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View Full Version : AAR: CSAT Advanced Individual Tactics, 14-16 November 2014, Nacogdoches, Texas



Chance
11-20-2014, 04:46 PM
BLUF

Phenomenal course, and highly recommended for everyone.

The School

I’ve covered CSAT previously (http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?11534-AAR-Combat-Shooting-and-Tactics-Tactical-Pistol-Operator-1-2-March-2014), but I will repost here for the sake of completeness.

CSAT is in Nacogdoches, TX, which is about two hours north from Houston and around three hours south east of D/FW. Nacogdoches is home to Stephen F. Austin State University and makes for a fairly nice town. Plenty of restaurants around and a selection of places to stay. The CSAT classroom and barracks are about a four minute drive from town, and the range is just down the road from that.

The barracks are very nice. Washer, dryer, refrigerators, showers, restrooms, ironing board and sofas. The classroom has plenty of desk space to spread out and work on what have you, and an LCD projector if you want to hook up your laptop and watch movies - Paul has a few movies there as well as every Panteao DVD available. There’s no stovetop, but there is a grill out back and at least two microwaves and a toaster oven that I saw. The bunk beds are split into five rooms. Clean linens, towels, mattress covers and pillowcases are all provided. And free WiFi!

The range facilities are very large, and I’ve yet to see all of it. There are three shoot houses, two of which are live fire and the other is sim only. The shoot houses are not 360 degrees, but the rooms are configured in such a manner that you can stress whatever CQB technique you’re trying to convey. There is a vehicle grave yard range, set up to mimic a parking lot – plenty of space, and vehicles arranged in all different orientations so you can practice your cover. Multiple pistol and rifle ranges as well, with one going out to 800 yards that is due to be lengthened to 1000 yards next year. The ranges are top notch and there’s permanent cover adjacent to all of them.

One nice thing I appreciated was that you can pull up and park right next to where you’re going to be shooting. There’s no unpacking all your gear onto a trailer, then towing the trailer to the tables, which are set up sixty yards away from the firing line for some reason. The entire time, I never pulled anything out of my car, I just worked from the trunk. Very convenient.

In AIT, the focus is on pistols, but everything else you can run however you want: full kit, concealment, somewhere in between, et cetera (other courses dictate certain carry methods or equipment configurations). Paul’s ‘Civilian Response to Active Shooters’ course covers much of the singleton CQB basics, as well as covering Paul’s preferred system for setting up ‘active response’ bags. ‘Active response’ bags usually include your weapon system, as well as your medical gear. Subsequent exercises always assumed you had a SOF-T in a rapidly deployable state.

The Instructors

I have described Howe’s CV in a previous post (http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?11534-AAR-Combat-Shooting-and-Tactics-Tactical-Pistol-Operator-1-2-March-2014). I assume everyone on this forum knows Howe, but I’ll include here for the sake of completeness.

Paul is former Army, ten years of which was spent in special operations (Paul never uses the ‘D’ word). His experiences include both Panama and Somalia. During the Battle of the Black Sea, he was part of the assault element tasked with capturing persons of interest at the initial target building of the raid, then spent the night at the crash site of Super Six One. He was featured prominently in Mark Bowden’s outstanding book Black Hawk Down and Paul now his own interview with Panteao regarding the events that took place.

He has a Master’s degree from Stephen F. Austin with his thesis focusing on the military’s interaction, and subsequent distancing, from the media. He also has his own book, Leadership and Training for the Fight, which is an excellent read on everything from effectively delegating responsibilities to keeping PowerPoint presentations interesting.

Nick Stewart is a sergeant (recently promoted) with the Nacogdoches Police Department, and works with their SWAT team as well as their Street Crimes Unit. Nacogdoches, and the surrounding communities, is a surprisingly seedy place, and Nick had actually been up late serving a warrant the night before the class started. Nick is an easy-going, affable guy and actively solicited questions while throwing in various pointers whilst we ran through the exercises. He was exceptionally well-versed in Paul’s system, as well as referencing a plethora of his own experience. Nick is the owner and operator of CSAT’s pro shop, and goes above and beyond to make sure he gets his orders right.

Dave, whose last name I unfortunately didn’t catch, is a recent graduate of Paul’s instructor course. He’s presently in training, so is not officially part of the CSAT instructor roster yet. He spent time in the British Army as a scout sniper, and, as such, has an affinity for long range shooting. Dave is a gun nut: he brought his suppressed HK45 to class and let students play with it, and has played an active role in the development of a takedown AR-15 intended for motorcycle cops (it’s an AR pistol, with a Law Tactical folder, SIG brace, and a quick detach barrel / hand guard / gas tube. The package, disassembled, is about 12” long and can be assembled in seconds. My understanding is that it’s going to be available exclusively through the CSAT store, and I think he sold three or four on the spot.) He works for a company, based in the Houston area, that is the only organization in the US that can teach explosives skills to civilians. Subsequently, his stories of TSA encounters were pretty amusing.

