During the planning phase to begin the war in Iraq, the planners (eggheads) at Central Command (Centcom) developed several courses of action that the Coalition Forces could encounter.  I don’t remember all of them in detail, but most of them covered different nuances of how the Iraqi Army would fight us.

Fairly late in the planning process, a new course of action appeared.  We were initially told that there was a remote chance that the entire Iraqi regime could collapse as soon as the invasion was underway.  This “remote” course of action was called Early Regime Collapse (ERC).  At first, we just reviewed our plans to ensure that we could account for massive amounts of prisoners if the Iraqi Army surrendered en masse.

Then the Army began issuing cards and handouts describing the procedures for organizing Iraqi infantry or tank battalion after they surrendered.  We began developing our own courses of action that were predicated upon the Iraqi Army giving up.  Before long, ERC became the de facto plan for the invasion of Iraq.  I’m sure that there were exceptions, and most of the squads and platoons were ready to fight.  At the higher level of brigades and division though, the Iraqi Army had all but surrendered before we even crossed the berm.  I actually felt a little disappointed that the war was over…and I was still in Kuwait.  War was a total bummer.

Once the invasion was underway, we didn’t get into any huge firefights right away.  But we didn’t take any prisoners either.  We saw lots of military aged males who were in civilian clothes, but no uniforms.  What we would soon realize is that the Iraqi Regime wouldn’t collapse like the Centcom planners thought.  And they didn’t fight us the way we thought they would.  The fights in Nasiriyah and Hillah were indicators of things to come.

Why is any of this important?  The simple mistake made during pre-invasion planning was developing a plan (a course of action) that centered on how the enemy would react.  Leaders within the law enforcement community, specifically trainers, should heed the lesson here.  In a violent struggle between men, there isn’t a reliable way to predict the behavior of your assailant.

Think of how you currently train to deal with violent assault.  Not how you think, or plan.  How do you train?  Do you train to read, assess, and act?  To observe, orient, decide, then act?  Or do you talk about the OODA loop, then train to fire a certain number of rounds at a paper target from a pre-determined distance from a static position during daylight hours?  If you think a gunfight unfolds like a choreographed Kabuki theater, you’re setting yourself up for an expectation shortfall.  You will be surprised and possibly killed because your attacker did not stand still and act like a paper target.

Do you train to confront active shooters?  How did you develop your tactics?  Do you believe that the “profile” of an active shooter or terrorist will determine how they react to law enforcement?  Do you train your officers to solve tactical problems, or do you teach them techniques that they will use.

For years, teaching tactics ad nauseum from the latest “expert” was the norm.  It’s time to break from choreography and begin teaching principles-based realistic training.  Law enforcement officers don’t need to be taught what to think about a situation, they need to be taught how to think tactically and solve problems.

Don’t be guilty of planning for Early Regime Collapse.  There aren’t any guarantees during a violent encounter.  Jedburgh has developed the most innovative training programs available anywhere.  Based on years of personal combat experience by Special Forces, our firearms training is firmly grounded in the realities of modern gunfighting.

We’d like to opportunity to train with you or your agency.  Contact us at info@Jedburgh-USA.com for scheduling.

Professional law enforcement and the armed citizen share the same challenges as the athlete.  You obviously want to have a full and complete set of skills to defend yourself from a violent attack.  While there is some risk of over-training, I suspect the majority of us should be more concerned with a lack of preparedness.  If you knew the date, time, and circumstances of the fight for your life I assume that you’d either: a) not be there, or b) prepare to fight.

The problem, of course, is that you don’t know when you’ll be assaulted.  Athletes know when they’ll perform, and the games they play have well defined rules and even referees.

Armed professionals have to be ready to play on any given day, at any time, regardless of the weather.  There are no rules to surviving an assault, and there will not be a referee to adjudicate.  There is only surviving – or getting killed.

