This is the most accurate statement in the thread. I work in the Army TRADOC range management program. The biggest factor is range space and time; AND the balance of training. Remember, the average new trainee has no experience with firearms. You have ten weeks to teach them to be basic trained soldiers. Firearms training is important, but there are a lot of other skills the soldiers also have to train on. There is no way possible that the Army can justify spending the time and money to get every soldier an M4C/Magpul “expert” with their weapons.
The level of proficiency achieved is enough to safely handle their weapons and engage the enemy during tactical maneuvers. Tactics at the basic level is simple move and fire with a buddy, and that is the building block for everything else.
Most of my more advance firearm skills and knowledge were acquired on my own outside of the Army. But having said that, I have seen how effective baseline firearm skills are when applied with the proper tactics. As in, tactics equate getting the shooter and weapon system in a position of advantage to engage the enemy, and have nothing to do with actual firearm handling/shooting.
I think some people also forget about all the training that we, specifically Infantry, get that civilians can’t even touch.
1st, there is a distinct difference between firearms training and tactical training, as in training tactics. Military tactics involve working as a team.
Most civilian shooting situations involve a lone shooter, as in a CCW self defense shot or home defense. In these situations, you have nobody to maneuver with. Your “tactics” are very much different and your situation will very likely boil down to good gun handling, i.e. who shoots faster accurately…
Military tactics maneuver, supporting fire/elements, etc. Actual firearm handling is far less important than the proper use of tactics. Firearms skills will not save you if you walk into a well set ambush, nor will they save you if your opponent out maneuvers you.
Right. If you are operating in a team and are engaging multiple enemies, the tactics that the Military are going to be VERY IMPORTANT. Remember though that Civy’s CAN and DO tactics training. At least once a year, I do 2 man and 4 man CQB low light/no light training. This level of training is most likely superior to what the majority of the Military receives.
A good balance of training for .Mil trigger pullers is most likely the best way to ensure that they are getting what they need. Tactics training via the Military, gun handling, accuracy, CQB/low light via the private sector.
Actually, we are not necessarily the best military in the world. We think we are the best, because we WIN. We WIN because our system rocks. Our system rocks, because we have tremendous resources.
Where we fail, is that we neglect basic soldier skills because of all of the above. Which occasionally bites us in the ass when exposed. Soldier for soldier we are nowhere as good as “we” think we are.
The two/four man training you have, correct me if I am wrong, is still focused on specific tasks. I agree with your assessment, but my experience is that lots of good trianing goes on with the right people, depending on the unit and mission. Some of it is generated by civilian training. I learned a lot outside of the Army that I subsequently brought back into the Army when training my people.
The hard part is conducting collective task training. For example;
Task: Conduct two man movement while engaging targets. Involves a few subtasks, such as engage targets, move with a weapon, and move as part of a team.
A collective event might be like this (for military);
Task: Conduct ambush as named location no later than…
Perform planning- subtasks, route recon, resupply, brief plan (OPORD), rehearsals, etc.
Perform movement- subtasks, move as platoon/squad (not easy, way harder at night), land navigation, security, possible react to contact, set up objective rally point
Recon objective- subtasks, brief contigency plan, move as team, recon objective, emplace security, perform link up with friendly forces (very hard)
Emplace ambush- subtasks, emplace machine gun
Execute ambush- subtasks, employ weapon (day/night), assault as team, clear objective (EPW sweep), form perimeter (difficult at night), movement as platoon to ORP
etc…
The point is, for military, a lot of work goes into a mission before anybody even thinks about putting their finger on a trigger. That requires a lot of training. For a civilian, you can be Joe Blow asleep in your bed, and a guy breaks in your house. Now you are seconds away from employing a firearm…
Part of the issue the Army faces now is that they are trying to do to much in the way of firearms training with raw recruits, and they are not getting the basics down before they are exposed to the more advanced shooting.
Yes, tasks. Like clearing the room. There is a flow to it though and what your doing or the position you are in could change with each and every room.
I have never been in the Army so will take your word for it.
The hard part is conducting collective task training. For example;
Task: Conduct two man movement while engaging targets. Involves a few subtasks, such as engage targets, move with a weapon, and move as part of a team.
A collective event might be like this (for military);
Task: Conduct ambush as named location no later than…
Perform planning- subtasks, route recon, resupply, brief plan (OPORD), rehearsals, etc.
Perform movement- subtasks, move as platoon/squad (not easy, way harder at night), land navigation, security, possible react to contact, set up objective rally point
Recon objective- subtasks, brief contigency plan, move as team, recon objective, emplace security, perform link up with friendly forces (very hard)
Emplace ambush- subtasks, emplace machine gun
Execute ambush- subtasks, employ weapon (day/night), assault as team, clear objective (EPW sweep), form perimeter (difficult at night), movement as platoon to ORP
etc…
The point is, for military, a lot of work goes into a mission before anybody even thinks about putting their finger on a trigger. That requires a lot of training.
Part of the issue the Army faces now is that they are trying to do to much in the way of firearms training with raw recruits, and they are not getting the basics down before they are exposed to the more advanced shooting.