Dave is British. Very, very British. He knows his stuff, is approachable, solicits questions, and is more than happy to prattle on about any shooting-related trivia students were interested in during the down time.

Class Makeup

There were eighteen students total, making the instructor to student ratio 1:6. Most students seemed to be from Texas, with the Houston-area being well represented, but others flew in from as far as California, Colorado, and the Carolinas. Hearing the students from California talk about life behind the Granola Curtain was far more upsetting than any video Paul had of actual gun fights.

All of the students were experienced shooters, and there were no “that guys” so far as I was aware. The class was divided into three teams, and each team was always at a different training station. Other than the final scenarios run on the last day of class, there was very little ass time.

The pistols represented were: lots of Glock 9s, at least one Glock 23, a 1911, an XDS, an M&P, and a Beretta 92FS. Paul is a big fan of Berettas: you could tell because every time he mentioned the gun he said something along the lines of, “That’s a great gun” and took to calling the respective shooter his “Beretta brother.”

With regards to lights, many seemed to have Streamlights. There were a few S&W lights, and nowhere near as many Surefires as I would have anticipated (maybe five or six students). Paul is a fan of Surefire, and Fenix. I was not aware of Fenix, but they’re about a fourth as expensive as Surefire lights, seemed to work about as well, and Paul has yet to see have one break (he uses them personally).

Day 1

Day 1 began in the classroom. Paul covered a few basics, as in where the load / unload points for the barracks were, and the fact that Nacogdoches has four times the national STD rate (he recently had a SWAT student that ended up with a yeast infection in his throat).

The lecture covered safety, mindset, the fundamentals of singleton CQB, shooting around vehicles, and a handful of other things. Paul has a massive video library, so there were videos for most any point he wanted to make. His demonstrations of shooting vehicles were an eye opener: rounds can easily bounce off hoods and windshields, which makes crowding cover on the vehicle (which seems to be what many police are trained to do) an especially bad idea. At one point, he shot the side of the vehicle at an angle, and the round skidded the entire length – I can definitely see why you don’t want to stand right next to walls and such.

After the lecture and PP presentation, we broke for lunch, and then headed to the range. Once there, we went through the basic range orientation (to assess students for the skills needed to safely complete the class), then covered the essentials of: entering and clearing a single room; negotiating and clearing a T-intersection; and, negotiating an extended hallway to clearing a single room, while tending to a friendly casualty. With the exception of the initial orientation, the class was never together in one big group on the range.

Each of these scenarios had three runs: one dry, two live fire. Everything was run with the use of a handheld or WML. After breaking for dinner, we returned and repeated the scenarios in low / no light, again one dry, and two live fire.

Paul has a simple, but effective system for varying the targets. Any illustrated target he buys, he makes sure the hands are in two different positions. Then, he paints over whatever prop the target originally had in the hands, and tapes two different print-out props each. Props were pistols, beer cans, cell phones, badges, and so forth. Several students were chagrined to see they had shot a plain-clothes police officer.

The first day was primarily an orientation for students to get used to handling their pistols, along with a light source, in the dark. Of the 18 present, probably five had a weapon light, and I am the only student I am aware of that had a laser (Surefire X400). A few had red-dots, and it was mentioned that some lights can be so bright that they drown out the dot. The exercises focused primarily on short-range shooting (e.g., within seven yards).

Day 2

The second day began, again, in the classroom. Additional PP slides and videos covering what we going to practice on the range, as well as a crash course in the use of a SOF-T tourniquet. The lectures threw a huge amount of information at us pretty quickly, and even with detailed notes, I’m having trouble remembering it all. Some sort of notebook for this class is mandatory, in my opinion. Range work focused on: basic vehicle bailouts, low-light barricade work at 30+ yards, and the medical scenario.

The medical scenario was as follows: you come into a hallway, with a LaRue pop up target placed about 25 yard away. You engage the LaRue target, making sure to knock it down, then clear the nearest room and re-enter the hallway, doing a “dirty-clean-dirty” scan. When the LaRue pops back up, shoot it again. At that point, your weak hand would be disabled. You would have to deploy a tourniquet with one hand, while scanning the hallway back and forth for emerging targets, and engaging the LaRue once it had fully deployed. It was an excellent scenario that really illustrated how a hand-held light is indispensable (I was of the (uninformed) opinion that a WML was the end-all-be-all of lowlight).

Day 3

The last day of course started on the range and was culmination scenarios, based on what we had learned on the first two days of class. For pragmatic reasons, these scenarios were run during the day (no one wanted to hang around until dark on a Sunday).