But how do we find the balance between training and our daily lives?  We can’t simply train constantly.  I think the problem is two-fold.  First, we don’t train enough.  And second, we don’t maximize our training time.

Like all truly complex subjects, it sounds simple.  Train more and train better (train more better?).  But how do we build a world-class training program that maximizes our chances of survival while balancing our duties to our families and communities?  I propose that we use the same scientific approach that professional athletes use.

One of the key components to a successful training program is to ensure that the desired skills are transferred into the student’s long-term memory.  Once the teach, coach, mentor cycle of traditional training is complete, how do we measure skill transfer?

To measure training success, place the student under stress.  Bar is a unit of measure roughly equal to the atmospheric pressure of the Earth at sea level.  Simulated stress using accelerated heart rate, timed drills, and other stressors will allow an effective assessment of both the students performance, and the efficacy of your training program.  Under increased pressure, the problems or shortfalls in your training paradigm will be exaggerated.

The Jedburgh Hi Bar Training™ concept proposes to meet this need.  Whether the training covers firearms or tactics, we have developed a method of instruction to successfully transfer skills to the student, followed by a stress-filled evaluation designed to objectively determine whether learning has been achieved.

If your training program is still using qualification standards to measure performance, you aren’t preparing your officers to survive a violent assault.  Jedburgh has developed the most innovative training programs available anywhere.  Based on years of personal combat experience by Special Forces, our firearms training is firmly grounded in the realities of modern gunfighting.

We’d like to opportunity to train with you or your agency.  Contact us at info@Jedburgh-USA.com for scheduling.

We have long discussed the statistics and circumstances of law enforcement performance during lethal encounters.  There are usually two directions that the discussion takes, based primarily on the author’s perspective.  Either training is the primary animator, or the psychological and physiological impact of the incident leads to poor performance.

Since Jedburgh is a training outfit, you can guess what side of the fence I come down on. What may not be obvious is that our firearms training is less about weapons than it is about people.  Let me share with you what are considered the SOF Truths.  The original author is actually a non-SOF retired Army Colonel named John Collins, who was nonetheless a smart guy and whose SOF Truths remain as valid today as when he wrote them in 1987 for a Congressional Report.

• Humans are more important than hardware
• Quality is better than quantity
• Special Operations Forces cannot be mass produced
• Competent Special Operations Forces cannot be created after emergencies occur

While these were written for very specific military units, it doesn’t take much imagination to apply these truths to law enforcement units, departments or agencies.  In my opinion, the truths are fundamentals that can be applied to any profession.  Here are the Jedburgh Training Truths ©:

• The man is the weapon, the weapons are just tools
• A quality professional is better than a quantity of  amateurs
• Training must be tailored to each individual to deliver perfect performance
• A core of professional competence must be constantly maintained

These truths permeate our training mindset and our entire approach to business.  You can’t train firearms effectively without training the whole man.  Understanding how the human brain learns and processes information, the psychological impact of violence, and the realities of modern combat are essential to building a world class program.  Training time must be devoted to Mindset, Weapon Manipulations (Marksmanship), and Tactics in equal measures.

Combat Triad

There are plenty of indications that our current approach to training needs to be modified.  In the last ten years, there has not been any appreciable improvement in the number of law enforcement officers killed, or even the hit probability of officers involved in shootings.

Did you know that there is no correlation between how well an officer qualifies and the probability of the same officer hitting his intended target in a gunfight?  There is some isolated data that indicates a slightly positive correlation, but when you factor in the small population and high standard deviation you end up with statistically insignificant results.

The standards we use to determine accuracy and proficiency with the use of firearms does not indicate either when the officer is fighting for his life.

We need to develop a comprehensive and holistic approach to firearms training.  The entire training paradigm requires modification to field the most professional police force possible.  It will save lives.

Don’t train on what you want.  Train on what you need.  Jedburgh Corp has developed the most comprehensive firearms training available anywhere.  It was built on the vast personal combat experience of some of the most elite special operators in the country.  Contact us at info@Jedburgh-USA.com to provide feedback on the blog, or discuss your training needs.  Also, feel free to post your comments.

