AAR Shivworks AMIS Oct. 12 & 13, OK City (somewhat long)
The class was taught by Southnarc (Craig Douglas) and hosted by Spencer Keepers in Yukon, OK (a suburb of OKC). I’m sure Craig needs no introduction if you are even remotely serious about training. He is a straight-up stud with regard to the subject matter he teaches. He’s not only a BTDT in the real world, but he’s a great teacher/communicator as well. In my experience, there are a bunch of guys out there with knowledge on any given subject who are horrible at teaching that knowledge to others. If you find someone (in any field) who’s world class at both you’re lucky. I’ve taken numerous classes from numerous instructors and I put Craig at the top of the heap (along with Pat McNamara). If either offered any class-- even tactical basket weaving- I’d find a way to get there if I could as I’m sure I’d learn something useful. Spencer Keepers is a super cool dude who makes a top notch AIWB holster and is an excellent shooter in his own right. He did a great job hosting the class, which I’m sure wasn’t as easy as he made it look.
The class was Armed Movements in Structures. It is exactly what it sounds like-- moving around through a building with a gun while trying not to get shot by bad guys. The class was geared toward a singleton working in this environment. There are numerous classes which teach room clearing as part of a team, but this class isn’t one of them. As a civilian, if I’m ever in a situation where I have to clear rooms, things will have had to go horribly wrong. A bump in the night where I have to make my way up to my kids’ rooms comes to mind. In other words, I don’t do this for a living nor do I have a team stacking up behind me. I’d be on my own… a scary proposition.
This is a very difficult AAR to write. I learned so much I don’t know where to begin. To put it in perspective, I took Southnarc’s ECQC this spring and have sat down to write an AAR several times since. Each time, I couldn’t find a way to write it up that would do justice to the class-- it really changed how I deal with everyday situations. This class is similar, but more narrowly focused. As such, it is an easier AAR to compose.
TD1:
Day one began at 0800 where we met in the parking lot. The facility Spencer lined up was cool. It used to be a car dealership but now is owned by a company that makes custom interiors for horse trailers. This allowed Craig to divvy the facility up into four distinct sections. The four sections replicated an office setting, a home setting, a big-box store, and a warehouse. There were tons of nooks and crannies in each section which made clearing them a difficult and dangerous process.
We started out with a brief intro and then went around the room so people could introduce themselves and give a brief background as to their previous training. It should be noted that the vast majority of the class had taken classes from Craig previously-- a real statement as to the quality of his classes. The class was made up of 18 students from various backgrounds (thankfully, I wasn’t the only attorney because, for some reason, attorneys get picked on at these types of classes). Most were civilians without a ton of prior training in door-kicking. There were a couple of LEOs there, as well. One guy in particular was an officer from Tulsa who was GOOD at this stuff. He stated that he has to enter/clear about two houses per week. At the hot wash at the very end, he stated that this was the best, most practical training he had ever received on the subject-- high praise. As was the case with ECQC, this was a relatively “douche-free” zone. There was one guy who was inching toward tampon status, but he was somewhat tolerable…
After the intros, Craig gave a brief presentation/lecture on the subject matter. This was helpful as it laid a foundation for what we’d be doing for the next two days. Next we viewed a closed circuit video of an armed encounter which turned deadly for the officers involved. It drove home the points Craig was making as to the spatial relationship between you and the bad guy(s). It also showed the importance of the geometry and angles, as well as movement. Craig explained the staccato pace of movement as dictated by the situation and environment. Apparently you can’t just bum rush every situation-- who knew?
Then we broke out the dry erase board and Craig drew an overhead view of a somewhat complex building layout. Students were chosen to come up to the board and demonstrate with a marker how they would handle the various problems that confronted them. While doing so, Craig and the rest of the class would discuss different options and methods. This was awesome because I think if you know the “why” behind what to do and not to do it makes your decision making exponentially better. This seemed like an easy process until I was chosen to be the guy with the marker. When you’re the one making the decisions, it is much more difficult as opposed to pointing out what someone else did wrong. The key takeaway to this exercise was that sometimes (often times) there is no “right,” safe answer. Some answers are merely less wrong than others. Either way, clearing a house with a (potentially) armed adversary is NEVER a safe endeavor.
After this, we broke into four groups. Each group was assigned a route to work. This was the classic crawl-walk-run scenario. Craig floated between the various groups and coached, but fellow students did a lot of coaching too. I was lucky to have Dave (the Tulsa officer) in my group who picked up on this stuff pretty quickly and was quick to help out if the rest of us had problems. The early runs were done with a cleared gun (i.e. no ammo or mags) and progressed to force on force later. This class was strictly airsoft only. After each meal break, we were patted down to ensure no live weapons were present. The day progressed like this with each evolution getting a little more intense and with weapons/hostiles gradually being thrown into the mix.
