Protective Shooting Concepts
Battle Rifle Workshop
January 31st, 2015
8:00 am to 4:30 pm
The Beaver Valley Rifle & Pistol Club
Beaver Falls, PA
The battle rifle... historically, the main armament of the infantry, utilizing a full-sized cartridge: .30-06, .303 British, 7.62x54R, and eventually a 7.62x51mm weapon for NATO forces. Our Battle Rifle Workshop mixes elements of our Protective Carbine 1 & 2 with more traditional military rifle courses of fire. The temperature stayed in the 20s all day after starting in the single digits in the early morning. There was several inches of snow on the ground, clear skies, no wind, and bright sunshine. There were 11 shooters and three instructors. Weapons included multiple SCAR 17s, a PTR-91, a .308 Saiga AK, a 10" barrel FAL, an M1A Scout, a Knight's Armament APC, and an M1 Garand... along with some spares.
Shooter skill and experience levels ranged from very proficient, to unfamiliar with typical close range rifle manipulations. After the safety brief, the class was split into Chalk One and Chalk Two. Chalk One headed to the training range for drills while Chalk Two headed to the rifle range for zeroing and position shooting. After lunch, Chalk One and Chalk Two switched places. Shooters were run through fairly typical carbine drills on the training range, but with an emphasis on recoil control using an aggressive mount and body alignment behind the guns.
On the rifle range, shooters started off the bench at 50 yards to find if their rifles were roughly "in the zone" for a 200 yard zero. A known-zeroed rifle was used as a control, and POI was slightly high at 50 yards for a 200 yard zero. Once the guns were hitting in the center and slightly high at 50, we started hitting steel at 200 from the bench with a spotter calling out corrections. Once we knew the guns could hit, we took shooters off the bench and built solid prone positions. When shooters demonstrated that they could all hit at 200, they shifted their positions and shot at 300 yards. All shooters achieved this objective.
After lunch, Chalk One and Chalk Two swapped ranges and we ran through the same process with the new groups. After successfully completing our objectives, the class formed back up for a little bit of competitive shooting. We chose the VTAC 1-5 Drill at 15 yards utilizing PSC Scoring*.
After the drills, we turned to testing weapon effects on various common materials utilized as cover and concealment. Besides .308 rifles, we shot 300 BLK, 9mm, .45 acp, and 12 gauge (both 00 Flite Control and slug).
cinder block - no more than 3 hits to complete destruction
solid block - no more than two hits to complete destruction
solid core door - not cover from any caliber, but maintains integrity very well
glass block window - not cover, destroyed easily by one round of 9mm
End of Part 1, standby for Part 2...