Columbine was a seminal event in law enforcement.  While there had been other mass-shootings in the country, the nature of the assault on the students and faculty at Columbine High School would force a change in the decision-making process of law enforcement officers.  It was no longer appropriate to contain a suspect, call a tactical team and wait.  What the shooters at Columbine (and other similar attacks) clearly demonstrated is that they would continue to kill until forced to stop.

A new wave of “Active Shooter” tactics and training were developed across the country.  The tactics would stress speed by first responders.  In some cases it required new equipment consisting of rifle or carbine, helmet, and ballistic vest.  In most cases it required a new skill set for the “average” patrol officer.  Patrol officers would likely be the first on the scene and most active shooter protocols would call for a hasty breach and assault.

Instead of waiting to have a completed and fully rehearsed assault plan, first responders would literally move to the sound of the guns in an attempt to halt or neutralize the threat as quickly as possible.  Victims would be by-passed in order to halt the shooter as quickly as possible.

The recent Fort Hood shooting depicts a successful application of modern active shooter protocol.  Officer Kimberly Munley and her partner responded to the incident within three minutes.  Witnesses report that Officer Munley moved aggressively toward the shooter and engaged him with her pistol.  The shooter turned to face her and began returning fire.  During the exchange, Munley was hit in both legs and the wrist but stayed in the fight, striking her assailant twice more in the upper torso bringing him down.  Without her swift interdiction, the shootings would certainly have continued for some time and the number of victims would have climbed.

As active shooter training continues to mature, more and more trainers are advocating single officer entry in order to halt the attack as quickly as possible.  Advocates for this technique site numerous past active shooter situations during which the attacker quickly surrendered or committed suicide when confronted by law enforcement.  While the data used is certainly correct, I disagree with the conclusions reached.  Developing tactics which rely on your assailant to quickly surrender are frighteningly incomplete.  There is an inherent flaw in developing highly refined and narrowed tactics which presupposes the will to fight of your enemy.

While the criminal profile of active shooters continues to be refined, the profile of terrorist attacks continues to expand.  The next evolution of terrorism took place in Mumbai in 2008.  The Jedburgh Research Initiative recently completed a comprehensive study of the incident and published a reconstruction of the attack, available for download here.  While the lessons learned from Mumbai are numerous and far reaching, there are obvious implications for active shooter protocol.

The Mumbai attack changed the profile of the active shooter.  These determined terrorists were not afraid to confront police, even well-trained and well-equipped national counter-terrorism forces.  Of the 104 killed in the Mumbai attack, 18 were police officers.  Would you ask the same “average” patrol officer to confront a pair of terrorists armed with military rifles, grenades and explosives?  Alone?

If not, what is the decision point to alter tactics from a “traditional” active shooter scenario to a “terrorist” active shooter situation?  Will you divide and diffuse limited training resources by conducting separate training sessions to deal with both possibilities?

What’s needed are fundamental principle-based tactics.  Don’t waste your time teaching someone what to think.  Focus instead on teaching how to think.  Patrol officers will be bombarded with conflicting pieces of information about the threat, location, and intentions.  Their senses will be assaulted by the sights, sounds, and smells of modern urban combat.  Tactics that are appropriate for Mumbai-style attackers will work for any active shooter situation.

The Jedburgh Advanced Urban Combat Course was developed in cooperation with a Federal law enforcement agency to teach initiative-based urban combat skills.  Graduates will have the necessary skills to confront and overcome a terrorist threat.  If your active shooter training assumes that the attacker is just waiting to quit, you need to re-evaluate the lessons learned from recent terrorist incidents.

Law enforcement officers will have to refine urban combat skills to deal with an ever-evolving terrorist threat.  Any two officers from any shift need the skills to assault any building, day or night.

