Simulating a catastrophic miss

[UNM1136]

No!

Putting a shooter through hell is one thing. Train to Failure. But failure is the Teacher. It will happen all by itself, with no simulation. In the Realz Wurld a catostrophic miss is often a career ender, and many times a lifestyle ender. Why in the world would we contribute to that mindset? We want our shooters to think that they can be successful. Otherwise we get the Uvalde "mother may I" (if proven) situation. People refusing to decide, and trying to force others to.

This is an area where catostophic misses need to be the bogeyman. Punish the misses. Depending on the class, ALL the misses. Incorporate (from the EMS world) autofails in drills. Then retest, to a limit. Let the shooter's imaginations, with coaching, realize the problem. And in units with, oh, say, a hostage rescue mandate: explain, train, then enforce.

Professional and peer pressure can go a long, long way...But learning, not punishing should be the goal.

pat

[JHC]

No!

Putting a shooter through hell is one thing. Train to Failure. But failure is the Teacher. It will happen all by itself, with no simulation. In the Realz Wurld a catostrophic miss is often a career ender, and many times a lifestyle ender. Why in the world would we contribute to that mindset? We want our shooters to think that they can be successful. Otherwise we get the Uvalde "mother may I" (if proven) situation. People refusing to decide, and trying to force others to.

This is an area where catostophic misses need to be the bogeyman. Punish the misses. Depending on the class, ALL the misses. Incorporate (from the EMS world) autofails in drills. Then retest, to a limit. Let the shooter's imaginations, with coaching, realize the problem. And in units with, oh, say, a hostage rescue mandate: explain, train, then enforce.

Professional and peer pressure can go a long, long way...But learning, not punishing should be the goal.

pat

This is an interesting thread to me. So I'll ask for clarifications. Initially the "No!" Then the use of the words punish/punishing appear to be on opposite sides of the argument as used.

I am not clear where exactly your going but I can tell you have some good stuff in there. "Accountability" is how I view all of it vs punishment. They can sound similar but teach differently.

[UNM1136]

Accountability might just be a better term, and I wish I had used it.

I think that very few situations involving cops and firearms should be yes/no/black/white. The OP left me with a very unstructured impression of the situation, so I inferred a bunch.

I have had a kitty where everyone threw in a $20 and winner walked away with it. Professionally and personally we can put a ton of stress on each other.

I think autofails, regardless of the subject, need to be thoroughly explained and trained for so the aspiring practioner can avoid them when tested.

So...Courses vs. Drills. Punishing misses on drills provide instructional opportunities. Our goal as instructors is to provide instruction at opportunities.

For MOST situations, shooters can't process failure as well as we like. The vast majority need thier hands held and egos stroked.

Punishment is relative, and I did not explain it well. Most trainees, when asked to perform, should not need much explanation of where things went wrong. You should have already trained them, and should only need to remind them.

Sorry I need to be clearer, I have been up for 22+ hours, and need to go to bed...

pat

[DDTSGM]

I think that if you wanted to drive home the accountability of your actions it would best be done during force on force.

Have folks react in a realistic manner to the wounds they receive, e.g. dead center in the face mask -drop like a sack of spuds; in the arm - writhing and moaning, etc. Be realistic in the depiction - not all wounds are going to be painful.

The safety officer would call out wound type and severity, the shooter would then be responsible for follow up. It could get messy if the shooter also takes a round - self-aid or victim aid first? What if the suspect is wounded worse than the hostage/bystander?

An exercise like that would be time consuming, but also program a proper response.

I have testified in cases where one of the main issues was whether LE should be expected to approach and render aid, formatting a trained response would be invaluable in such situations.

JMO

Also, my opinion - doing pushups during firearms training classes takes more time away from training than a quick AAR does. My mindset is you're paying to advance your shooting skills, not do PT.

[DDTSGM]

doubled

[GJM]

There are a number of possible layers to this.

First layer, many to most shooters have not shot enough, to realistically know whether they can make a certain shot, and with what percentage of success. The outcome of the shot is completely unknown.

