Tactical Training

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We break vehicle skill sets into two types, high threat driving, and vehicle tactics. High threat driving is everything you do with the vehicle while it is in motion. Vehicle tactics, the focus of this article is everything you do around a stationary vehicle.

The majority of us spend a great amount of time in and around vehicles, but for some reason don’t train enough around them. In the last year between military contracts, and during my own courses I have seen around 500-700 people do the same number of wrong things over, and over again. Let’s take a look at them.

First of all, vehicles, even when up armored, are poor fighting platforms. They are intended to be able to soak up rounds as you drive away from the threat. Which brings us to the first point: Your best option when it comes to vehicle is to use them for their intended purpose and put distance between you and the threat.

At all times, when you are by yourself, or with friends loved ones, you need to be aware of your surroundings, and always looks for holes to drive through if the need arises. Identify drivable terrain, which we define as anything you drive through or over without disabling your vehicle.

The next thing is to keep windows up and doors locked, during force on force scenarios we have to instruct the students to not do one or the other. Because with the windows up, and the doors locked, the chances of an occupant being attacked are slim. Couple this with movement and the chances of something happening in transit are very low.

Click Here to Keep Reading – TACTICAL TRAINING: High Threat Driving and Vehicle Tactics >>>

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Just because you fell doesn’t mean you are out of the fight

Many people are aware of the fact that falls are one of the leading causes of injury and death. As a matter of fact some statistics show that they are the leading cause of death between people 0-14 years old and those over 25. The vast majority of falls are of course accidental, but what about those that occur during interpersonal combat.

The only fear we are born with is the fear of falling. This is known as the Moro Response, those of you who have kids have seen it. An infant is sleeping on their back on a flat surface, a door slams, the infants and legs reflexively jerk in before spreading back out.

We also experience this when we are dozing off and get that falling feeling. It is also what happens when we lose our balance going backwards; our head tries to get back over our feet as our arms flail out to the side in an attempt to regain balance.

Time and time again in all types of training, and more importantly in the street, I see people fall. Ask anyone who is a Judo practitioner or any of the other arts that include throwing and they will tell you how much time is spent learning to fall correctly.

They will also tell you that the younger you start the better it is. There are two reasons for this, the first and most obvious is that when you are younger it just does not hurt as much. The second is that the older we get, the more times we have fallen, and the more panicked our response becomes.

Click Here to Keep Reading – TACTICAL TRAINING: The Fall Guy >>>

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Is this really so likely to happen to you that you need to spend money training for it?

Over the past few years I have been seeing magazines, tactical blogs, the law enforcement community and tactical trainers presenting the threat of running into an Active Shooter situation as a likely scenario – or at least a likely enough of a possibility to warrant a person or agency purchasing tactical gear or paying for specialized training.

But statistically speaking the chances of someone running into some wacko going postal while buying a pair of chinos at the Gap is right up there with being struck by lightning – certainly not a likely enough possibility that would necessitate the average Joe (or even most Police Departments) to go out and spend money on gear or training centered around an Active Shooter scenario.

Now some people may say “people do get struck by lightning so it is better to be prepared” – well going by that logic I should go out and buy a rubber suit or wear a grounded lighting rod on my head.

You are more likely to get punched in a bar than being at the right place at the right time with the right tools to take down a guy who is randomly shooting people – that really can’t be argued, it is a statistical fact.

So why don’t the gear companies and tactical trainers tell you to spend your time and money on a boxing gym membership instead of buying some silly ‘active shooter fanny pack’ or taking a 2 day 500 dollar active shooter course?

In my opinion this is just another “scare the sheep into parting with money for crap they don’t need” scenario created by people wanting to profit from peoples fear.

Every time I hear about someone buying some sort of kit or training centered on the unlikely chance they will get into a shoot-out with a crazed gunman at Wall-Mart I can also guess that they have a basement filled with food and water for when all computers were supposed to shut down at midnight New Years Eve 1999 (or for when the Commies were supposed to invade in the 80’s, or for the next Terrorist attack, or for the impending zombie pandemic).

Now, not all of the folks teaching courses or slinging gear are trying to hustle you, many of them have also fallen into the trap of believing an extremely rare media hyped incident is a very real possibility – when it is not.

