Its All Fun & Games Until

Maybe math is more important than you think. You might appreciate it more if you have to work tactical problems. Where you need to clear around corners to a dead space at the far end of the wall; what is called a hard corner. Years ago when I was working as OPFOR for my guys I witnessed an amazing phenomenon. The further back into the angle I got, the less I had to expose in order to gain ground down range. I saw the reverse play out when teammates would hug the corner as they attempted to clear the hard corner. While not ideal, both of these skills are important in the grand schemes of tactical movement repertoire. The problem was how this thinking it went against the grain from conventional wisdom.

It Is Not Always The Why

I remember when teaching a tactical team Active Hostage Rescue skills where managing corners was heavily emphasized. One of the members in their previous career was an architect. As I was explaining corners and the approach towards a corner I talked about obtaining the best vantage point. The better the vantage point the more down range hazards you can clear. Leaving usually the hard corner to visually clear with a dynamic movement. As we worked in commercial buildings we had the opportunity to explore a variety of these types of problems. His curiously was piqued and in the evening after class he pulled out his old drawing program. He created a large scale representation of not why it works, but how it works. I remember his excitement rolling this large piece of paper across his patrol car hood and the careful explanation as to the how.

You Can Only Look One Way

While I cannot remember the technical terms, it was impressive. When you are working in smaller and smaller units the ability to cover all the angles becomes more challenging, almost impossible. Since you can only look in one direction the importance behind achieving the best vantage point becomes huge. Of course, there are points of diminishing returns such as when you have to clear a weak side corner. This forces you to expose more of your body since it typically crosses the plane before your firearm does. A maximum we teach is to maximize your distance and minimize your exposure. When you accomplish these in tandem you create a significant tactical advantage. In order to minimize your exposure you may have to develop the skill of transferring to your weak side to help reduce your exposure. I caveat this technique with a statement that focuses on safety and competency. If either of those are suspect, then you are better off exposing more for improved fighting capacity.

See First Always

There will always be those who have a hard time accepting this technique is simple and effective. Going down range to get the bad guy’s perspective helps. Even then it still takes time to accept; which usually comes with application. When placed in a situation where it doesn’t matter how skilled, how cool your gear is or who’s side you are on it generally boils down to who sees who first. If you are exposing less and seeing more you will come to recognize the value with time. If you step back as an observer you eventually see the light bulbs turn on as they perform more and more runs through a simulator.

When you are playing an adult hide-n-seek game, you will come to appreciate the importance behind these maximums. You will develop these skills out of self preservation.

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Your First Priority

You have to acknowledge we are in different times. The days of jumping into the fray are long gone. For lots of reasons, the biggest being the litigious society we have become. To help cope with this new reality you have to consider a tiered approach to the various situations you may find yourself in and what you should do in advance to prepare. Starting with the most obvious, your safety. While you may be out by yourself, if you have a family, a career or people who depend on you it should be your priority to make it back safely. This includes avoidance, deescalation and disengagement. It is ideal to avoid most confrontations, but if you are on the clock then trying to deescalate in order to work towards disengagement should be your priority. Remember your objective, your mission is return to base safely.

Moving as a Team

The next scenario is to consider what to do when you are out with your team. Who is on your team, your family and immediate family and close friends. These are the people who you are working to return safely to each night. While you may find yourself in a variety of situations, the goal of each one is to navigate safely back home. This may require you to break into smaller elements. Where you work to secure safe passage while the team strong points in the most secure area available. As you scout the terrain, you are looking to see if it safe and if so, what is the best route to get out of the danger area. Or, you have to sit tight in your secure area and let things unfold so you can wait for an opportunity to take action.

Actions On Contact

At some point the scenario drifts to outside of your team. You happen to be minding your own business when you stumble across a situation. Do you intervene, do you observe or do you continue on your route. All good questions and to be honest the best answer is to continue on your route. If they are not part of your team, don’t compromise the safety of your own team for an unknown. I know that may seem pretty cold hearted, but it is a fact of life. The only exception is if you saw the situation from the beginning. In this case, you have the full picture and can make a more informed decision.