Don’t train on what you want.  Train on what you need.  Jedburgh Corp has developed the most comprehensive firearms training available anywhere.  It was built on the vast personal combat experience of some of the most elite special operators in the country.  Contact us at info@Jedburgh-USA.com to provide feedback on the blog, or discuss your training needs.  Also, feel free to post your comments.

You train hard, perfect your skills and develop new ones.  You’re a modern day warrior poet, a gunfighter.  Always remember:

Is not life a fleeting existence in the present?
A split second separate the past from present,
The present from the future, now and unknown.
The past gone, the present now, future unknown.

Life is fleeting, and so are your skill at arms.  Without regular maintenance, how long until your hard-fought skills begin to atrophy?  Which skills will degrade first?

A Navy study on the degradation of skills of their Aviation Anti-Submarine Operators showed that the skills and knowledge had “degraded significantly” when tested after 29 days.  Interestingly, both the factual and computational portions of the test showed similar levels of atrophy while the classification portion of the test showed no loss.  Obviously, I’m not comparing being a pistolero to being a Navy geek but I’ve personally experienced a similar phenomenon.  If I’ve gone a month or more without training I can still classify different parts of the pistols and discuss fluently the fundamentals of pistol marksmanship.  The loss occurs on the line when I’m engaging “threats.”  Both accuracy and speed suffer from the time away from the range.

The Army conducted a similar study on Nurses in an attempt to understand the retention of both Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS).  Following certification in both skills, the nurses in the study (133 nurses assigned to Fort Sam Houston) were retested 3, 6, 9, or 12 months later.  The findings show that while theoretical knowledge of both BLS and ACLS skills remained strong, performance skills suffered greatly.  The basic skills were retained at a higher rate and tended to atrophy at a slower rate.  63% of nurses retained BLS skills after 3 month and 58% after 12 months.  Only 30% of nurses passes ALCS after 3 months with just 14% after 12 months.  My takeaway is that your basic firearms skills will degrade more slowly than your advanced skills.  My guess is we tend to practice our basic skills more often.  Basic skills tend to be easier to train on at most ranges.  Many ranges specifically prohibit skills needed to maintain advanced weapons proficiency.  Drawing, rapid fire and shooting while moving can be difficult to train on because of range constraints.  The result is that we’re all better trained on basics than advanced skills.

There has also been several studies that discuss the general decline of “skilled work” in our industrialized and computerized society.  The craftsmen and artisans of 50 years ago are being replaced by technology, lasers, and robots.  Is it possible that it’s becoming more difficult to develop true skills in our modern society?  Not necessarily apropos for the current discussion, but still  fodder for discussion around the squad or team room.

So how do we develop a firearms training program that will maintain the highest level of proficiency?  It will obviously have to represent a realistic commitment.  We can’t spend all our time working to be good at our job.  Whether we like it or not, we actually have to leave the range from time to time in order to do our job.

Just like in other areas of our life, we have to prioritize and focus our efforts on our needs even at the expense of our wants. There’s a natural tendency to work on things that we like to do, and we tend to have better skills at the things we work on (because we like them).

We won’t be assaulted at the time or place, or in the manner of, our choosing.  In order to best prepare a solid foundation of basic skills needs to be developed.  Built on this foundation will be the advanced skills necessary to dominate and survive a violent encounter.  Shooting while moving, shooting from barricades, shooting at moving targets, shooting “disadvantaged” (i.e. shooting after being hit by your attacker), and shooting from alternate positions should all be the focus of your program.  The advanced skills will atrophy at a faster rate than basic skills.  To counter this trend, spend minimal time working on stationary targets from static positions.

Don’t train on what you want.  Train on what you need.  Jedburgh Corp has developed the most comprehensive firearms training available anywhere.  It was built on the vast personal combat experience of some of the most elite special operators in the country.  Contact us at info@Jedburgh-USA.com to provide feedback on the blog, or discuss your training needs.  Also, feel free to post your comments.