In the words of a fellow warrior Dave Grossman, retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, “Gun fighting is the American martial art and if gun fighting is the American martial art, then force-on-force training is like full-contact sparring.” This analogy provided by the internationally recognized scholar, author, soldier and speaker, reaffirms the need for full-contact sparring, or reality-based training as it’s known among law enforcement officers.
The best way to become a proficient and competent law enforcement professional is to train as close to reality as humanly possible. Think about it—would a true martial artist only hit a strike pad to become more adept in his craft? Would a boxer be successful if he only hit a heavy bag during training? Sure those skills are part of the training process, but the training has to evolve beyond that to be effective. To that end, why would any first responder whose primary weapon is a firearm only shoot at targets?
Reality-Based Training
As in full-contact or competitive martial arts or boxing, there’s only one way to truly prepare for the realities of combat, outside of the actual experience itself, and that’s through reality-based training (RBT). This training approach includes the fluid integration of decision-making skills and tactical concerns, such as recognition and effective use of cover, shooter movement, engaging multiple or moving targets, and shoot/no-shoot judgment scenarios utilizing non-lethal training ammunition (NLTA), such as UTM. Reality-based training is a dynamic training process that involves real people and real perceived threats.
RBT often involves force-on-force technology, which makes it possible to emulate violent confrontations and unpredictable encounters without injury. Officers can fight and assess their skills against an opponent (who is shooting back) as they test protocols, techniques and concepts.
The Importance of Force-On-Force Training
Training in static, stress-free environments can be limiting for officers who interact in high-stress situations. Training that replicates the pressure of real-life encounters is the only way to provide officers with the experience needed to survive. Over time, officers who gain real-life experience, learn to perform and control stress while in dangerous situations. Training should be designed to test agency protocols and tactics. Doing so allows trainers to find out what works and what doesn’t before a critical on-the-job incident occurs. Strategies can be improved and errors remediated during and after training. RBT allows officers to “train until they get it wrong, not until they get it right,” which means pushing protocols, tactics and skills to the limit so officers are better prepared for the realities faced on the street. Of course, nothing will replace the stress experienced in a real gunfire fight. However, if an operator feels that they’ve been in a similar situation before, they’ll have a plan to draw from and be better prepared to not only survive, but win.
No one individual has the same response to a stressful situation, so it’s ineffective for officers to rehearse a pre-determined response, technique or tactic to a given situation without working through their individual physiological response to stressors during realistic conflict scenarios.
Such drills might include the risk of pain, decision making and accountability. RBT exposes officers to the psychological and physiological responses of hurting or killing another person. When we combine proper concepts, tactics and strategies with the ability to manage the body’s normal and natural responses to a stressful event, we have a formula for success.
Overcoming Common Challenges
Historically in firearms training, measuring an officer’s competency meant looking at a quantitative result, such as qualifications on static ranges. Now, with reality-based training, we can assess competency levels far beyond low-stress target shooting drills.
In reality-based training, the threat of consequence is paramount—it’s what changes or affirms behavior. Force-on-force training incorporates both visual and pain penalty consequences. Building NLTA products and training concepts into battle drills and mission rehearsals will condition officers to positively react to new or evolving situations in a split second. Outside of actual conflict, force-on-force training is the only way to provide a platform for an officer to test the strengths and limitations of their individual protocols. The goal is to provide a means to see what works, what doesn’t and to serve as a springboard to enhance officer survivability.
Tips for Incorporating Force-On-Force into a Training Program
Performance goals will be achieved with RBT teaching methodologies, which take officers through a series of skill-building drills and mini-scenarios in a realistic environment. The process should be a systematic, phase-based approach developing a program that uses a series of drill progressions involving stress inoculation. This provides the officer with an environment to manage his/her own physiological response to stress while applying good tactics and decision making. Realism is further enhanced by allowing the officer to use his/her own operational weapon system and gear during training instead of simply a blue-gun or an unfamiliar dedicated conversion weapon. The objective is to promote training success not training scars.
Training Concepts
Weapons and tactical aptitude are perishable skills that can fade over time. Force-on-force, reality-based training enables officers to train the way they’re going to fight. The concept of reality-based training is to provide a methodology to enhance skills, concepts and applications in order to identify areas of individual weaknesses and more importantly, identify a method to test training protocols, concepts and skills. It also offers an agency a method to quality control, revise and update training programs while identifying a process to evaluate individual student performance.
Those attending the upcoming HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit on Oct. 29–Nov. 2 in San Diego will have the opportunity to participate in RBT using the UTM/Phoenix system. The Phoenix team will be at the Summit teaching skill sets that will pay dividends during conflict. For more information, visit www.thehalosummit.com.
Steve Didier and Tony Lambraia will be instructing Force on Force courses at the upcoming HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit, taking place Oct. 29–Nov. 2. The Summit will transform San Diego’s 44-acre Paradise Point island into a homeland security training lab for immersive training scenarios, live-action demonstrations and course education. For more information, call 619/881-9125 ext. 3 or visit www.thehalosummit.com.
Steve Didier and Tony Lambraia are the co-CEOs of Phoenix RBT Solutions, a provider of reality-based training solutions for law enforcement, military and private sector security at the national and international level. They both served with the Department of Homeland Security as original charter members in the development of its Use of Force policy and also created the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s widely heralded 220-acre Counterterrorism Operations Training Facility. Each year, they helped train more than 50,000 students enrolled at FLETC. For more information, visit www.phoenixrbtsolutions.com.