Agreed, however, I still hold the senior NCOs/Officers responsible for developing necessary individual war fighting skills in their troops. Like several folks have stated in the pass, there are plenty of active duty resources to tap into, but don’t. Manly because of pig headed commanders from above worrying about exceeding their annual training budget or ignorance. They can request more money prior to predeployment training for live fire range seminars through the USAMU (who has gone into Theater to conduct training with Infantry units) and Army SOCOM, SFCOM, etc…but don’t know they can, or think that the reinforcement of “basic” marksmanship is enough. That said, you can still train them in dry fire exercises, weapons manipulations, etc…that wouldn’t exceed the annual budget, and still give the troops an edge.
A lot of commanders do in fact pull out the stops to get the training they can. And the best training takes place below the training budget level, platoon and squad level. We did lots of innovative marksmanship training not Army approved in 2003 prior to deployment to Kuwait. But at the same time, advanced marksmanship training for even Infantry units is not always the highest priority, nor should it always be the highest priority.
But I agree it is a leadership issue on all training, some leaders are good at training and some aren’t. That has nothing to do with the issue of civilian marksmanship training versus military.
An average Infantry platoon put through a carbine shooting match, 3 gun style (but with just their assigned weapon) will most likely lose badly to your average group of 3 gun shooters.
Conversely, you average group of 3 gun shooters will have probably zero efficiency on the battlefield and will be completely incapable of employing their weapons effectively. The level of training required to operate as a unit and employ even basic infantry tactics is much higher than I think some people imagine. Especially if you are under fire. Imagine/remember how difficult it is to perform in a stress shoot if you are not completely proficient at your task. Now imagine doing the countless tasks surrounding unit maneuver under fire.
Civilian marksmanship versus military marksmanship is a matter of priority and purpose. Military marksmanship only comes into play at the sharp end of endless other tasks.
Correct. I addressed the military side of the thread. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to address one side of the discussion, without addressing the other. :rolleyes:
I was British Army, around 11 years regular and some reserve stuff afterwards…I was also a British Bobby, yes, yes one of those funny Cops that don’t carry a gun and wears a silly hat.
Basic training for infantry appears to be longer in the UK than in the USA, someone above mentioned 10 weeks. I think ours runs at around 14 weeks for cooks and bottle washers at the moment and infantry is nearly 6 months. I know that the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines have to do 6 months before they get sent to a unit.
There is initially training in use of the personal weapon which lays the foundations of shooting and marksmanship. The fundamentals of shooting are then built on to include moving pairs, moving sections and moving platoons in full on platoon attacks.
Nowadays, and I have this from people who do the job now, the black arts of room clearance are taught to infantry personnel. Remember that around 9 or 10 years back this was an SF only skill and very few got to see, let alone, use stun grenades.
I remember back in the 80’s when I arrived at the Close Protection Unit to do their EOD. I was a sport IPSC shooter and had been shooting one thing or another for 20 years by that time. The unit had three training days a week that you attended if you were not working or on a job. I rolled up at my first one thinking these guys must all be gods able to handle weapons like experts. Within an hour they were around me asking where I had learned to shoot and what were these mag changes and other moves I was doing … all basic IPSC stuff. For the next 3’ish years I ran a weekly class for them and used to take the unit firearms coach and a couple of others to IPSC matches in Belgium so that they could learn more.
I also know that UKSF (Tier One) receive their specialist pistol training from outside the box, enuff said. I further know that the Magpul DVD’s were well received by certain members of a particular SF Troop when they got a set of them for christmas … I played Santa.
Truth. It’s very different to run and gun when you have to lug around a bunch of gear, with armor, an ACH, and you have other soldiers to think about. Add to that the fact that you are sweating to death or freezing, and your constipated from MRE’s, and you’ve only had sex by yourself for a long time.
It’s just different. Though, there is something to be learned in carbine class, because your typical soldier has very limited trigger time every year. My last qual still had combat vets who flinched when they fired their weapon. They just dont shoot enough to get comfortable.
This is true for larger agencies’ teams primarily. For the most part, part time teams, by far the majority of teams in the U.S., also don’t get the training that they need.
I would add that a lot of what SWAT does at training is sometimes perceived as “high speed” by others at my agency, should be regular training across the board.
I remember back in the bad old days of the '80s, when we faced off against the Soviets, and were told how bad their soldiers sucked, because they were alloted XX ridiculous small number of rounds a year to train.
I remember feeling damned superior to them, forgetting, in my arrogance that we were alloted 14 rounds to zero and 40 rounds to fire for record, once a year. And we were a forward deployed CAV unit, right on the border.
Back to training, though. Civilians can do something military usually cannot do; they can develop a taxonomy of their day to day lives (what they do, where they go, how they get there) and develop training scenarios for the most likely places they will need to use their firearms skills or possibly even most places they might need their firearms skills and then approximate those conditions on the range and train for them by developing drills and working on each step of the process. They can also do repetitive iterations until they get it right.
I think its sad when we can use a multi-million dollar piece of ordnance to take out a pickup truck with a few insurgents, but can’t come up with enough money to train soldiers how to shoot properly.
We are the best military in the world because of technology. We certainly aren’t on basic soldiering skills. That could very easily come back to haunt us one day.
I agree that marksmanship is not the be all and end all of soldiering skills by any means, but the level I see is often flat out sad. I’ve passed along as much as I can from classes I have taken and most soldiers are hungry for that information. But as has already been said, most don’t know what they have been missing and a Private with a wife and couple of kids cannot even consider coughing up the money for a class and ammo.