Your True Mission

The problem with not having all the information is you are making decision with limited intelligence. You don’t know the background, context, the instigator or the victim. Looks can be deceiving, words can be misleading and the situation can seem clear cut, but it is not. If there is any doubt you do not have all the information, then involving yourself is a poor choice. Of course, you can do what you feel is necessary and you may even be able to legally justify, but did you take the time to consider the moral implications. Most people will feel a sense of accomplishment they helped a stranger. I can appreciate that sentiment. However, in so doing you brought great risk and jeopardy to your family. Strife and stress from traversing the legal landscape. Uncertainty of your financial future along with time away from your true mission, your family.

Stop to consider if your actions truly support your team mission. If it does, move swiftly and surgically to solve the problem or move swiftly and surgically to return to base.

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The ability to discern friend from foe is constant challenge within in the training industry. In fact, I feel often times it is a glossed over subject.

Magic wand

In preparatin for an upcoming advanced tactical class I suggested folks read an older blog on conducting scans in a training environment. The blog was appropriately entitled “Magic Wand Syndrome” and is a good read regardless of your profession. A problem I continue to see on the firing line is the lackluster effort put towards conducting a scan. Most of the time the scan is mentioned as a post shooting task, but the reality is you are pretty much always in scan mode. You are either in a flood beam type scan or more of a spot light beam depending on the situation. If you cannot locate the threat, all your killer commando skills are worthless.

Breaking the target down

While for some, square range training is the closest they will get to reality. Others will eventually move to more realistic type training and depending on your profession again it more than likely will involve a shoothouse or my preferred term a killhouse. As you work the problem you should be faced with a variety of scenarios applying the target discrimination process. Early stages of work in the killhouse sometimes tips the hand for the student because targets are placed out in the open typically on target stands or bullet traps. A major obstacle to overcome is the Pavlovian response of shooting everything on a target stand because thats all you have ever done. While I would like for folks to be able to process the available information in order to make a timely decision I have come to recognize it is not always possible.

The power of pain

Being able to process the available information is a learned skill, the bigger problem learning the skill in the first place. It is hard to develop the ability to process information quickly when you find yourself in a high stress situation. This is where training must step in to fill the gap and where most people have no clue. You have to constantly challenge the student’s target discrimination process as well as have severe consequences for failures. I am a firm believer in the power of pain compelling people to learn.

Split second decision making

As you move to more challenging scenarios the target conditions and locations should also get more challenging or the time get shorter to perform the target discrimination process. At a certain point this must be performed in a split second so learning the skills early on and practicing is the only way to get better. I hate “dirty” targets in a killhouse. Targets that have been shoot over and over as they remove a large portion of the target discrimination process when students fail to truly perform positive target identification.

Being mud-sucked

They see the bullet holes and without really processing the information they fast forward to shooting rather than looking more closely at the target. I am a firm believer of constantly changing the conditions of the target so the student must perform good PID every single time they conduct a run. Even if it is the same target in the same location, you have to change it up and that is where overlays come into the equation. Part of my preparation for this upcoming class was securing appropriate targets and accompanying overlays. Too my surprise they don’t carry the matching overlays anymore. Instead they have generic overlays you are suppose to use to “cover up”. Epic fail target company, the contrast of an image of a right hand on the left hand of the target is not getting it done. Now, students will have a heads up something is wrong versus performing their correct target discrimination process or in other words training is lacking.

This type of training is tough enough, I don’t need any more challenges by having suboptimal gear to train with. Frustration is a result of wanting to put out the best product, but being limited by my terrain.

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The subtle difference

The other day I had a casual conversation with a good friend, a solid operator. We were discussing what one usually discusses when bored; which is what new toy to buy and by toy I mean gun. Eventually our conversations turned serious and we were discussing the responsibility of current instructors to instill the ability for their students to think on their feet. While typically not a part of flat range training the moment you move into a shoothouse it becomes imperative the students can read a situation then make correct split second decisions. You will notice I added “correct” to the sentence in an effort to bring attention to the fact many times these decisions being made are not correct.

Higher order vs. lower order

For those of us who have been around shoothouses long enough you realize the most important trait an individual can have is critical thinking. Yes, there is the knowledge and application of their tactics, but that is the lower order level of learning. The higher order level has to do with their ability to analyze a situation, decide what to do then evaluate the effectiveness of their actions. The mistake I see in the assault world is teaching people choreographed movements through a known floor plan. Congratulations, you have memorized your movements. The moment you throw a wrench into the plans effectiveness as a cohesive unit falls apart or worse.

