Study your environment and the realities that you might face. Develop a plan of action, train your partners and your family, and be ready. Make sure that the next urban terrorist who hides from you will be in more danger from you than you are from him.
A standard submachine gun is often one of the best and most versatile tools available for indoor and limited-range outdoor scenarios.
Even with the modern advances in weaponcraft, the ubiquitous handgun is still often preferred for indoor scenarios because of its controllability and maneuverability.
Dale Fricke oversees a firing drill with a suppressed submachine gun.
SEVENTEEN
HOW TO
PRACTICE TACTICS
Practice doesn't make perfect; only PERFECT practice makes perfect. If you practice crap for twenty years, all you'll be is a "crapmaster." Crapmasters do not win gunfights!
By now, most of you know that one of the most important things you can do to enhance you firearms skills is constant and consistent dry practice of the fundamentals in conjunction with regular live-fire practice. Those who practice the "three secrets" as well as gun manipulation drills (e.g., presentation, reloading, malfunction clearances) on a regular basis fare much better in combat than those who do not. Historical evidence and personal experience will prove that fact quite easily. The study of personal tactics, particularly as they relate to building searches, may be handled in the same fashion.
At this point in your studies, you should know how to handle most of the architectural obstacles you may face in a typical urban building. If you wish to make these skills second nature instead of simply having knowledge about their execution-you must "dry practice" them. In every apartment or home you will have doors, corners, hallways, hallway intersections, and (if you are lucky) stairs.
First of all, follow the standard dry practice procedures to unload your firearm (and secure the ammunition). The last thing you want is any new ventilation at the end of your dry practice session. Not only is this embarrassing, but it also annoys the neighbors.
Next, find a door. Practice approaching the door, checking the doorknob, and opening the door while maintaining a ready position. Practice clearing the room beyond from the outside and getting through the door (do the latter several times with the door opening inward as well as outward).
Training in a tactical simulator is essential to a thorough understanding of tactical principles.
With every step, the trainee is presented with another potential danger area, threat, and shoot/no-shoot decision.
Now, find a corner and repeat the process. Clear a right-hand corner 10 times and then reverse it and clear a left-hand corner. Watch your movement on. the approach and be careful about not allowing your weapon to precede you into unsecured space.
Find a T-intersection and repeat the process again. Pay attention to the basics. Read the discussion on T-intersections again to be sure you know how to handle them properly. Just as you do with simple dry practice, proceed slowly and make the movements perfect. This quest for perfection will yield extreme smoothness, which will also make you efficient. Remember, there is little need for speed in most tactical situations.
When you are comfortable with these techniques, introduce a dry practice target into the equation. This target should be a depiction of a hostile human being, not simply a neutral silhouette. This will accustom and condition your mind to search for humanoid features.
The next step involves the assistance of a partner. For many years my wife and I were on different working schedules; I would arrive home about an hour after she'd left for work. Before she left, however, she would usually hide a handful of evil-looking humanoid targets within the house. When I arrived home after a long night at "The Front," I would unload my pistol and follow my dry practice procedures, and then I would hunt the hostiles. She would make them extremely difficult for me to find, because if I failed to locate a target I had to take her out for an expensive dinner and night on the town. Of course, I was required to be honest about whether I ever failed to find one.
Some fainthearted readers may be put off by such extreme measures and practices. Well, all I can say is that when your life depends on your skills, nothing is extreme!
The next level is to play a tactical hide-and-seek game with plastic "red guns." We conduct similar exercises at our training courses, such as the Advanced Tactics Course. Have your part- ncr go hide in your residence (armed with a plastic red gun prop) as an adversary would. You will go search for him as you would if you were really hunting a dangerous adversary. NOTE: Please use only nonfiring plastic training guns for this exercise!
Simulations may be executed by the individual or team.
Above all, it is important to learn how to move through each obstacle smoothly and correctly.
For those who are fortunate enough to have access to Simunition FX training cartridges, you may set up actual forceagainst-force scenarios. These Simunition FX cartridges may be fired in real firearms if you first install a safety kit. This type of training is as close as you can get to an actual building search for an adversary or an actual gunfight. One caution about Simunition: the strike of these cartridges stings considerably. The tendency is to armor yourself from head to toe in hopes of mitigating the sting; I am a firm believer in the concept that pain is the greatest of teachers. Other than protecting the obvious vital areas (eyes, throat, groin), a simple long-sleeved shirt and pants will suffice.
Additionally, the great motivator here is the possibility of being hit and the resulting pain. If you use Simunition too much, you will become desensitized to the sting, and it will lose its training value. I've seen this firsthand in SWAT training where officers will expose themselves to the incoming fire because subconsciously they are no longer afraid to get hit. This has disastrous potential on the street.
Finally, you may graduate to a tactical "hide and seek" where your training partner prepares an ambush while you go find him.
Just as with any form of semiathletic skill, continuous practice is important to the development of tactical skills. But not just any type of practice will do. Only perfect practice makes perfect performance. This applies to both the physical and the mental-emotional aspects of tactics. Perfection-unattainable as it is-must be your goal when your life depends on your success.
I remember well the thought processes I experienced during my first gunfight (my first real brush with death) years ago. In spite of the very real life-threatening danger, the smoke, the gunfire, and the confusion, I reacted tactically, mentally, and emotionally just as I had trained myself to do in tactical simulations. When I heard my adversary's gunfire I remember thinking, This is familiar territory… I've been here before… I know what isgoing to happen next. Such practice as I've described will develop "experience" as much as is possible in today's world without really "getting in the elephant's face." The experience obtained in training can be as real as you wish to make it. It is simply a matter of attitude. Often, that very experience, obtained on the training field, is what will define the difference between a glorious victory over incredible odds or an unexpected death on the battlefield.
TERMINOLOGY OF TACTICS
Ace: A master tactician who has developed an extremely high level of skill and expertise in tactics and weaponcraft.