The Value of Airsoft handgun practice as practice

[cclaxton]

Rick and Randy at the NRA recently started a force-on-force Airsoft class. A few of my friends have picked up Airsoft guns and are practicing with them in their basements. Shooting while moving seems to be a popular drill with Airsoft.

1) Will training with Airsoft negatively impact our training with live fire or dry fire with a real handgun?
2) How important is it to have an airsoft gun that matches the platform we use for live fire?
3) There seems to be a range of airsoft products from $25 up to $300, depending on capability. What is minimum quality needed?
4) I saw one that actually ejects casings...not sure if this is just cool-factor or really helps.

Any recommendations on airsoft pistols and products?
I found this really great airsoft site: http://www.airsplat.com/Items/GP-ASG-CZ-17397.htm

Thanks,
Cody

[JV_]

1) Will training with Airsoft negatively impact our training with live fire or dry fire with a real handgun?

If you have bad airsoft habits like a suboptimal grip or always target focusing, it might.

[ToddG]

1) Will training with Airsoft negatively impact our training with live fire or dry fire with a real handgun?

Depends on what you're trying to get out of it. Zero recoil practice has its limitations and risks. But from a FOF standpoint they're outstanding and the benefits of FOF are really pretty divorced from the things you're trying to train during live fire exercises.

2) How important is it to have an airsoft gun that matches the platform we use for live fire?

I'd try to get the same general gun. It will probably never have an identical trigger. I'd want as close to the same sights as possible, etc., because the idea is to practice with what I actually have. Nonetheless, I've done plenty of FOF using guns utterly different from my EDC at the time and still received great benefit from the training. Using the EDC-similiar FOF weapon is cake, doing FOF is meat & potatoes.

[ford.304]

Get something close enough to your real gun to have it fit your real holster.

I use one a $40 M&P9 clone. It works ok. Accuracy sucks past about 15 yards, so it's realistic :P

[ST911]

Airsoft excels at FoF and tactics work. Smart gear choices that keep the differences between your EDC and training guns help but it will never be seamless. Even the best stuff is still only approximate. The benefits outweigh any potential downside. For greatest similarity, dedicated FX (or equiv) systems still rule.

[AJZ]

All great points. I will jump on and say even the gas blowback guns that have some recoil will give you a false sense of grip strength and timing on the gun. I found that after training heavily with airsoft, the first rounds out of my real EDC felt very uncontrolled in respect to recoil management. I still think it's a useful tool, just have to really focus on keeping that grip pressure. Check out www.redwolfairsoft.com as well.

[TheTrevor]

As noted in my training journals, I supplement ~2x/week pistol live fire at the range (on my current training schedule) with airsoft, specifically a pretty darn nice KWA USP45 gas blowback gun.

I find that the gas blowback system is helpful in terms of practice watching my sights while firing, even though it's straight-back recoil with no appreciable rise. Anything which jostles your sight picture is good, IMHO, for instilling visual discipline. Downside is that gas blowback has this annoying tendency to (literally) freeze up the gun with lots of rapid fire. I keep an electric heat gun handy to warm the slide and magazines when I'm doing a bunch of fast-paced shooting. I also fill mag reservoirs using cheap stinky propane from a Coleman cylinder instead of the premium airsoft "green gas".

The heavy KWA magazines, which are the exact same dimensions as USP45 mags, make for highly realistic mag-swap training. Being able to set up a USPSA or IDPA stage in the back yard in 5-10 minutes, then go through it at full speed complete with mag swaps from my Ghost carriers isn't just fun, it's great practice. Downside is that the mags are $40 apiece, nearly doubling the cost of the system to ~$300 to have gun + 4 mags. The baseplate retention system is also a bit fragile, but it's easily repaired/upgraded and the mags do fine if you drop them on grass or foam mats.

For how I approach airsoft training, and what I get out of it, I think it's VERY important to have a gun which comes as close as possible to duplicating the ergonomics of your real gun. I was able to go back and forth between the workbench and the garage pellet-trap target when working out how I wanted to apply grip tape to my USP-family guns using the KWA gun as a test mule. That sort of thing will get you all sorts of kicked out at most indoor ranges that I've been to.

[Mr_White]

For how I approach airsoft training, and what I get out of it, I think it's VERY important to have a gun which comes as close as possible to duplicating the ergonomics of your real gun.

This is an important point to me, but it also depends on what kind of practice is being done with the airsoft gun. For FOF, it's not a problem for me that my airsoft Glocks have radically different triggers than my real Glocks. For straight skills practice, I think it matters. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be gained from it (sight tracking), but that difference is what keeps me using my airsoft guns for FOF pretty much exclusively. If I want skills practice, I'd really prefer to live fire, then dry fire, then use my SIRT, in that order.

[TheTrevor]

This is an important point to me, but it also depends on what kind of practice is being done with the airsoft gun. For FOF, it's not a problem for me that my airsoft Glocks have radically different triggers than my real Glocks. For straight skills practice, I think it matters. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be gained from it (sight tracking), but that difference is what keeps me using my airsoft guns for FOF pretty much exclusively. If I want skills practice, I'd really prefer to live fire, then dry fire, then use my SIRT, in that order.

I think your skill level may be at the point where you would notice diminishing or negative returns from using airsoft guns outside of FoF. After all, you are calibrated to the point that you can evaluate and analyze the precise effects of GFA's on your Glocks.

Beyond that, though, I'll add a few things I left out so the previous post wasn't even longer:

I don't expect an airsoft trigger to ever replicate the real thing. They are invariably lighter, and there's no LEM option. I get my trigger practice with the LaserLyte system and live fire, and don't let my manipulation of the airsoft trigger cross over to my actual-gun skills.

In addition to sight tracking, I get significant value practicing target transitions on the move, and doing realistic reloading on the move. I can induce the same mistakes doing SOM (shoot on the move) and stage-planned reloads, by pushing my pace to the point where I start to screw up occasionally, as I might see doing it with a real gun. It's interesting how the lack of hard recoil doesn't seem to make the gigantic difference in SOM with target transitions that I thought it would.

Live fire is always preferable -- but my opportunities for rapid fire are at (a) matches, (b) roughly bimonthly visits to rural private property, and (c) sneaking in the occasional fast pair at the range. Airsoft gives me satisfying feedback, in the form of holes on my targets, that I just don't get from laser or dry fire.

[Mr_White]

After all, you are calibrated to the point that you can evaluate and analyze the precise effects of GFA's on your Glocks.

I'm not at all sure I am analyzing the effects correctly though....