by Max Velocity
I am not trying to sell these slings here so I am sure there are others that mimic this same purpose!
Now we are getting closer to the real purpose of writing this post, but not quite yet: I already mentioned using a lot of different sling methods. One that was really convenient was to use a simple web strap/buckle arrangement attached to your gear on the right shoulder that clips to the stock of the rifle. This is a very efficient single point sling that allows the rifle to hang by your side. It is very good if you are doing operations that involve checkpoints or similar, because it allows you to let the rifle hang while you look at IDs, or whatever.
However, if you kneel down to deal with a casualty, or a similar action, using a single point sling, and take your hands off the rifle to do something else, then the muzzle of the rifle is in the dirt. The rifle will also hang around and bang around. If you take part in a CASEVAC carrying a stretcher, or an improvised one, your single point slung rifle will bang around your hips.
That is why I like to have a sling that I can use as a traditional two point sling where I can put my rifle on my back. That gets it out of the way if I have to kneel and do something, like care for a casualty, or climb, or similar. I can then put the rifle back on my front and either continue to use the sling (unbuckled) or just take it off my body and free-hand the rifle.
There is another aspect to this. On a long patrol you may be tempted to rely on the sling because you are carrying your rifle in the patrol ready position, which is insisted upon like an article of faith in the U.S. Military. When you do the patrol ready for a long period of time, your lower non-firing hand wrist is twisted out and begins to hurt. You will then either let the rifle hang on the sling to relieve the pain, or you will change your grip and even put your hand on top of the rifle, or grip the front sight. That will impact you negatively if you have to react to contact. It's lazy and it’s cheating.
It was primarily my experience in the US that led me to get first a VFG (vertical front grip) and now an AFG (angled front grip). Because if I have to carry my rifle in the patrol ready position, this relieves pressure on my wrist and allows me to correctly carry the rifle, without relying on the sling or changing my hand position, and allows me to be ready to react to contact.
I will tell you now that in the British Army, and on my other experiences on operations, we did not use the patrol/low ready position, at least not to the same degree. Rifles were carried more horizontally. There is another article of almost religious faith and that is about flagging your buddies. Although we did not flag our buddies, we also did not worry about it too much, and threaten to get into fights if ever a muzzle went anywhere near anyone else. A lot of that is to do with trust in the safety and weapon handing of your buddies. If you are not actually listening to what I am saying, it would be tempting to come back and say that I am not safety conscious and advocate flagging. Not so. I am very careful in the safety procedure on my ranges so that muzzles do not flag others. I use the patrol or low ready positions.
I was asked this question in comments copied here:
Anonymous May 26, 2013 at 8:18 AM
I enjoy your postings...very good info. I train in a similar way with a group of guys...we do the things you've posted about several times a month...my question is about an issue that’s come up between us and I'm interested in your input. When you are doing these drills, with your weapon on safe and either on a 2 point sling or 1 point...with dynamic movement going on, what is the realistic acceptance of being "muzzled" by your teammates? Or as you patrol, in condition 1, loaded and on safe, finger off trigger, rifle slung diagonally muzzle down, is it a bad offense for your muzzle to cover a teammate’s lower leg? Thanks for your input if possible.
Max Velocity May 28, 2013 at 6:48 AM
I think there are two sides to this, and it is important to be realistic and not a fundamentalist about this stuff. Clearly you want to be responsible and safe and not flag your buddies, which is why we do what we do for safety procedures.
The other side of it is that in a team there is trust, and you should be competent enough to be trusted to apply the correct safety procedures, and not endanger your buddies. You should be competent with your weapon and safety. There will be times when the lower part of a buddies lower leg, as you say, gets swept. Just make sure your safety is on and you finger outside the trigger guard as you patrol.
So on the one side you don't intentionally flag your buddies, and on the other you are safe with your weapon handling.
The patrol ready is actually hard on the wrist for long patrols. Often people will carry their weapons in a more horizontal position. Machine guns, like the 240, are not carried in the low ready but in a more horizontal position. You don't sit or stand there pointing it at your buddy, but sweeps will happen.
What I don't like is the fundamentalist attitude of wanting to get into a fight every time it happens. For example: a student rolled on me, I was stood behind him on the range this weekend doing safety, and he swept his rifle back down range over me as he did so. Did I lose my temper? No. I just told him to watch his muzzle if he was going to do that again.
So on the one side there is safety and being responsible, and on the other there is safe weapon handling and trust. The answer is in the middle there. If you don't like what a guy does, say he patrols across from you in a more horizontal position and flags you occasionally, then just have a quiet word and work it out. It doesn't have to end up with you both rolling in the pit!
So what am I really saying here about the flagging thing? When on the ranges you must be careful to keep your muzzle down (or up, if that's the way you do it) and never flag your buddies as you are moving between positions. That is backed up by always having your safety on and your finger outside the trigger guard while moving. When you are out on patrol/operations, you will also never intentionally flag your buddies, but given the realism of weapon carriage there will be times when parts of your buddy’s bodies are 'swept'. Be realistic, have trust and be mindful of your weapon safety: safety on and finger outside the trigger guard.
