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Thread: Failure (AKA Drug or Armor) Drills

  1. #1

    Failure (AKA Drug or Armor) Drills

    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Often this technique begins from a close-quarters or retention shooting position as illustrated below.

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    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.

  2. #2
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    Good post. We are seeing more and more actors wearing and possessing body armor. My friend was also killed earlier this year and the actor was wearing soft armor(he was an illegal alien living in a crappy little apartment so its not about $$$). Most of what I've seen is soft armor but this is definitely something to think about.

    My general ideas for armor are: 1) carry a gun with a lot of BBs 2)apply lots of BBs to problem 3) if your smacking the BG and he ain't going down change your POA to belly/legs or head

    In my experience a lot of folks give up when they take hits to the gut/abdomen. Not quickly but when there is a lull in the fight shut starts getting real and they bed down.

  3. #3
    Farnam is a big believer in the zipper drill, and the paper target he designed is set up for it.

  4. #4
    Site Supporter rob_s's Avatar
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    I think that this is another example of why we need to reach a certain level of subconscious competence with our firearms. If we're still at the stage of trying to figure out how to get it out of the holster without shooting ourselves in the dick, we're not really at a point at which we can effectively assess the affect (or lack thereof) that our rounds are having on the target.

    If someone is at that stage of maybe conscious incompetence or conscious competence perhaps teaching them a traditional "failure drill" is the way to go. Maybe in the age of 15+ rounds in the gun there is some room to adjust that formula, although since most people post about big guns and actually carry little guns, maybe not.

    If getting the gun out, lining up the sites, pressing the trigger, recovering to an adequate site picture, assessing the situation, and repeat as needed is all second nature, I don't know that we need a formula. That Subconscious competent shooter is likely capable of seeing that what he's doing isn't having the desired effect, and moving on to other places to put bullets. In that person's situation, training on alternate locations and perhaps some education on hierarchy (better to go for the head or the hip? why, and when?) is probably in order.

    only somewhat related, I recall seeing a t-shirt (or signature line that should be a t-shirt) that said "2 to the chest 28 to the face" that I always think of in these situations.

    I will also forever hear Pat Rogers (RIP) voice saying "so I shot him in the cock" in a NY accent...
    Does the above offend? If you have paid to be here, you can click here to put it in context.

  5. #5
    This isn't an endorsement of this method, but an observation of how they taught the failure drill at Gunsite when I was there 10ish years ago. The idea was that it was your standard response - fire two rounds to the high center chest then automatically transition to the head, if the head is there and available as a target, you take it. If it's not there then your two rounds worked or the target is doing something that requires you to assess it, in which case shooting for the head isn't necessary in either scenario.

    I've gone back and forth on that theory for a few years, and I think as a training method for people who are serious about developing shooting talent it's not a bad one. The USAF teaches this method for our current qualification course, which makes sense because it was heavily influenced by the modern technique.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by jetfire View Post
    This isn't an endorsement of this method, but an observation of how they taught the failure drill at Gunsite when I was there 10ish years ago. The idea was that it was your standard response - fire two rounds to the high center chest then automatically transition to the head, if the head is there and available as a target, you take it. If it's not there then your two rounds worked or the target is doing something that requires you to assess it, in which case shooting for the head isn't necessary in either scenario.

    I've gone back and forth on that theory for a few years, and I think as a training method for people who are serious about developing shooting talent it's not a bad one. The USAF teaches this method for our current qualification course, which makes sense because it was heavily influenced by the modern technique.
    There seems to be some diverging opinions over the Mozambique over the years:

    The generally misunderstood technique known far and wide as "The Mozambique," is named in honor of a friend and former student of Jeff Cooper's, Mike Rouseau, who was later KIA in the Rhodesian War.

    In Jeff's words:

    As time passes we discover that there are a good many readers who have not been to school and who are puzzled by our reference to "The Mozambique Drill."

    I added The Mozambique Drill to the modern doctrine after hearing of an experience of a student of mine up in Mozambique when that country was abandoned. My friend was involved in the fighting that took place around the airport of Laurenco Marquez. At one point, Mike turned a corner was confronted by a terrorist carrying an AK47. The man was advancing toward him at a walk at a range of perhaps 10 paces. Mike, who was a good shot, came up with his P35 and planted two satisfactory hits, one on each side of the wishbone. He expected his adversary to drop, but nothing happened, and the man continued to close the range. At this point, our boy quite sensibly opted to go for the head and tried to do so, but he was a little bit upset by this time and mashed slightly on the trigger, catching the terrorist precisely between the collar bones and severing his spinal cord. This stopped the fight.

    Upon analysis, it seemed to me that the pistolero should be accustomed to the idea of placing two shots amidships as fast as he can and then being prepared to change his point of aim if this achieves no results. Two shots amidships can be placed very quickly and very reliably and they will nearly always stop the fight providing a major-caliber pistol is used and the subject is not wearing body armor.