The curriculum covered: vehicle bailouts, firing from the V (that being the angle the vehicle door makes with the rest of the vehicle), and fire and maneuver (F&M) through the vehicle shooting course; the same, with two-person teams; negotiating a target placed at the end of a 65-yard hallway in the light, maneuvering to a friendly casualty past multiple open doors, clearing a room with a hostage, and dragging the friendly into the room, and finally administering a tourniquet to your “wounded” strong hand; and, a scenario that involved you arriving upon a kicked-open door and negotiating the obstacles presented from the target being inside a darkened structure (e.g., a garage, or shed) while you were in the light.

Shooting into a darkened structure from the daylight convinced me to upgrade my lights. While my Surefire E1B (110 lumens) surprised me by how well it worked in low light, it didn’t have enough oomph to illuminate a dark room, and I had to get much closer to the structure to begin to clear it than I would have preferred.

Firing from the V was interesting. The scenario allowed to either draw the gun inside the vehicle, or to hop out and draw then. I chose to draw after hopping out, as I had never really practiced that before, and did not want to forever be known as, “The guy that shot Paul Howe’s windshield” (Paul used his truck, and Nick used his patrol Suburban). Bailing was practiced from both the driver’s side, and the passenger side. I learned that vehicles can make tricky firing braces, as people shifting around inside the vehicle, or themselves bailing out, is going to cause the vehicle to bounce around, which can hose your shot. One of many things I never would have considered on my own.

The Bad

I have zero complaints. Even with this being the inaugural AIT class, it was executed well. I’m sure what minor inefficiencies there were will be ironed out in subsequent iterations. The only downside is that Paul’s only going to host it in the winter, when things get dark earlier in the day.

The Good


Paul’s curriculum on Paul’s facility. Very little waiting around for your turn to run a scenario. Based on the feedback the class gave Paul, I suspect any inefficiencies will be eliminated in future classes.
The scenarios stressed the risk versus reward of hand-held flashlights and WMLs.
Round count was in the 400 range, and zero shooting for the sake of shooting. Every round was well spent.
Size of groups was excellent – no crowds, and everyone had plenty of opportunity to ask questions.
Nacogdoches isn’t a metropolis, but there were plenty of real restaurants, and the range is about five minutes from downtown.
The ranges are well-equipped, and the barracks are a bargain.
… I don’t know, everything in the class was great.



Summary

A wonderful course that gives students a lot of insight, and plenty of things to experiment and practice on their own. Highly recommended.

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________

I've left out a lot of information, but all are welcome to ask questions.

Mike Pipes
11-20-2014, 06:07 PM
Chance an excellent aar.....thanks....it was a great class.................i was the lone 1911......cya retro mike

Suvorov
11-20-2014, 06:21 PM
Thanks for the AAR! MSG Howe is a class act. The number of classes I want to go back to CSAT for is legion.

MVS
11-20-2014, 08:10 PM
Thanks for the review. I have been wanting to go to a Paul Howe class but just can't convince myself to make the trip to Texas to do it.

Cheap Shot
11-20-2014, 09:07 PM
Outstanding review

thank you

SeriousStudent
11-20-2014, 09:17 PM
Thank you so much for the detailed AAR. I am definitely heading to CSAT in the spring for a class. I'd really like to do this one as well next fall.

shootist26
01-05-2015, 07:20 PM
I'm taking this next year

Would you recommend bringing a double stack pistol or does it not really matter?

I know some other instructors want you to bring x number of rounds to the line for each training iteration, which would mean more single stack mags shoved in back pockets.

Mike Pipes
01-05-2015, 07:33 PM
I'm taking this next year

Would you recommend bringing a double stack pistol or does it not really matter?

I know some other instructors want you to bring x number of rounds to the line for each training iteration, which would mean more single stack mags shoved in back pockets.

Mike Pipes
01-05-2015, 07:39 PM
I'm taking this next year

Would you recommend bringing a double stack pistol or does it not really matter?

I know some other instructors want you to bring x number of rounds to the line for each training iteration, which would mean more single stack mags shoved in back pockets.

Sorry for earlier stupid shit.....I would suggest bring what you carry everyday as it will be a come as you are fight....cya retro

Chance
01-05-2015, 10:15 PM
Would you recommend bringing a double stack pistol or does it not really matter? I know some other instructors want you to bring x number of rounds to the line for each training iteration, which would mean more single stack mags shoved in back pockets.

Outside of the initial orientation, the class doesn't spend much time shooting set drills on the line. I would bring whatever you carry on a regular basis, and use it as you carry it. If you're not sure how well that's going to work, bring another pistol - you can swap any time you need to. You'll have ample opportunity to top off your mags, and, assuming you keep your ammo in your vehicle, additional rounds are never more than a quick jog away.