Back to the basics

Decentralized command and control is critical to the timely accomplishment of your mission. You cannot wait for instructions on how to solve a problem when the problem is starring you right in the face. I see hugely expensive shoothouses popping up all over the place and believe me I’m stoked to see this, but they are part of the problem. I am not saying you should avoid these facilities, quite to the contrary. The instruction on tactics, techniques and procedures is what makes or break these facilities. Despite all the grandeur it is fundamentals executed decisively that make up close quarter battle. They are principle based and therefore transcend a multitude of situations and scenarios.

To put your hands up or get on the floor

A perfect example is the decision to go deliberate or dynamic. It’s a trick question for the simple reason you will jump from one technique to the other on a single target and this is the problem. You therefore cannot say we always do this or always do that. The situation will dictate and the ability for the assault team members to recognize the situation and then adjust accordingly is sourly missing in many team structures. You may start out deliberate and have to jump to dynamic because the situation is changing, rarely do plans survive first contact with the enemy. To make matters worse, this transition may be conducted multiple times, can each member of your team examine the situation then develop a new plan in a compressed time frame.

The heart of your battle plan

Before you can expect to perform at this higher order of thinking you have to master the fundamentals. It doesn’t matter what kind of uniform you wear there are constants you will face and need to master. Some of these constants are breach point procedures, hallway/stairwell management, room entry/management and consolidation. Each of these principles are unique and must be thoroughly practiced and rehearsed with their appropriate contingencies. Any structure take down will have these constants preformed and often times performed multiple times. I consider this to be the lower order, the higher order comes when you change something and the team has to recognize the change, evaluate it and then implement their change to tactics and this is how you get to correct split second decision making.

I have always said it and my mentors said it to me long before me, CQB is a thinking mans game. It is not for the dull or dimwitted, but the cleaver and creative.

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You’re doing what???

There is always crazy stuff hitting the industry. All it takes a quick search on YouTube to see some of the silliness and worse the time we waste discussing much of it online. Something to consider is most discussion on tactics are cyclical. Meaning they come back around after a certain period of time. They began to loose their luster for some, probably because someone comes along trying to re-invent themselves. Then when enough time goes by someone “discovers” these old tactics again and now they are all the rage.

Feel good versus effective

Negotiating cover and or concealment is a subject everyone has an opinion on, but here are some cold hard facts to consider. Hugging the cover/concealment is more feel good than effective; which is why we call it the vertical fetal position. On the battlefield, it is not always who is the “best”, a lot of times it is who sees who first. Being able to search, locate and identify within your sector is what separates the good from the bad regarding tactics. If dealing with threats off the ground floor such as the second deck or roof tops, hugging cover would be ideal. Provided it is the tactical imperative, but managing good offset should be your default.

You have to see to do

We see it often in our assault classes where students out-run their headlights. They are not trained properly on target discrimination practices and therefore have little experience in really breaking targets down. You either don’t recognize a shoot threat, or you shoot a no-shoot threat. Both outcomes are the result of poor training, specifically not building tactics that allow you to process your battle space in real time. If you are right up on your edge or corner and you pop out or over, you have milliseconds to search, locate and identify the new space you are viewing.

Working angles

It doesn’t take much, sometimes a few feet to provide you the offset you need. Usually if you can fully mount your weapon that is good enough. At this point it is all about angles, I could break it down, but it would require a lot of coffee and a bunch of crayons. Suffice it to say you can be deliberate or dynamic. You can slowly work the problem, or quickly bust the corner. Once you have good offset and decide to clear around to the unknown the next main principle to adhere to is what we call the “three eye” principle. It is pretty simple, when ever possible keep your eyes, weapon and potential target all in line. In so doing you give yourself a degree of time to process through your target discrimination process then engage if necessary.

Cover is temporary

If performed correctly it also allows you to minimize your exposure, though in tight quarters this is not always available. The proverbial boogieman around the corner should compel you to compress your position in anticipation of a close quarters fight. However, the idea of backing off cover should be the default, followed by being up close when the situation dictates. One last comment, just remember cover is always temporary, either through degradation from projectiles or defeating through angles. If you are hunkered down behind something and it is getting rung like a bell recognize the danger. Move to your next piece of cover or more likely your last. Now, here is the kicker, if your opponent is willing to maneuver on you, don’t let that cover become your coffin. That is where the standoff will come into play.

Avoid the vertical fetal position when working cover. Mind your offset.

'Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.' Sun Tzu, Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher

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