AAR - Protective Shooting Concepts - Battle Rifle Workshop - Jan 31st, 2015

[Jay Cunningham]

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...

[Jay Cunningham]

After testing the more mundane objects, we turned our attention to the SUV. We attempted to be a little scientific, before all hell broke loose. This is what we tried at first:

• target in drivers seat
• target behind engine and front wheel
• target behind C Pillar

A car generally provides good cover. While all rounds of varying calibers - including pistol - penetrated the sheet metal of the car on one side, they did not pass cleanly through. Absent the use of an AP round, it is not realistic to expect the rounds to pass cleanly through both sides of the vehicle. There is enough "stuff" in cars such as interior panels, sound deadening, seat frames, etc., to deflect a round. Like most forms of cover, after absorbing multiple rounds in the same general area, penetration increased and rounds passed through both sides. As one would expect, shotgun slugs provided the greatest amounts of destruction, but as noted above did not initially penetrate cleanly through.





Throughout the demonstration, a silhouette was placed behind the engine block in line with the front tire and front axle. This position provided excellent cover, stopping all rounds (including AP) with the exception of rounds which were "skipped" off the hood. Firing into the windshield of the car provided some interesting observations. 9mm FMJ rounds easily penetrated the windshield and struck a silhouette placed in the passenger seat with little deflection. .308 rounds penetrated the windshield, front and rear seats, and existed the vehicle the rear sheet metal.





After all was said and done, at the end of the day we decided to let the boys have a little decompression time. PSC tries our best to avoid ballistic masturbation, but when we CHOOSE to perform ballistic masturbation we aim to do it right!


The Doomed SUV





general notes:

• PTR-91 broke in half
• SA58 OSW ran after multiple gas adjustments
• full size FAL broke a charging handle
• SCAR 17s ran well
• M1As and Garand ran well
• KAC guns needed a lot of immediate action
• .308 Saiga AK conversion had an AD moving selector from safe to fire

The cold weather was a good test of gear and durability for the firearms as we saw a number of malfunctions that were most likely induced by the cold weather, such as short stroking or the broken stock of the PTR.





*PSC Scoring utilizes the USPSA Target and Limited Vickers count: A Zone is -0, B Zone -0.5, C Zone -1.0, D Zone -3.0. This is full seconds, not "points".

[Jay Cunningham]

Special thanks to PSC instructors Ashton Ray and Dan Stephenson for doing their usual great job, and also to National Armory for vendor support.

[Kyle Reese]

Nice, Jay! Looks like a great time was had by all.

[Chuck Haggard]

What I have noticed about getting through cars, and I have been lucky in that I have gotten over the years to shoot up lots of them, is that getting through from perpendicular is rather easy, things get angled they get a lot more dicey.

I've put 9mm 124gr Lawman and +P Gold Dot clean through a Crown Vic sideways, if I am going through the trunk, or the doors, and I am shooting from the 90 degree off to the side. The bullets are still flying fast enough to get through a 1/2" plywood witness panel and to kick up dirt on the berm 20 yards downrange (IMHO still have enough juice for significant wounding under the old Army "casualty" criteria). And by putting bullets through the car I mean reliably, like 18 out of 20 test shots on a particular run.
7.62x39 and 5.56 green tip, along with Tac Bonded, 62gr DPX and various other barrier loads will also do that. I haven't noted normal lead core x39 to be any more able to get into or through cars than the better 5.56 loads. The old Chinese steel core stuff did noticeably better than the commercial lead core, or the lead core surplus for that matter.

Start trying to get through the car at an angle though and bullets get weird. Break up, get caught in body parts, yaw, etc.

Jay, my observation on .308s has been that unless one is using a barrier load, and I note that things like a heavy .30cal Barnes are ferocious on cars, often a .308 is wasted on trying to get through a car due to bullet break up. Did you observe any of that during your shooting there?

BTW, looks like a fun class, and well thought out and delivered to boot. Kudos to the students willing to make snow angels to get more training.

