AAR: Armed Movement In Structures (AMIS) June 4-5, 2011 Culpeper, VA

[ToddG]

One of the students was able to provide the building. It is not normally a firearms training facility. In fact, at one point while my "team" was outside getting direction from Craig on handling doors, we had an off duty police officer walk over and ask us about the guns in our hands and stuff.

Craig mentioned more than once that a big limit on how often he can teach AMIS is access to a suitable facility. It needs to be realistic, big enough to break up into separate areas for each group to practice independently, and the owner needs to be ok with the potential minor impacts of airsoft and Simunition FX.

[jslaker]

Hm? Sorry, I was picturing Whore Island.

In all seriousness, great AARs for what sounds to be a great class. Re: the suggestion of an AMIS-for-Dummies sort of course, the impression I've generally gotten is that SN covers great material and does a great job of it, but for someone like me that has absolutely zero experience on some of the topics he covers, it definitely sounds intimidating. A class specifically aimed at For-Dummies types might help with the fear that people like me have of wasting my time plus that of an instructor and class by ending up out of our element.

[fuse]

Do any of you think you could have performed better with night sights on the sim guns?

Or was the main issue finding/tracking/IDing the threat?

[SouthNarc]

For everyone who attended I'd like to thank you for the hard work you put into the weekend. I had a really great time and it was a privilege to work with such a capable, astute group. Special thanks to TC for pimping the course around the 'net enough to make it happen and to Todd for solid peer review.

I do have a tendency to make students drink from a firehose whether the topic at hand is a gunfight in the driver's compartment of a vehicle or a solo structure movement problem in a cluttered real world environment. Todd and I talked about some more "walk" between crawl and run and his comments have certainly given me some food for thought. That being said I will probably always dwell on the fringe of the training industry with my tendency to explore shitty problems that don't necessarily leave the student with a feel-good. BUT......it's honest. I know that over my career as a police officer and particularly during my U/C heyday there were times when my training absolutely failed and I will be the first guy to say that I'm alive today not because I'm any good at anything, but because I was lucky. I don't want anyone who comes to me for training to get into a real world event and just scrape by like I did.

So the tendency in me to dig really deep holes in the training environment is strong and it's not often that a student feels comfortable in any coursework I offer. Most everyone breaks down at some point like Todd described. That's neither right or wrong......it's just my belief in how to prepare people for a life or death event. There's got to be stress. Real, tangible, palpable stress.

Great weekend guys. Thank you!

[TCinVA]

Do any of you think you could have performed better with night sights on the sim guns?

Or was the main issue finding/tracking/IDing the threat?

It was both. When I had a read on where the threat was, (and that wasn't often) I had a hell of a time actually getting some sort of index on the weapon. I was relying primarily on body mechanics to get the gun pointed in the general vicinity of the person I was trying to shoot. Night sights would have helped in knowing where the gun was aimed and would have made it easier to line up an accurate shot on the occasions where you had enough light to pinpoint the location of the other dude.

Most of the shots I fired during the sims runs were fired more in hope than in confidence. On a couple of occasions I went full homeboy over the top of some "cover" (from sims rounds, anyway) and fired a spread of rounds because it was about as effective as anything else I could possibly do.

The lighting was also a factor on the airsoft runs in partial light. I fired 20+ shots at a dude and managed to nick him once during a run where I just couldn't get a decent read on my sights. He was 7 or 8 yards away, but was behind various bits of the accumulated junk. This means that I had a few inches of opfor target to shoot at for less than a second at a time as he worked through the junk to try and close in on my position. (As the opfor we weren't allowed to move...the good guy could) My sights were an indecipherable blur because I was shooting from a shadow. I could see him because he was relatively well lit...but I couldn't get a useful aiming reference on him because of the lighting conditions in the area I was in.

I've said this many times before, but lighting is highly dynamic. The conditions you are presented with to try and make a shot can be radically different as little as a foot away from your current position. This is why I am not a fan of completely black sights. I know a lot of guys are all amped up about having black sights, but in a situation like the above...trying to hit a relatively small, fleeting target in a tight time frame in poor lighting...having some sort of low light capable sighting system is the only way to do it.

Someone could argue that if it was a real Beretta 92 that the 9mm rounds would have penetrated some of the cover and made hits, and that's certainly a possibility...but I would argue that it's rather silly to rely on that when there are readily available means of allowing you to get a good aiming reference and break an accurate shot that is deliberately sent into the exposed anatomy of the other dude rather than hoping that if you pull the trigger enough sooner or later one of the bullets will work through his cover/concealment and hit him. Someone could argue that I should have used a light. In that situation using my Surefire wouldn't have made me any better able to hit him, but a big beacon from the dark side of the room would have made it a lot easier for him to draw a bead on me.

[Bill Lance]

Like every other class SN does, this sounds excellent---and a must-do for the truly dedicated practitioner.

Also, kudos to the guys who have posted reviews here. Those are phenomenal as well!!!

Thanks!!

Bill

[Dropkick]

Do any of you think you could have performed better with night sights on the sim guns?

Or was the main issue finding/tracking/IDing the threat?

I agree with TCinVA. I had a Glock 17 airsoft replica with the standard "field goal" sights. Night sights might have helped me see my sights better in some situations. However, there were times where it was so dark, or a bad guy was hiding in a shadow, that you can't even see your target. So it's not a matter of: "If I have X piece of gear, I'll be okay."

Although, my new found general feeling about night sights is that it can't hurt to have them. (Well, except your wallet.)

[SouthNarc]

I've said this many times before, but lighting is highly dynamic. The conditions you are presented with to try and make a shot can be radically different as little as a foot away from your current position.

This is an extremely cogent observation and one of the reasons that one should train in a real structure with windows, artificial light, and natural light. Also the light changes constantly as the day wears on.

[LittleLebowski]

There's one criteria for folks I want to be trained by. They must like Archer

[Byron]

Great write-ups!

Todd - thank you for the kind words: much appreciated.

I can only speak for my group, but I was extremely impressed with my fellow students’ attitudes.

The whole class was definitely an absolutely great group of guys. Every man was genuinely interested in helping his fellow student as much as improving his own performance.