After lunch, there was more of the same. A steady progression of building then refining skills. There was a ton of info to take in, but we ate the elephant one bite at a time so it never felt overwhelming. During each evo throughout the day, the teams went to a different route. Toward the middle of the afternoon, it began to feel like a grown-up version of hide and seek-- but much more intense. Actually doing something rather than just hearing about doing it really drives the point home. And actually getting shot for not doing something correctly makes the point even more apparent! (I counted 14 different welts on my body at the hotel later that night).
We broke for supper and most of us went to a nice Mexican restaurant for supper. I had a couple of beers because I “train as I fight” and I sure wouldn’t want to fight sober! Craig picked up the tab for all of us. Craig, if you read this, thanks!
After we got back it was getting good and dark. That began the low light/no light phase. I’d never done much low light work before, but it was AWESOME! I loved it. As most of you probably already know, lack of light throws a whole new wrinkle into things. Craig demonstrated the light technique he advocates and it is very effective. He is stealthy as hell while moving through the dark. His use of a strobe made it all but impossible to actually know where the hell he was. I’ve read several AARs and seen some videos on the innerwebs that show his techniques, so I won’t repeat them here. Suffice it to say they worked. We continued to work though our routes with only our handheld and WMLs. This was eye opening. We broke for the day at 2230. A fourteen hour day that was crammed full of new information-- this was truly drinking from the fire hose.
TD2:
Day two began at 0900. We took up where we left off the previous night. Craig said he expected to see our techniques much more refined than the previous day. He was right. Everyone was smoother and more at ease on day two. We also added a couple of new components to the mix. Now we had a new category of people to deal with: we still had “shoots” and “no-shoots”, but we added “don’t shoot yets.” These were just what they sound like, people who may deserve to be shot, but may not. We were forced to deal with these guys, some of whom were drunk and/or just general shit heads. For those who have taken ECQC, this was similar to the MUC (Managing Unknown Contacts) situation. But in this case, we had the unknowns at gun point and had to process them. Not an easy proposition. We worked steadily all day building and refining toward the final evo.
Late afternoon, Craig had us all muster in the back warehouse (Route 4) to brief us on our final evo. He grabbed three role players (all AMIS alums) and took them to Route 3 (the simulated house set-up) to get them in place. I was the first one to go through the final evo (which was good because I was nervous and didn’t want to wait). My scenario was that I was awakened from a sleep by a strange noise and needed to go investigate. I was told that my dim-witted nephew was in a back bedroom and that we were the only two who were supposed to be in the house.
Spencer (one of the role players) was able to devastate my OODA loop early on with a prop and it seemed to go downhill from there. On the bright side, I didn’t shoot my dim-witted nephew. Once everyone (including the role players) had cycled through their own evo, we mustered in the main room for a hot wash. I was on the road headed home by 1930 Sunday night.
My Take-aways from the class: (in no particular order)
- This shit is dangerous. With my kids in bedrooms upstairs, I’m seriously considering an inside dog like a GSD. There is literally no safe way to get from my bedroom up to theirs-- so maybe an 80 pound missile of fur and teeth is the answer.
- I’m terrible at dealing with non-compliant people. For the most part, I’m used to people doing what I say or at least being rational. When I deal with shitbirds, they are usually on their best behavior and not in their natural state (****ed up on some substance and looking for trouble). I need to work on this and get out of my comfort zone.
- Re-evaluate/change the searching technique I use with a handheld light. After the first night, I counted five welts on my left forearm. I had been holding my light in a neck index while searching. The light drew fire. Period. Once I started holding the light out, away from my body I became more difficult to hit.
- The above concept applies for WML, too. Light draws fire, so I will not turn on my WML and search with it. I’ll carry a handheld to search with and my WML will be reserved for actually lighting up a threat in conjunction with shooting.
- Rethink my gear selection. I love my Surefires, but a strobe feature seems valuable in my situation (singleton trying to move through known territory to secure little ones). Maybe not for guys with a team stacked up behind them, but for me it makes sense.
- This class (along with ECQC) is a definite re-take class. I think I could take both of these classes 10 times and still learn something useful. I plan to take them both again next year-- I’m looking forward to taking AMIS again, ECQC, not so much as it was a painful, humbling gut-check… but one that was and is necessary.
- I look at rooms/stores/buildings/etc. differently now. I’ve always been pretty good at maintaining situational awareness, but this class sharpened that edge. I look at these places from the perspective of where I’d be if I were a bad guy looking to do bad things.
- The world is a scary place… it’s good to be prepared.