Contact!

by Max Velocity

  In this case, with standing reactive shooting, it is all about practice and consistency of bringing the rifle up to align sights on the target (‘mounting the gun’). In this case, your position is a consistent tripod and you need to view your position, as you stand there with the rifle welded to your cheek, as a turret, moving the body at the hips and moving the feet to swivel as necessary, to engage targets as they appear.

  However, pay attention to the section on RTR and reacting to enemy fire. There is an inherent danger here, that of standing too long and being hit by depth enemy. You will shoot reactively from a standing, or possibly a kneeling position, to eliminate an immediate threat, but after that you will take cover and continue to engage from a position of cover. This is where the ‘tacticool’ danger of some of the modern standing shooting positions comes in. Stances have been modified to take account of the ‘straight on’ style, and techniques such as the ‘aggressive C grip’ have been brought in to ‘move the rifle around like a fire hose’. This is a very effective way, in a standing position, of engaging multiple targets. However, it carries an inherent danger, when taught out of context, of being square range centric and tactically ignorant.

  That is not to say that the ‘C’ grip technique is ineffective, or bad in itself. Not at all. Use it if it works for you. The problem is that it is often taught without reference to real combat and tactical requirements. It becomes square range ‘tacticool’ stuff. As an example, it is reminiscent of a boxer training by only hitting the heavy bag, thinking he is a tough guy standing there until he gets in the ring and the punches are coming back at him. Then he understands, hopefully not too late, the need to duck, cover and move. So, the danger of some of the modern techniques of standing shooting is not the technique themselves, but the mindset that you are dominant, standing there while engaging multiple targets from the standing position - and then the guy hidden behind a tree in depth puts on through your chest.

  For those that have not been in combat, it would be useful to have an understanding of what it feels like to be under fire. ‘Small Arms Fire’ (SAF) is considered to be incoming high velocity rounds from assault type rifles and machine guns. Post-event, that is any incoming fire from hostile firearms. Incoming effective SAF is a violent experience. There is a difference between effective and ineffective fire. Effective fire can be defined as fire that has already caused casualties, or would do so if you continued on without taking cover.

  Incoming rounds can make various sounds. Mainly, when a high velocity round passes close to you it breaks the sound barrier and makes a loud violent cracking noise like a bullwhip being cracked by your ear. If rounds ricochet they can spin off making that distinctive whining or buzzing sound. Rounds striking near or around you will be loud and violent; they will tear stuff up, rip things apart, take branches down out of trees, smack into the asphalt tearing it up, kick up dirt and dust where they strike. Rounds at extreme range may make more of a buzzing noise. The old type army ranges where they had people in a trench down-range putting the targets up and down were a useful battle inoculation method because this gave the soldiers the experience of rounds cracking by a couple of feet above them; don’t go and have someone fire rounds past you in substitute, that would not be clever – “Don’t try this at home!”

  So, SAF can be a strange experience. It can either be very obviously close, violent and dangerous, or if not directed effectively at you can seem like an innocuous curiosity. It’s making the connection between seeing it at a distance and realizing how dangerous that will be when it is directed at you that is important. Night time tracer fire is an example. It looks slow and graceful as the tracer from the machineguns arcs across. The tracer rounds are only every one in five rounds and the ‘laser light’ effect is deceiving of the true violence. For newbies, often making the connection and understanding the true danger of the situation is an initial problem.

  However, it’s a fine balancing act between being in denial of the reality of the situation, versus being paralyzed by fear. Sometimes it is a better strategy to compartmentalize to deal with the situation NOW and worry about it later. Seeing the strike of incoming rounds, once you are battle inoculated, can be a simple event to which you have to respond appropriately: communicate, locate the enemy, return fire and move as appropriate to the threat.

  You don’t want to find yourself in a situation of overwhelming fear. Make fear your friend; respond appropriately and with the necessary urgency to the situation. Try not to panic.

  In a survival or combat situation your job is to survive and endure. You have to act appropriately, adjust your thinking to the reality of the situation, and get the right stuff done. Have a positive mental attitude. However, don’t be one of those positive thinking crazies: be a realist, plan for the worst and hope for the best. If the situation is crappy, have a laugh and a joke about it, a bit of black humor. Be aware of the ludicrous nature of situations and see the humor in them.

  Compartmentalizing is a useful tactic; try not to eat the whole post-event elephant at once, rather deal with the elephant a little at a time: i.e. deal with the immediate stuff, with a view to the strategic situation in the background. Don’t try and ‘drain the whole lake’ at once, but deal with the ‘crocodile closest to the boat’. It is almost useful to have two minds: have the overall reality ticking away in the back there, but concentrate on the immediate and be a little in denial of the overall situation while you are doing so, even though you know it is there and will need to be confronted eventually.

