AAR - Redback One Combat Carbine
Date: October 25-26, 2014
Location: C2 Shooting Center, Virginia Beach, VA
Weather: cool early finishing in the low 70s
The who:
Instructor: Jason Falla
Students: Me (10+ year LEO), another LEO from near by my home (hereafter “poor guy”), a Coast Guard tactical officer (hereafter “that guy”), an IT professional (hereafter “hipster”) and a doctor (“Doc”)
Yeah you read right, 5 students. Instructor to student ratio was awesome. Major kudos to Jason for going ahead with the class when he could have easily said “sorry not enough interest.” In the end several of us said we’d go a little higher on the class rate if we could keep class size smaller.
The gear:
Jason was rocking a sweet new KAC 11.5" full auto suppressed beast. Having not gone third click much recently he rode the safety to auto once and let loose a burst once (of course intending to go semi), switched between his Salient Glock and a more stock looking model.
I used a BCM MID-16 Mod 2, Eotech EXPS 2.0 and PMAGs lubed with Frog Lube. Gen 4 Glock 22 with a TLR-1. hSGI Costa leg red and a generic dump pouch all mounted to an HSGI 1.5" cobra belt. Ammo was all 5.56 spec 55 grain from various manufacturers. Aside from one or two PMAGs being a little tough to seat, I had no equipment problems. 50 yard zero on irons and optic.
Poor Guy used a brand new DDM4. He used a gen 3 Glock .40. Her got the name poor guy because neither gun ran well. The short story on the Glock was light primer strikes. The DD was choking on his ammo. We collected dozens of his unfired but beat to crap rounds at the end of the day. An ammo switch did much to rectify the problem. He said he was shooting Lake city 55 grain factory new.
That Guy was decked out head to toe (literally) in PenCott Green Zone. chest rig, camelback. Everything. He was using a facing AK upper on I think a Rainier lower, chambered in 5.56. He’s commissioned coast guard in one of their tactical units in the tidewater area. Glock as a secondary.
Doc is a medical doctor in the local area. He shot a Noveske rifle and a Glock. He had a few malfunctions, double feeds mostly I think.
Hipster, he hates being called that, had a mix and match SBR with Vortex variable pose glass on top. Also shot a Glock.
Everyone knew their nickname. We had fun with them.
The range:
C2 has a public range and a separate area for classes only. We used the larger area which gave use the ability to shoot in two directions. For one exercise, we turned to face a corner which allowed shooting targets from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock. That’s some serious area to cover. The hiccup, and it was significant, was day 2. We anticipated starting live fire an hour late for Sunday rules. That turned into 3 hours late because of some type of zoning issue. That was not communicated to RB1 in advance. Shifting on the fly, Jason ran a three hour block of CQB tactics with simuntions. It really showed the value of Jason’s preferred method of high ready weapon handling. So rather than just being instructed in how, we got the why. Downside was round count. Everyone loves to shoot a lot in a class and missing three hours put a dent in that. I’m not going to post a round count (because I don’t have one yet) but it was well south of the 1000 round guideline. A wild guess would be 600-700 rifle rounds and 200 pistol rounds.
Day 1:
A safety and equipment brief was given.
We leapt right in with Jason’s Operator Readiness Test. 10 rounds carbine to lock back, transition to pistol, 10 rounds to lock back, reload pistol, 2 rounds pistol, transition to carbine, reload and 2 rounds carbine. All for time from the seven. Loading the first damn round is where I experienced a tough seating PMAG. A great start.
We moved on to mechanical offset drills. I got pretty good at using the lower hash mark on the Eotech as a point of aim to get point of aim point of impact here. It was something I’ve been meaning to try. Seems like it works pretty well.
We wasted no time with zeroing. You either had a zeroed rifle or you didn’t. Seems as everyone did.
Reloading and transition drills were the next order of the day. Here is where Jason’s “control point” focus gets very useful. It would became a critical building block for the remainder of the class.
During lunch, Jason covered tactical medicine. Always useful.
After lunch we covered malfunction drills. The final exercise for that was a time run threw three rifles which Jason setup with various malfunctions. My SSA trigger got him apparently. “What kind of trigga have you got in there.” He thought he had a dead trigger until it went off. Of course that ARAK founds its way as one of the guns into that drill. Weird. Just weird.
We finished with that extreme angle shooting drill and learning his preferred method of footwork.
Day 2:
We started with the CQB block. I really can’t do justice to this. You really have to go see Jason in person.
Bilateral shooting was the big lesson for day 2. Moving the rifle from one shoulder to the other wasn’t as easy as I thought. With reps though it started to become natural. This is where his control point is critical. It also builds off his footwork lessons. Don’t be afraid to shoot off the foot on the same side as your weapon. With barricades it was very helpful. This also covered some malfunction and weapon manipulation from the non dominant side.
We did some work moving from barricade to barricade and a single then with partners and ultimately as a group of 5. Shoot, move and communicate was the order of business here. With all five shooters on the line at once and going through the line twice without stopping, we cooked threw a lot of ammo.
We practiced our rifle to pistol transitions again and turning to engage threats from off angles. We called it a day with another go at the Operator Readiness Test. I shaved two seconds off my initial time but managed to throw a couple rounds outside the acceptable target area while doing so.
Jason ran a pretty loose range (if that’s the proper way to put it?). Instead of constantly calling threat to keep the line in sync, because there were only five of us, he let us go at our own pace. Only loose instructions like “do it five times from each side” or “a full magazine’s worth.” Want so slow down and worth the drill threw by the numbers? Go ahead. Want to push yourself? Rock on.
He has a strict no pictures/video policy by students. He did have Carlo, his media guy, there taking pictures throughout though. Carlo did get in on the shooting too. That seems like a good gig.
It took a run at Jason’s SBR at the end. I’d never shot full auto or short barreled or suppressed before. Fun stuff. Now I get the gas to face thing.
At the end of the day we found one steel target that had a couple clean shoot-throughs. Jason wasn’t real happy about that. We couldn’t figure it out as everyone was shooting 55 grain FMJ, not penetrator. Really weird to see.
Lots of new stuff learned. Lots of laughs were had. I’m eagerly waiting for another RB1 class next year.