    However, simply chanting "two in the body, one in the head" oversimplifies matters, since it takes considerably longer to be absolutely sure of a head shot than it does to be quite sure of two shots in the thorax. The problem for the shooter is to change his pace, going just as fast as he can with his first pair, then, pausing to observe results or lack thereof, he must slow down and shoot precisely. This is not easy to do. The beginner tends to fire all three shots at the same speed, which is either too slow for the body shots or too fast for the head shot. This change of pace calls for concentration, and coordination which can only be developed through practice.

    And that's the genesis of "The Mozambique Drill..." although I discover to my horror that political correctness today requires that it be referred to as a "Failure Drill."


    Taken From: thegunzone.com


    From the above, it seems that originally the thought was that it was a 'considered response' rather than an 'automatic response.'

    This example from a document entitled Methods of Target Engagement the Weapons Training Battalion, Marine Corps Combat Development Command MCB Quantico, VA, seems to be an example of the divergence from the original concept

    In this document the author goes to some detail discussing the origins of the Mozambique Drill and differentiating between it and a failure drill:

    MOZAMBIQUE DRILL. This technique is similar to the Failure to Stop Drill, but with some critical differences. Mike Rouseau, while on duty in Mozambique, developed the Mozambique Drill. A mercenary and student of Col. Jeff Cooper, he took into account the limitations of the weapons he had on hand, and developed a technique that would uncompromisingly incapacitate any threat.

    a. The Mozambique Drill is three shots: two to the chest and one to the head, without an assessment between. Assessment after the initial pair is not required since we will immediately transition to an incapacitating shot.

    b. If the pair is successful and effective, the target will drop. If the target is protected by body-armor, excessive fat, dense muscle, or under the influence of painkillers, psychotic rage, or psychoactive substances, the initial pair most likely will not immediately stop the target. The initial rounds will serve to distract the target and momentarily prevent him from accurately engaging you, even if they do not stop his hostile actions.

    c. Regardless of the effectiveness of the initial pair, the target will be immediately incapacitated by the third shot............

    ..........e. The Mozambique Drill appears to be similar to the Failure to Stop Drill at first, but there are critical differences between the two techniques.

    1) First, the Failure Drill is a response to a pair to the chest. The shooter only intended to fire two rounds, but those two rounds did not achieve the desired effect, so an alternate aim point was selected. With the Mozambique, the shooter intends to fire three shots into the adversary prior to beginning the engagement.

    2) The Failure Drill is a response, and therefore can only be executed after an assessment of the target. The Mozambique is a stand-alone drill. It automatically compensates for the first rounds being insufficient to immediately end an engagement.

    3) The Failure Drill opens up options for the shooter after the first pair fails. The shooter may choose to destroy the mobility of the target or instantly incapacitate the target. The Mozambique Drill is intended to immediately and unquestioningly end the engagement regardless of the effect of the initial pair.

    4) The Failure Drill is a response to the failure of a standard reaction, and may be employed at any range. The Mozambique Drill is intended as a close-range response for situations that require that a threat be destroyed immediately.


    Rather than get lost in the weeds discussing the lineage of the concept (which, laughingly, I seem to have started) let me offer that I feel instructing service members to perform the Mozambique Dril as described above in response to a close-range threat by enemy combatants is prudent.

    In regards to training police to execute these drills as an 'automatic' rather than a 'considered' response is problematic, IMO.

    (I'll finish these thoughts later - I've been waiting for my F-in-L to get ready for a doctor's appointment, and then I have to return some equipment)

  7. #7
    Continuing: My belief has always been that police use lethal force to stops folks from inflicting harm likely to cause death or great bodily harm. Additionally, they use force to seize folks who have committed offenses which require their arrest without delay due to continued threat to the public. There is no sanction to mete out justice in any law or court decision, nor is such a thought part of the social contract which binds America as a society. Rather, the police use of force is to stop subjects within a framework that provides for the reasonable safety of the officer or the public at large. Unfortunately the shots that quickly stop a subject's aggressive acts are also shots that are very likely to cause death.

    In that context, training officers to reflexively fire 'two to the belly and one to the head' could be seen as sanctioning police execution. Obviously, this isn't as much of a problem if officers are taught to fire two or three rounds to centermass, then assess the need for follow up shots.

  8. #8
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    Dagga Boy as well as some very experienced others spoke of the benefits of the drill in this thread:

    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....rill-why/page2

    It's worth a read.

  9. #9
    A concern I've always had is that if the 2B/1H is trained to a conditioned response, why not just start with the head to begin with?

  10. #10
    Member feudist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Williams View Post
    Farnam is a big believer in the zipper drill, and the paper target he designed is set up for it.
    Can you link to a pic of that? I'd appreciate it.

    I read about the "zipper" in an old DTI Quip.

    IIRC, he made an observation from FOF training and video from actual shootings that people will bend and jerk away from a gun pointed at them.

    This could cause them to drop below your line of sight momentarily(lose sight, lose the fight)

    He suggested initially presenting at the belt area because no matter which way they bent they would still be in your sights. If the threat continued

    he then started shooting his way along the body(up, down or sideways)until the opponent went down, ending up at the brain housing case if necessary.

    This would not be a stereotyped assessment after X rounds, but a way of engaging a reacting, thinking opponent, and getting the necessary rounds on him ASAP

    to stop him. If it took one, three or all of them.

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