  If you compartmentalize effectively, you can shelve away the stress of the immediate situation and deal with it in the short term, perhaps even to the point that you don’t realize the effect that the stress is creating somewhere in your mind. That is why you are able to operate in a hostile environment without becoming incapacitated by the fear of ‘what if’; knowing what the enemy can do and has done to others. Build a mental fort, become a little ‘OCD’ about stuff so that you can create some rituals that keep your mind working. Later, when you are safe at home, you may find yourself crying quietly for apparently no reason, because some of that stress popped out from somewhere.

  If you are in a dangerous environment, such as combat or a post-event situation, you can’t dwell too much on the what-ifs. You also can’t dwell too much on the fortune or misfortune of chance – the if he had been two seconds quicker such and such would not have happened thought process. This kind of thinking can lead to denial because, for instance, when the roadside bomb goes off and you are wounded, you can’t be thinking why me, why did this happen to me, if we had left on time we would not have been hit etc.

  In such environments you have to create a mental fort based on whatever you can to justify the non-craziness of what you are doing (even if it is a little crazy, when you step back from it). If you are out on convoys in Afghanistan, take strength from feeling good about having your gear on all set up right and ready to go, the armor of the vehicle, the drills your team just practiced, the fact that you did some good route planning; justify it to yourself and build a little mental confidence.

  A fearful nature will dwell on the possibilities too much and yes, your perfectly set up gear rig will not stop that IED from tearing through the vehicle, but let’s be a little in denial of that so we can get our job done.

  Blog Post

  The Fundamentals of Shooting:

  The fundamentals of shooting are not a secret and neither are they rocket science. However, it is vitally important to get it right and practice, practice, practice. In my opinion it is vital to get the fundamentals right before progressing to any 'high speed' combat style shooting.

  The U.S. Army taught fundamentals of Marksmanship can be summarized as:

  Steady Position

  Aiming

  Breath Control

  Trigger Squeeze

  And to show that these are not a secret, you can read all about it in detail online.

  In my opinion, correct shooting tra
ining should progress from the solid basics up through increasingly dynamic combat/tactical style training. If you don't get the basics right, you will not have the solid foundation to build on for the more dynamic stuff.

  On my Combat Rifle / Contact Drills (CRCD) course, I cover these basics on the first morning, as a 'remind and revise' before moving on. It’s important to note that I expect those attending my course to already know how to shoot and handle their weapons at a basic level, such as square range or target shooting. My course is designed as a transition from such shooting to a combat environment.

  In my training experience, spanning British Army Paratroopers through local nationals and contractors in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, I have always looked back to British Army techniques, such as used in the Systems Approach to Training (SAT) used with British Army infantry recruits. Marksmanship training will follow a process based on the following:

  Grouping & Zeroing: the basics of marksmanship, shot grouping etc.

  Application of Fire: shooting out to various ranges to take account of range and wind effects, watching fall of shot, estimating range and adjusting sights/point of aim accordingly; short exposures of the targets and multiple targets at various ranges.

  Transition to Field Firing: Controlled ranges to introduce movement of the firer, movement of the target, reaction drills, exposure times for the target, multiple targets and engagement under combat conditions.

  Field Firing: Tactical engagements under combat conditions, moving from individual up to unit formations. Battle drills, suppression, tactics, assault, break contact etc.

  What you get when you attend my CRCD course is a weekends training that takes you from your square range experience and moves you through transition to field firing on to field firing.

  The British Army 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.

  Immediately you can see 1) the fundamental application of this all the way up from range shooting through field firing and reactive close range combat shooting 2) although some of these principles are harder to apply in a dynamic situation they will still be your basic foundation as you move on to dynamic combat environments etc.

  OK, so let’s take a look and summarize the application of these principles:

  1) The position and hold must be firm enough to support the weapon: this is about building that position using natural body physiology and without excessive strain. Depending on the position, you will always need some muscular effort to hold the rifle in position, but you need to minimize this and relax as much as possible. Muscular effort means strain and ultimately shaking and fatigue, all messing up your group.

  Let’s take the prone position as the starting point and the example. As you build up to other positions, such as kneeling or standing, the principles apply but you will find yourself with less support and more of a requirement to use muscular effort to hold the rifle up.

  Prone: view the position as a tripod (as are all positions, the prone providing the most support). You support the rifle with your non-firing hand and the elbow on the ground is the first point of the tripod, the butt of the rifle is tucked into the pocket of your shoulder and between the two the rifle should sit there naturally. The rifle rests on that non-firing hand without excessive grip or effort. Your firing hand grips the pistol grip and will operate the trigger. The elbow on the firing arm is the second point of the tripod. You should be able to take the firing hand off the rifle (for example to work a bolt) without the rifle moving, supported by the non-firing hand and the pocket of your shoulder. The final leg of the tripod is provided by your torso/hips where it touches the ground.