Next layer is more skilled shooters. Now the question is how difficult is a shot, what are the mechanics of making that shot, and how much emotional control do they have to execute. Obviously, the harder the shot and shorter the time, the greater of a shooter's 100 percent ability, will be required. That is a problem with fixed time drills. If the par is very doable for you, time becomes mostly a non factor. If you have to struggle to make the par, then you are in the predicament of having to pick between executing within your ability or going for it and hoping you make it. (As an aside, I believe many instructors set par times to reflect how much time it takes for them.) It goes without saying, that the harder the shot and the larger the group, the more failures there will be.

Most Mondays, my wife and I start the week with a debrief of what we screwed up at the last match, and devote extra time to fixing that skill.

[CCT125US]

I know Pressburg has used photos of students’ family members for at least some iterations of his No Fail Shot class, at least if I’m recalling the Primary and Secondary episode correctly.

That is fantastic

...how much emotional control do they have to execute. Obviously, the harder the shot and shorter the time, the greater of a shooter's 100 percent ability, will be required. That is a problem with fixed time drills. If the par is very doable for you, time becomes mostly a non factor. If you have to struggle to make the par, then you are in the predicament of having to pick between executing within your ability or going for it and hoping you make it. (As an aside, I believe many instructors set par times to reflect how much time it takes for them.) It goes without saying, that the harder the shot and the larger the group, the more failures there will be.

I like the term emotional control. Giving respect to the difficulty of the shot and having an understanding of what is required through practice and repetition.



Appreciate the responses so far. My apologies for posing a question and then stepping out.

Part of this comes from making a mistake that has cost some mental and monetary expenditure. Nothing catostopic, but a point of learning for me. A shot that deserved more respect if you will.

[rcbusmc24]

I think that if you wanted to drive home the accountability of your actions it would best be done during force on force.

Have folks react in a realistic manner to the wounds they receive, e.g. dead center in the face mask -drop like a sack of spuds; in the arm - writhing and moaning, etc. Be realistic in the depiction - not all wounds are going to be painful.

The safety officer would call out wound type and severity, the shooter would then be responsible for follow up. It could get messy if the shooter also takes a round - self-aid or victim aid first? What if the suspect is wounded worse than the hostage/bystander?

An exercise like that would be time consuming, but also program a proper response.

I have testified in cases where one of the main issues was whether LE should be expected to approach and render aid, formatting a trained response would be invaluable in such situations.

JMO

Also, my opinion - doing pushups during firearms training classes takes more time away from training than a quick AAR does. My mindset is you're paying to advance your shooting skills, not do PT.

I want to caveat off of this one a bit because while it is a good idea and can be executed properly it must be planned for and prepped or it can rapidly cause issues. I can't really speak to this from a domestic LE perspective I can say that we found some stuff out while training multiple USMC raid forces up over the last 20 some years in force on force scenarios that may be valuable to others planning this type of training. Casualty play must be planned and executed very carefully. I and others I worked with will never allow a individual Marine or anyone other than one of the pre designated controllers to call someone in a force on force exercise as a casualty. Nor will we ever allow a trainee to take himself out of the fight in this manner. There are several reasons for this.

At the rifleman level it is because we do not want to condition the Marine to "go down" if they take a hit, they are always expected to keep fighting through it, even if they know that the face shot they just "took" would be catastrophic. At the basic level this is no different than the old trained response we used to have to always take a knee "to simulate taking cover" to fix a malfunction or conduct a reload.... That sounds dumb right? Sure it does, yet we have a bunch of examples from early in the war of dudes on knees in the open in firefights reloading or clearing malfs because that is how they were trained... so we stopped doing that. It's the same trained response with this.

At the unit level it is because the conduct of the raid is the primary training task and we do not wish to bog the unit down with casualty play and induce a early or premature culminating point for the unit. This also considers into the commanders continuing evaluation of whether they have hit go/ no go or abort criteria as per the mission planning that they have conducted.

