you?
As you move towards the enemy position, or away from it in a break contact drill, you are always looking for your next position of cover. You are always running ‘head-body-weapon’ and practicing active muzzle awareness. You are scanning for your buddies and moving your position as necessary in order to engage the target safely. As you locate your next cover, locate your buddies so that you don’t run the wrong way, into their safety angle. Communicate if necessary – “I’m on your left!”
It is always better to run the lanes slower and under control, than faster and out of control/unsafe. It is better to maintain a steady momentum of fire and movement on the enemy, as you press closer and closer to his position, that it is to run about the woods like headless chickens, causing a safety STOP.
And here is the kicker: those students who train at MVT learn this all under controlled conditions. It is vital that you learn these things at a reputable school that conducts actual live fire movement training. Otherwise you really don’t know what you don’t know. We have an expression at MVT which is students ‘going bluescreen.’ By attending battle inoculation live fire training with movement, under controlled and safe conditions, you are pushing back the point at which you will become exhausted and ‘go bluescreen.’
“Shoot, move and communicate” sounds good on the internet. It’s not so easy to practice in the real world.
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