[Jay Cunningham]

Nice, Jay! Looks like a great time was had by all.

It was a helluva lot of fun!

[Jay Cunningham]

What I have noticed about getting through cars, and I have been lucky in that I have gotten over the years to shoot up lots of them, is that getting through from perpendicular is rather easy, things get angled they get a lot more dicey.

I've put 9mm 124gr Lawman and +P Gold Dot clean through a Crown Vic sideways, if I am going through the trunk, or the doors, and I am shooting from the 90 degree off to the side. The bullets are still flying fast enough to get through a 1/2" plywood witness panel and to kick up dirt on the berm 20 yards downrange (IMHO sill have enough juice for significant wounding under the old Army "casualty" criteria). And by putting bullets through the car I mean reliably, like 18 our of 20 test shots on a particular run.
7.62x39 and 5.56 green tip, along with Tac Bonded, 62gr DPX and various other barrier loads will also do that. I haven't noted normal lead core x39 to be any more able to get into or through cars than the better 5.56 loads. The old Chinese steel core stuff did noticeably better than the commercial lead core, or the lead core surplus for that matter.

Start trying to get through the car at an angle though and bullets get weird. Break up, get caught in body parts, yaw, etc.

Thanks much for sharing that Chuck, there's nothing like experience when it comes to esoterica like weapon effects on vehicles.

Jay, my observation on .308s has been that unless one is using a barrier load, and I note that things like a heavy .30cal Barnes are ferocious on cars, often a .308 is wasted on trying to get through a car due to bullet break up. Did you observe any of that during your shootings there?

BTW, looks like a fun class, and well thought out and delivered to boot. Kudos to the students willing to make snow angels to get more training.

We did a lot of testing on the engine block and front wheel as a cover point. We expended LOTS of ammo attempting to inflict a fatal wound on a hiding USPSA target and he was very well protected. We tried .308 AP and .30-06 AP perpendicular to the block, and neither penetrated. We did observe numerous instances of .308 loads not making "clean" through-shots. Rifled slugs seem like the best bet against the passenger compartment. Here's a really cool one:

I took a picture perfect 12 gauge shot perpendicular to the windshield on the driver. The 00 Federal Flite Control buckshot group impacted beautifully tight right where the top of the driver target A Zone was. We went to check it out fully expecting a good kill shot, but the driver target was UNTOUCHED! The entire seven pellet group barely clipped the top of the dashboard and ALL deflected into the vehicle roof. It was astounding.


It was a great group of guys who were willing to come out in the ice and snow!

[Aray]

Start trying to get through the car at an angle though and bullets get weird. Break up, get caught in body parts, yaw, etc.

Jay, my observation on .308s has been that unless one is using a barrier load, and I note that things like a heavy .30cal Barnes are ferocious on cars, often a .308 is wasted on trying to get through a car due to bullet break up. Did you observe any of that during your shooting there?

BTW, looks like a fun class, and well thought out and delivered to boot. Kudos to the students willing to make snow angels to get more training.

We did see significant jacket separation on many of the .308 rounds in use. The .30-06AP did perform better, but marginally so. Again, there are lots of little pieces parts inside of a vehicle that do strange things to flight paths.

[Chuck Haggard]

I've personally shot 30-06 AP all the way through things like a M114, those AP cores get through a ton of material, even if they yaw.

I was guessing that the non bonded .308 loads would exhibit break-up

[iakdrago]

7.62x39 and 5.56 green tip, along with Tac Bonded, 62gr DPX and various other barrier loads will also do that. I haven't noted normal lead core x39 to be any more able to get into or through cars than the better 5.56 loads.

Also I think that you hit the nail on the head with the 90 degree comment. Too often you see "test" videos of various barrier blind ammunition to demonstrate it's effect on car doors. In nearly ALL of the videos, the barrier is 1 or at most 2 sheets of stamped sheet metal. There is A LOT more to a car than the thin piece of metal... I feel that those videos give a false sense of security, and i am glad that you brought that to light.

Jay, the class looks fun, are you thinking of offering it in the future as well?