  You are gently using the non-firing hand to pull the rifle back into the pocket of your shoulder and other than that there is no excessive muscular force used.

  2) The weapon must point naturally at the target without any undue physical effort: you must set up your 'tripod' so that the weapon points naturally at the correct point of aim. The correct point of aim must be the same as the natural point of aim. The natural point of aim is where the rifle will point if you relax and don't use muscular force to haul it over in one direction or another. The way you can figure this out is to close both eyes, relax and breath naturally. When you open your firing eye you will see where the sights are pointing. It should be at the target, but probably won't be! Imagine you are on a pop-up target range out to 300 meters. Targets will come up at various ranges and off to each side of the axis. The lazy thing is to just haul the barrel over each time and take a shot. The other way you find out your natural point aim is seeing where the sights settle once you have released your shot - unless they settle back on the correct point of aim, your natural point of aim is not correct.

  The way to do it is to move your 'tripod' so that you are correctly aligned with your target. This means moving your torso/hips, To move your natural point of aim right, move your legs/torso left. To depress your barrel, move your hips forward, to raise your aim, move your hips back. Thus, if you are conducting an application of fire shoot on a pop-up range, you should be moving dynamically with your hips as the targets appear, not just hauling the barrel over with your forearms.

  3) Sight alignment (i.e. aiming) must be correct: Before I go into this, note that if you are waiting to engage targets, you should have both eyes open and looking over the top of your sights. To not do so will reduce your awareness of the battlefield and target acquisition. It will also produce tunnel vision, particularly with narrow field of view optics, which will lead to awareness and fratricide problems when you move onto field firing. At closer ranges and also with particular sights designed as such (ACOG etc.) you will engage with both eyes open. As ranges increase, you will move back to your fundamentals and it becomes more like range shooting, closing the non-firing eye to take the shot.

  Check the linked U.S. Army Study guide above for diagrams on correct sight alignment. Sight alignment is closely tied in with natural point of aim and breathing. Once you have set up your 'tripod' to establish that natural point of aim, you should be breathing naturally. When you do so, the sights will move up and down: as you breathe in, the sights will depress (chest rises) and as you breath out the sights will rise (chest falls). See-saw action. The correct time to take the shot is to time it so that as you breathe out, the sights rise onto the correct point of aim and you pause to hold your breath to squeeze the shot, and then continue. Don't hold your breath too long, or you will start to shake and it will all go blurry. If you mess up, just keep breathing and try again. Doing it this way, if aiming at a single target to get a group, you can simply breathe and take steady shots each time the sights align, thus getting a good group and not disturbing your position.

  Note, in the early stages of marksmanship training, its all about getting a good tight group. This indicates application of the fundamentals and will transfer to your more advanced shooting in the form of greater accuracy. Target style shooting is the bedrock and tight groups will allow you to move forwards to field firing with better skill. Don't forget your Appleseed!

  Note that your correct focus is not on the rear sight or the target, but on the front sight. You should be focusing on the front sight as you release your shot. If you have a consistent position, cheek weld and thus sight alignment and you place the front sight on the target as you release the shot, you will not miss.

  4) The shot must be released and followed through without disturbance to the position: This means that you will not snatch the shot. There is natural recoil and your body will absorb that. If you have a natural point of aim the sights will settle back into the correct position, you continue breathing, and get ready for the next shot. When you pull the tri
gger for deliberate shooting like this, you will hold it to the rear until the shot has released, then deliberately let it forward. There should be an audible click as you let the trigger go forward. That is how you ensure you do not snatch your shots.

  Application: It is vital that you get a solid basis in this kind of marksmanship training and application of the fundamentals. When you move onto transition to field firing, field firing, reactive shooting and any kind of close quarters stuff, you will not be able to apply the fundamentals in such a deliberate way. But you need them as your foundation.

  In a combat environment you will be moving, taking up odd fire positions behind whatever cover is available, breathing hard as you conduct movement on the battlefield. This will make it hard to apply the deliberate principles. You will not have a steady breathing pattern and in a kneeling or standing position you may be simply 'holding the wobble' as you take the shot. You may be muscling the rifle around to engage targets. You will not have time to hold the trigger to the rear, you may be firing rapid shots. However, with the fundamentals behind you and a good natural position on the rifle, you should be able to bring it, with practice, into a better natural aiming position and have a better chance of getting off accurate shots.

  I make it a point of not being an advocate or 'fundamentalist' for any of the various styles, alternatives, fads to whatever of shooting positions and equipment, in particular for standing close quarters engagements. I simply advocate that you do what works for you. If you are an old dog, it may be harder for you to learn new tricks, so do what works based on the solid fundamentals. In one of my classes, you won't be upright for long anyway, you will be taking cover!