Shooting & Weapons Training
You need to get to the range and practice shooting. Once you have learned how to shoot and get a decent group on the range, you have to figure out some way to learn different shooting positions and how to combat shoot. Once you can do this, you need to learn how to fire and maneuver (shoot, move and communicate as a member of a team).
It may be hard to find a range where you can do this, but there are alternatives: do paintballing or airsoft, or just get out and run about in the woods practicing the drills in this manual. Be wary of commercial paintball/airsoft places: it is not the same as a situation with real weapons and bad habits can form. Better to consider the use of paintball or airsoft weapons on your own terms, as part of your own training away in the woods somewhere, to allow you to practice the correct drills. Consider shooting training in the following:
Prone (lying) position
Kneeling or squatting
Standing
Prone, firing around cover
Kneeling, firing around cover
Standing, firing around cover
Firing from inside buildings: stay back from the windows, preferably on the other side of the room in the shadows. If you have time to prepare a defense, fire from behind a vision screen such as a torn curtain or blind. Additionally, be behind hard cover in the room, such that the cover is on the far side of the room from the window i.e. chest of drawers filled with dirt or sandbagged position. Being back from the window will limit your fields of fire, but your sector of fire should be tied in with others covering their sectors to prevent a gap in the defense.
Moving targets: make sure you practice ‘leading’ the target so that your shots don’t pass behind the mover.
Firing from inside vehicles: fire through open windows, through the glass of closed windows, or through the body of the vehicle if necessary. Don’t drive around with wea
pons hanging out of car windows unless you want to look like an Iraqi police team.
Changing magazines on the move: you can drop the empty magazine, but in a post-event situation you don’t want to be throwing your mags away like that, you want them available for reloading. Consider the use of a dump pouch if you are wearing a plate carrier style rig. If you are old school and are wearing a web belt, then empties can go down your shirt or jacket front, where the belt will stop them falling to the ground.
‘Slicing the Pie’ on a corner: this is used when operating in buildings. If you have to look around a corner, don’t just stick you head around or poke your weapon around (it could be gabbed by an enemy waiting just there). Step back from the corner and raise your weapon to the ready position, then slowly move to circle out so more and more of the area around the corner comes into view, all the while your weapon is pointing where you are looking so that you are not surprised and you can immediately engage any threat that comes into view. It is called slicing the pie (you could call it’s called slicing the pizza if you wanted) because you are moving around the corner in little segments, like pieces of the pie.
Figure out which is your dominant eye and learn to shoot primarily with that hand; controversial yes. If you are right eye dominant, then shoot right handed and patrol right handed; in a crisis, all this changing of weapons to the other side, for instance to fire round cover or patrol on a certain side of the trail, will only result in a cluster.
When firing around cover, the idea is to keep as much of your body mass behind cover as possible; exposing as little as possible to the enemy. For a right handed shooter, this is easier from the right side of the cover than the left. When looking around something like a corner, get down and peer around low, where the enemy will not expect to see your head. Rather than ‘other handed’ shooting practice, what actually can be more useful is learning to handle the weapon, shoot, and change magazines if one of your hands/arms is injured.
The Marksmanship Principles are as follows:
1. The position and hold must be firm enough to support the weapon.
2. The weapon must point naturally at the target without any undue physical effort.
3. Sight alignment (i.e. aiming) must be correct.
4. The shot must be released and followed through without disturbance to the position.
Saying the same thing, the U.S. Army Fundamentals of Marksmanship are STAB:
1. Steady Position
2. Trigger Squeeze
3. Aiming
4. Breath Control
Note: details of the U.S. Army Fundamentals can be found easily online.
When shooting, the body should be viewed as a tripod. In the prone position the tripod is formed from your chest and both elbows. As you breathe in, your chest rises and the muzzle of the weapon dips. As you breathe out your chest falls and the muzzle rises. To adjust sight alignment with the target, don’t just pull the barrel over – adjust your body by scooting back or forwards or left and right with your whole lower body/hips.
Place the front sight on the target and focus on the front sight. As you breathe, the front sight will go up and down on the target. As you breathe out, the muzzle will rise; when it is on the correct point of aim, briefly hold your breath and squeeze (don’t snatch) the trigger. Once the shot has gone, gently release the trigger and continue to breathe. To check sight alignment, try closing your eyes and continue to breathe steadily, then open your eyes and see where your sights are: on target or not?
