Another thread kind of prompted me to start this thread in hopes of stimulating discussion. I hope there will be differences of opinions involving methodology regarding actually shooting the drill.
First I thought it would beneficial to discuss failure drills in general using excerpts from a student handout.
Introduction
History has shown that the handgun is ineffective in instantly incapacitating a determined human adversary:
Physiologically, no caliber or bullet is certain to incapacitate any individual unless the (central nervous system) is hit. Psychologically, some individuals can be incapacitated by minor or small caliber wounds. Those individuals who are stimulated by fear, adrenaline, drugs, alcohol, and/or sheer will and survival determination may not be incapacitated even if mortally wounded.
The will to survive and to fight despite horrific damage to the body is commonplace on the battlefield and on the street. Barring a hit to the (central nervous system), the only way to force incapacitation is to cause sufficient blood loss that the subject can no longer function and that takes time. Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds. - Special Agent Urey W. Patrick, Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness, July 14, 1989.
What Stops the Assailant
Research by Dr. Martin Fackler, reported in the Wound Ballistics Review, Volume 5 Number 1, Spring 2001, developed a list of reasons that subjects stop their actions when struck by handgun rounds. This familiar list is, in order:
1. Psychological response to being shot;
2. Hits to the central nervous system;
3. Major organ damage;
4. Shock due to blood loss.
Absent a hit to the central nervous system, a determined assailant may suffer devastating wounds without immediate incapacitation.
Shooters should, therefore, expect that their handgun may not be effective in incapacitating a threat and must be prepared, if necessary, to take action which immediately incapacitates the subject. The actions taken to accomplish this are commonly referred to as ‘failure’ or ‘drug and armor’ drills and generally involve delivering precision shot to the head or pelvis. The thought being that shots to the head will disrupt the central nervous system and shots to the pelvis will incapacitate by destruction of the hip sockets or pelvic girdle resulting in the subject falling to the ground and their mobility restricted.
Anatomical Aimpoints
Shots which impact the brainstem or disrupt the cervical spine will cause instant incapacitation. Frontal reference points for these areas would be from the bridge of the nose downward to the jugular notch. Side reference points are the ear canal down the neck.
The frontal skull is thick and slopes slightly, as a result handgun projectiles may not reliably penetrate the frontal skull. Additionally handgun projectiles do not travel with sufficient velocity to ensure instant incapacitation by penetrating the cranial vault.
Shots which impact at the seventh cervical vertebrae (dashed line) or above will most often cause complete loss of control to the arms and hands.
Shots to the Pelvis Area
When targeting the pelvis, it would be more accurate to say we are targeting the hip socket or upper femur rather than the structure of the pelvic girdle - for the reasons outlined below by Dr. Martin Fackler.
Officers are commonly instructed to fire multiple rounds at the subject’s front pockets. The primary problem with this tactic is that even if successful the officer is still facing an armed subject who may still be capable of using force.
One of the most widely quoted experts on wound ballistics, Dr. Martin Fackler, had this to say about shots to the pelvic girdle:
“I welcome the chance to refute the belief that the pelvic area is a reasonable target during a gunfight. I can find no evidence or valid rationale for intentionally targeting the pelvic area in a gunfight. The reasons against, however, are many. They include:
1) From the belt line to the top of the head, the areas most likely to rapidly incapacitate the person hit are concentrated in or near the midline. In the pelvis, however, the blood vessels are located to each side, having diverged from the midline, as the aorta and inferior vena cava divide at about the level of the navel.
2) Additionally, the target that, when struck, is the most likely to cause rapid and reliable incapacitation, the spinal cord located in the midline of the abdomen, thorax and neck), ends well above the navel and is not a target in the pelvis.
3) The pelvic branches of the aorta and inferior vena cava are more difficult to hit than their parent vessels -- they are smaller targets, and they diverge laterally from the midline (getting farther from it as they descend). Even if hit, each carry far less blood than the larger vessels from which they originated. Thus, even if one of these branches in the pelvis is hit, incapacitation from blood loss must necessarily be slower than from a major vessel hit higher up in the torso.
4) Other than soft tissue structures not essential to continuing the gunfight (loops of bowel, bladder) the most likely thing to be struck by shots to the pelvis would be bone. The ilium is a large flat bone that forms most of the back wall of the pelvis. The problem is that handgun bullets that hit it would not break the bone but only make a small hole in passing through it: this would do nothing to destroy bony support of the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is essentially a circle: to disrupt its structure significantly would require breaking it in two places. Only a shot that disrupted the neck or upper portion of the shaft of the femur would be likely to disrupt bony support enough to cause the person hit to fall. This is a small and highly unlikely target: the aim point to hit it would be a mystery to those without medical training — and to most of those with medical training. - Fackler, ML, Shots to the Pelvic Area, Wound Ballistics Review, Issue 4, 1999.
Application of Techniques
These must be precision versus area shots. Some of common errors that shooters make in the mechanics of the drill are:
• Moving the weapon too quickly to the alternate target area (head or pelvis);
• Not stopping movement of the weapon before firing;
These errors can be corrected by quickly assessing the need for additional shots, then looking to the alternate target area and then bringing the weapon to your eyes, rather than your eyes following the weapon:
• Shoot - and assess;
• Look - to the alternate target area;
• Move - the weapon to where you are looking;
• Refocus - on the front sight;
• Shoot - and assess.
Essentially this is the same technique taught for use when engaging multiple targets.
Zipper Drill
As discussed above Drug and Armor Drills (AKA Failure Drills) require precision movement of the weapon in that the shooter stops firing, transitions the weapon, refocuses of the new aim point and then applies marksmanship fundamentals.
The Zipper Drill differs from the Failure Drills in that the shooter delivers the first shot and then traverses the weapon upward firing as the muzzle raises. The shots upward along the centerline of the body offer the most potential to stop the assailant, first by impacting the major organs and then by impacting the CNS.
The diagram below illustrates a shot pattern from application of the Zipper Drill.
Often this technique begins from a close-quarters or retention shooting position as illustrated below.
In this position the shooter's support arm is blocking the assailant, notice that the gun is not oriented level, the first shot(s) will hit low. This is important to reduce the likelihood the shooter will strike his own arm or elbow. Additional shots can be fired 'zipping' the assailant as the shooter breaks contact and traverses the weapon's muzzle upward - the shooter may continue to shoot one-handed or establish a two-hand grip.
TRAINING ISSUES
Is there a difference between 'Mozambique' and 'Failure'?
Is the failure drill taught as a conditioned response or as an assessed response? In other words do we teach shooters to fire triples - two to the chest and one to the head automatically, or, do we teach them to assess to see if the first two rounds have done the job? What are the issues for law enforcement versus the CCW/HD shooter?
Will folks actually execute the drill when needed? Based on my experience I'm doubtful the average shooter will. I base this on the following experiences: We didn't do a lot of failure drills with recruits in basic training, certainly not enough to in-grain a response. As a result, when I had the opportunity to conduct our Close Range Survival Skills or Tactical Pistol for Patrol courses, a significant amount of failure drill's were included. Then one day during the force on force portion of Tactical Pistol I noticed that none of the officers ever transitioned to a failure drill when the subject didn't immediately fo down. I canc'ed the next drill, told the officers what I had observed, and had them do a drill consisting of several reps on an advancing subject with a knife, executing a failure drill. Thankfully I had another day and I threw in a scenario with a subject that didn't go down. Excellent results.
My takeaway - unless you are doing nothing but failure drills - the shooter needs to experience a f-on-f emotionally significant event in which they prevail by doing a failure drill to anchor the response.
Hope this generates some discussion.