At the exercise level we want to test the commander and his company staff along with his medical personnel in all facets of casualty triage, treatment, transport and transfer. By having specific scenarios already prebuilt we can avoid overloading with the same mundane injury and make the corpsmen and combat lifesaver designated Marines properly evaluate and treat injuries, triage properly, pass critical information up and then conduct the actual transport of casualties to the evacuation platforms. Otherwise it just turns into dudes throwing TQ's onto each other and piling them up in a room to be forgotten about until extract...

Casualty cards are prepared and handed out to the controllers prior to the event by the medical (corpsman) lead instructor. We do watch to see if someone does something along the way that will allow a particular card to "fit" him or her but many times its just becomes someone's "turn" . That's how it be sometimes in combat anyway so that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

All in all I think Dan is on the right track with the basic idea, I just caution being careful not to inoculate your shooters with the idea that taking a hit means they are out of the fight. The best care under fire that you can give an injured person is to win the fight, then come back and treat them with no gunfight still raging around them and you. I've seen too many units overwhelm themselves with casualties and become combat ineffective or lose all momentum due to poorly planned casualty play.

[rob_s]

Well, in USPSA, making a hit on a no-shoot could be an instant DQ…



…Just saying.

When I first started running carbine matches, that was the penalty. For the stage though, not the whole match. FTN or NT and you dq’d the stage. While amusing, I don’t think it was all that great an idea, in hindsight. It was at a time when I wasn’t able to different triage between gun games and self-defense, and now I know better.

Later, I moved to just having a very high penalty for FTN and NT. I think this was the final iteration of the adorning, and may actually be what they still do today.

https://sites.google.com/site/tssasfdcc/scoring

SFDCC works under the principle of Target Neutralization in order to make scoring easy and fast. Targets utilized are standard IDPA targets with -0, -1, and -3 scoring zones. A target shall be deemed neutralized when it has two shots in the A (-0) zone, three shots in the B (-1) zone or best combination possible of both zones. Any shot in the C (-3) zone does not count for scoring purposes.

Penalties are calculated as seconds added to raw time in the following amounts:
Failure to Neutralize a threat target (FTN): 30 Seconds
Hit on a Non-Threat (friendly) target (NT): 30 Seconds
Procedural (P): 5 Seconds
Failure to Do Right (FTDR): 100 Seconds

[psalms144.1]

I'm sure several of you have heard these things before, but here we go again:

When I was running a protective detail for a high level DOD leader, we had LOTS of opportunity to train with firearms and tactics (like every day we weren't on the road). My guys got pretty proficient in shooting fast and accurately, and, as sometimes happen, got a little lackadaisical. So, I modified the agency's FLETC-based qualification in two ways - we shot the standard qual on the standard target, but with 50% of the allotted time per engagement, and I made a modified target where the "5" zone was just the rough CNS, and the "3" zone was the "golden triangle" in the high chest. Any hit outside those places was 1 point. With either modified qual, any round that missed the silhouette was a fail. Then I tied passing the qual to being able to travel on mission, and we shot it once a month. The team got VERY serious about it after I pulled one guy off a 10-day advance to Paris because he dropped a round off silhouette at the 25...

Every time we went to the range with pistol (pretty much weekly), we would round out the morning by shooting one magazine full at a (broken) pepper popper on the 100 yard berm. Least number of hits on the target had to buy (soft) drinks for the team at lunch, which would follow right after the range. This was another big motivator - the "worst" shooter rarely hit less than 11 rounds out of 15 at 100 yards, and several guys would consistently go 13-15.

Having said all that, I'll recall a common quote from my Boss at the time, ADM Olson (now sadly retired). He would say "You get the behavior you incentivize," with the corollary being it's damn near impossible to punish folks into excellence. So, while my approach was heavily "accountability" oriented, I would also give guys incentives to excel. To whit - folks who shot a 300 on either modified qual would either get a long weekend, or first "dibs" on upcoming high interest missions. My larger agency took a similar approach on PT - giving 2-hour time-off aways for folks for each event they scored "excellent" on during semi-annual physical fitness assessments. Surprising how well a small reward motivates folks...