Adherence to these principles will establish a basic standard and allow you to achieve better group sizes (i.e. smaller, because your shots are more consistent and strike closely together). Once you have done this, you need to move to combat shooting where there is a physical element (you will be out of breath) and many shots will be ‘snap shots’. For this, there is not so much of a steady breathing method as outlined above, it is more about gaining experience and judging the ‘wobble’ to briefly hold the weapon steady and squeeze off the shot. Between shots, make sure you open both eyes and look over the sights to prevent tunnel vision and aid target acquisition. When learning to shoot: ‘crawl, walk, run’.
In a contact situation, the danger is that people will not correctly aim their weapons, or they will shoot while looking over the sights and not really concentrate on killing the enemy. When in contact, the aim is to kill or suppress (neutralize) the enemy so that your team can move without being shot. Rounds cracking over the top of the enemy in their general vicinity will not make them take cover. Rounds striking close to or actually hitting the enemy will distract them from their aim and increase your survivability.
Take a moment to visualize this and practice it. When training for contact situations, take a moment to actually aim and fire the weapon at the target. When you are doing training where you have a live ‘enemy’ whether it be with airsoft or blanks or some other training method, practice actually laying your sights onto them and pulling the trigger; unless you are prepared to take another human life you are no good on a tactical team.
With the advent of good body armor with front and rear ballistic plates, training of soldiers in standing shooting positions has changed from the ‘old school’ way of turning your body off to the side with one leg forward, to the new way of standing straight on to the enemy. The reason for this ‘straight on’ approach is to present the front armor plate to the enemy; the maximum protected area; when standing side on you are presenting your less protected side, your ribcage, to enemy fire. So the change to the full frontal stance is mainly related to protection from enemy fire while wearing ballistic plates. Standing straight on is not as natural a shooting position and is not as relevant if you don’t have body armor plates. A more useful stance is a halfway compromise, just like the modified isosceles that you may use when firing your handgun. In fact, if you use the same modified isosceles foot position for rifle and handgun, you are in a good place.
With a modified isosceles stance, one foot forward and one back, you are still able to move naturally and dynamically but you have better stability than with a full frontal stance with both feet level with each other. Your body is still slightly turned off to the side, with the advantage of a more natural rifle firing position and hold, but you do not fully present the maximum protected space of your plate to the front. It’s a bit of a compromise but it allows dynamic movement and shooting as necessary. However, you are not fully turned off to the side like a very old school rifle standing firing position.
Therefore, make your own decision on how best to train for standing positions. Some of the techniques you see out there are positive developments; some of it is ‘tacticool’ stuff.
Practice some short range instinctive shooting with rifle, shotgun and handgun. Learn how to instinctively point the weapon at the enemy at close range and rapidly ‘unload’ on them until they go down (i.e. shoot them to the ground until the threat is stopped). At very short range this method does not actually use the sights and relies on instinctive, practiced, pointing of the weapons at the target at closer ranges. This can be taught with rifle, shotgun and pistol.
What is also useful is to practice drawing your weapon and aligning the sights on the target. This can be done ‘dry’ at home. When drawing a handgun practice getting the weapon up and aligned; you may be surprised that the weapon may be crooked in your hand. With a battle rifle, you can practice ‘ready ups’ from the patrol ready position to the standing firing position.
As opposed to the close range instinctive ‘shotgun method’ shooting outlined, for anything a little further away (perhaps beyond 10 yards, see how it works for you) then you need to take a short tactical pause between bringing the weapon up, aligning the sights and returning fire. Firing without doing this will get rounds down the range, but they may be wasted. This is a fine line: returning fire quickly will distract the enemy, but returning accurate fire that strikes them after a very short pause to align sights, will be far more effective.
You need to give consideration to the background behind your target, and in most situations you will only take a shot when you have both positively identified the enemy (PID) and you are taking an aimed shot that will not hit bystanders in the background. You also need to consider that your rifle rounds may well pass right through the enemy, or through walls and other concealment. You will know what situation you are in – in full infantry general warfare with no civilians around, it is considered standard drills to react to contact with initial fire in the general direction of the enemy, or into likely cover if you have not yet located them. With a more complicated situation and innocents around, you need to react with aimed shots only.
Clearly, the most stable position for shooting is the prone position. Coincidentally, it is also the one that gets you behind cover better! Going back to the idea of the body being a tripod, this is most stable and most easily understood in the prone position. If you kneel up, you are still a tripod but less stable. The standing position is the least protected and least stable position, but it is still a tripod between your two arms and your torso. When training for reactive shooting in the standing position, reacting to sudden contacts while on patrol, you should pay attention to bringing the rifle up and attaining a consistent cheek weld/sight picture.
What this means is that as you see the enemy, you are looking at the enemy and rapidly bringing the rifle up to engage. If the rifle is carried in the patrol ready, or low ready, positions the butt will be in your shoulder and if you are consistent you will be bringing the sight up to interpose it in front of your shooting eye (both eyes open for reactive shooting), between your shooting eye and the enemy. If your cheek weld is consistent the rifle will be aligned, and so long as you align the sights correctly on the target and do not snatch the shot, you will hit the target. Stands to reason, right?