I am seeking some additional perspectives from folks involved in training, including those working with force on force exercise problems. Others here are of course encouraged to offer their own thoughts as they might see fit. Some details are omitted to protect the guilty, and to hopefully focus the discussion.
The other day, had a situation arise in which a blue on blue incident occurred during a FoF evolution in a shoot house. The incident resulted in only simulated effects rather than any actual harm, thanks to proper safety discipline in advance. But two elements crossed into the same uncleared space from two doorways and the second man of the first element engaged the lead man of the second element, with a very tight double tap to the high center chest clearly shown with simunitions (less than three yards, so something one feels - but perhaps not as much as the one who pulled the trigger feels later.)
The incident itself was addressed contemporaneously to the satisfaction of participants, but was definitely a learning experience. Describing the incident is however merely background to the point I would like to raise:
* How do folks usually handle friendly fire failures in other than live fire training exercises? *
We assume that there is a crawl - walk phase in advance of real showtime, and is a needed learning element along the way to prevent this from ever happening with hot weapons.
Had this been live fire, the consequences of course would be very different. As it was, the shoot was adjudicated a vest save, and element continued exercise evolution to completion. The shooter bought dinner, and will be buying adult beverages under appropriate circumstances for the engaged party for a very long time to come. (For the record, the engaged party reacted with good humor, far better perhaps than I might have). Substantial additional training cycles will be invested by all parties.
The old tradition of signing the hostage target for missed shots in shoot house exercises is a good one, but has fallen out of use for the most part given the influx of IPSC / IDPA stage designs. Even so, one cannot sign a comrade in arms. This gave rise to a very intensive discussion of what traditions are appropriate for such cases. Such errors are going to be a very memorable event for all involved, but is there a need for such things to be institutionally recognized as such? On the one hand, there can be talk of sanctions - but again, in a walk / crawl phase there needs to be the freedom to make the kinds of mistakes one learns from. What makes a mistake a learning experience, rather than just a memorable one?
There was some talk of having the shooter and the element's senior lead both write a letter to the engaged party's widow. The very prospect is no doubt sobering enough, and I am sure more than a few folks thought about that letter more than once in the days that followed. A hot wash and subsequent formal AAR / LL writeup to lay out a case study also seems appropriate. (One may view this discussion even as a step towards that end, although the informal debrief that occurred over dinner surfaced just about every angle on the incident itself that might have been raised.)
There was also some discussion of the qualitative difference of such an incident during a fully competitive simunitions evolution, when compared with even a laser unit evolution (as is frequently done with SIRT training pistols during technical demonstration / discussion and crawl phase semi-cooperative evolution.) I am also not quite sure that even airsoft would have had the some cognitive impact on the participants, but that is a somewhat different question (and one that needs its own discussion, given the importance of airsoft as an alternative to those who face acquisition challenges in sustaining a reliable supply of simunitions equipment).
Because folks will no doubt ask, a few additional details that have no bearing on the question of how to handle these incidents in a manner that enhances training outcomes, but might provide additional lessons learned on risk factors to be aware of in future training evolutions. The engagement occurred in near total darkness, when a 4 man stack split into two, 2 man pairs to sweep through a complex unknown architecture area with multiple known adversaries. Participants had varying experience in solving tactical problems involving dynamic movement in confined spaces, ranging from over 20 years to something less than 5 years, with all but one participant having had OCONUS deployments under varying degree of intensity. (This non deployed participant was not however the shooter). Weapons were simunitions modified Glock 17s, with no WMLs. Handheld lights were not used during the immediate engagement. No radio comms were available to individuals within the elements. The shooter had approximately five minutes earlier in the exercise been engaged by a hostile role-player at grappling ranges, and literally shot the attacker off of a charge into the stack. The problem scenario required the elements to continue movement through the unknown facility. Additional contributing factors were the fact that these particular elements had not worked together in many months, although they had executed clearing problems as a team in the past on multiple occasions before that point time. The shooter was also back less than 24 hours from an OCONUS activity involving nearly 12 hour time zone difference (admittedly suffering jet lag), and about the same kind of flight time (under the current climate of exceptional budget austerity). This was the third structure problem of the day for the elements, conducted on a near continuous basis (breaks of no more than ten minutes between stages involving several dozen rooms, passageways, stairwells, as well as building exteriors and vehicles). The shooter's element had been directly addressed by an attending RO immediately prior to making entry to the space in which the engagement occurred, where the second element was simultaneously entering through a second doorway at at immediate 90 offset to the first element after sweeping an annex type area adjacent to the main, larger space. Interaction by the RO was theoretically intended to highlight continued tactical need for speed of flow through the space consistent with scenario objectives, but was in reality also driven by the administrative need to encourage rapid completion of the evolution to ensure that all participants could finish the problem, as the planned timeline for the overall exercise event was running behind schedule.
It should be noted that none of the above factors excuses the inappropriate decision by the shooter to engage a target that had not been fully identified. But these are factors that are important to consider as elements of risk that can be recognized and hopefully controlled for in future training evolutions.
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Originally Posted by tpd223