The following are a few points on Active Shooter Gear and Counter-Active Shooter Training that I would like to touch on:

Click Here to Keep Reading – TACTICAL TRAINING: The Active Shooter Threat is Way Overblown >>>

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I was chatting online with a buddy of mine yesterday about some of the firearm classes and training we’ve both done over the past year. As we were chatting we were sending each other pictures of ourselves while training (you know, the Ninja Action shots everyone takes).

The first thing I noticed was he was wearing a chest rig at the rifle class and a drop leg holster at the pistol course. The second thing I noticed was he was wearing the 5.11 tuxedo with knee and shin pads.

After looking at my pictures he asked me: “dude, why are you wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, chucks and a concealable belly pistol holster – and are you carrying your spare mags for your M-4 in your back pocket? – you own tons of tactical gear, why didn’t you use it for that training?”

I said: “I was honing my stateside civilian gun skills, and that’s how I would fight with a pistol/rifle stateside as a private citizen – my tactical gear and Ninja clothing is for when I am training for overseas high risk work”

So in return I asked him: “why are you dressing up like a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan hunting Osama bin Laden when you train – don’t you work at a bank? – seriously dude if you ever end up using a gun you will probably be wearing Dockers, a golf shirt and wing tips”

His answer: “I never really thought about it that way”

Click Here to Keep Reading Train Like You Would Fight – Not How You Would Fight Zombies >>>

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LOUD NOISES!!!

The first time I ever heard the phrase Interpersonal Communication Skills was 1991, I was a young soldier in Military Police School at Ft McClellan, AL. I wish I could say that I remembered anything about the class, but I don’t. What I do remember is that the title of the block of instruction has stuck with me for 20 yrs. Here is why, there is nothing as basic as communication with other people, but so hard to master.

Fast forward 15 years or so later and I would find myself attending both the FBI Negotiations Course, as well as our local sheriff’s department’s course. I was being trained as a “talker”. During both courses the phone would ring and a student would have to answer it, on the other end would be an instructor acting out a scenario. Whoever answered the phone had to negotiate the scenario to a conclusion. Even though it was just training and you were in no danger; we all got stressed out.

Over the years I have worked on my IPC skills, and shared my skills with officers I’ve trained, or was able to talk to people that others could not. Over the next few years I had the opportunity to negotiate several times with positive outcomes.

Of all the skills everyone should possess, I find this to be one of the most important and easiest to practice. I mean we talk to people every day. You only need to be dedicated to one goal…getting your needs met. Let me explain.

Click Here to Keep Reading – TACTICAL TRAINING: Interpersonal Communication Skills >>>

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fail

On the SORT team (Special Operations Response Team), we trained 2 days out of the month and spent a good amount of that time on the range
shooting and playing with other less than lethal munitions.

1. Always have your pistol on the range with you.

We were doing transition drills from our primary weapon to out secondary weapon which is our pistol. One of my buddies, I’ll call him P., forgot his pistol but had his primary weapon. So when he went to transition he grabbed at where his pistol should have been and realized that he didn’t have it on him.

So he tell the teams tactical trainer, I’ll call him T. T tells him you are going to have to use what you haveand gave P. the stapler that is used to staple up our targets. We started our transition drills again and this time P. grabs the stapler and starts shooting at the target from 15 feet and asks T. “Can you see where I’m hitting?”

By now the whole team was laughing and T. told P. to go get his pistol. We laughed about that for few months when we went on the range.

Click Here to Keep Reading Lessons Learned on the Range – Part 2 >>>

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Last week was pretty shitty.  In a period of 4 days I got robbed at gunpoint, was an involuntary witness to a domestic situation involving a gun while being audited by the IRS, was involved in a mall shooting, had to go to two weddings, one that a suicide bomber tried to infiltrate the receiving line, and the second a shotgun wedding that a bunch of drug addicts tried to hijack.

There was a day that I had to pick up my girlfriend from the courthouse where she was testifying, only to find out that the defendant’s buddies decided to shoot the place up, and terrorists decided to hold my friend hostage at a construction site.  And just for good measure, my nephew needed to be picked up from the ER after an overdose, but his “friends” were there first, and were willing to kill me to make sure he left with them.  Yes, last week just downright sucked.

Actually the only thing that sucked last week was the beating my ego took.  I’m actually describing some of the stages of the National Tactical Invitational (NTI) XX that occurred June 1-5 in Lewisberry, PA.

[click to continue…]

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