Maximum Effective Range

This year, we extended the range out to 660 meters, a full hundred meters beyond the US military stated maximum effective range of the M4 carbine, and, incidentally, over two hundred beyond the same for the M14.  The civilian imitations of these two rifles are the most popular weapon systems at my annual known distance shoot.  My personal experience would lead me to agree with the Army assessment of the M4, but I think they grossly underestimated the M14.  I would have given the M14 an honest 600 meters.  Nevertheless, it got me thinking about maximum effective range, and the following are some musings.

Some of the keyboard commandos I know have watched the Magpul long-range precision rifle videos, and are now convinced that the .308 Win is a one mile cartridge.  The point made by the instructor in the video is, I think, that with modern ballistic calculators, such a shot is possible. While the demonstration in the video is impressive, it is noteworthy that it appears that even with accurate measurement of range, wind, and a sophisticated ballistic computer, they are taking about six shots to make that one hit on steel at one mile.  Secondly, the idea of making a 1600 yard shot with the 308 is not new.  Here is a picture of the rear sight of the 1917 Enfield calibrated all the way out to 1600 (yes, it is not .308, but the ballistically similar 3006).

So does this mean the maximum effective range of the .308 is 1600 yards?  How about this box of .22 shorts which, according to the box, have a range of 2500 meters?

Or the .50/90 Sharps buffalo gun that Billy Dixon used, during the Battle of Adobe Walls, to kill a Comanche chief at a surveyed nine- tenths of a mile?

These examples only show what is possible, not what is likely.  Billy Dixon famously called his battle- ending fete a “scratch shot”, meaning he wasn’t sure he could do it again, or consistently. This brings us to the first requirement for determining the maximum effective range of a particular weapon system:  The projectile has to reach the target in a reliable and predictable way.  All bullets are affected by the same variables: gravity, wind, air density, spin drift, and coriolis effect.  However, the more powerful the round (and by powerful, I mean how much kinetic energy does it possess), the less each of these affect the trajectory of the bullet.  You can figure the wind drift for a .22 short the same way you do for a 300 Win mag, but if we say the drift for the first is 100 inches, and the second is 10, what would happen if your estimation of the wind speed was off by 10 percent? The 22 would be off 10 inches, and the 300 only 1.  Then factor in all of the many variables that must be figured, and the potential for error accumulates.  Those looking for a hard and fast rule will find this answer unsatisfying. More power is better, but how much is enough?

Those who love simple answers could look at the speed of sound. For a long time, the measure of the maximum effective range of a round was when it crossed from supersonic to subsonic. For reasons I don’t truly understand, a bullet’s trajectory is deflected in unpredictable ways when it drops below the speed of sound.  It was also useful for reasons that have nothing to do with the speed of sound. In the days of stubby fat projectiles, most reached the back side of the sound barrier with plenty of energy to spare.  The old NATO M80 147gr ball is a good example of old school bullet design. It drops below the speed of sound somewhere between 800 and 900 meters.  At that speed, it still has just under 400 foot pounds of energy.  That falls right in between 38 special and 9mm handgun energy levels, compared to the more modern 5.56 62gr bullet, which stays above the speed of sound till 700 meters, but only has 225 ft pounds of energy at that point. The energy is twice that of the 22 long rifle at the muzzle, to be sure, but pretty anemic.

This brings us to the second criteria for maximum effective range, which is that we want the bullet to have the desired impact on the target.  If that target is a piece of paper, it only has to make a hole; if the target is a game animal, it needs to bring down the beast humanely;  if the target is an enemy soldier, it needs end his ability to fight.  The amount of energy to do either of the latter two is highly subjective, but it would seem reasonable to want a level of energy comparable to, or better than, a handgun.

Let’s look only at these two factors: staying above the speed of sound, and having at least 500 foot pounds of energy (45 acp and 357 magnum levels). The 7.62×39 would max out at 400 yards, with 522 foot pounds and 1388 feet per second. The .223 loaded with a 69 gr target bullet is down to 475 foot pounds and 1980 feet per second at that same distance.  The .308 loaded with a 175 gr bullet is still above the sound barrier at 1000 yards, with 1200 feet per second velocity, and 560 foot pounds of energy.

In the beginning of this discussion, I said I believed the Army rating of the M4 at 550 meters to be about right, and 460 meters for the M14 to be very much too short.   The numbers here would suggest that the M4 is even less capable than I would have guessed, and the M14 far more.  The 7.62x 39 also far exceeded my expectations.

A final note: if Billy Dixon’s 425gr slug was still moving at 800 feet per second when it crawled out of the sky, it would have hit the Comanche chief with over 600 foot pounds of energy, more than enough to do the job.

When It Gets Real

How will I react “when it gets real”…  when it’s not just a game, a drill, or a score?  How will I preform when failure means my life, or, even worse, the lives of the people I love?  This is the question that haunts every martial artist.  And it should; after all, we invest a great deal of time and treasure preparing for the evil day. How disturbing would it be to have that day arrive and find that all has been for naught; that our Maginot line has been breached, and we are at the mercy of merciless men.  Trainers stay up nights worrying about this, too; or at least they should.  Generally, they approach this problem in one of three ways.

The first approach is what I will call Default to Training.  Jeff Cooper was an example of an adherent to the default- to- training method. This method holds that instinctive behavior can be modified; that we can focus on the front sight and not on the target, that we can hold the pistol “as gently as you would a live quail” while people are shooting at us.  We can gently press the trigger in a smooth rearward direction, while a homicidal maniac tries to kill us.  And there is validity in this; we have all heard veterans say things like:“my training took over, and it was just like a drill” or: “I could hear my drill instructor’s voice in my ear saying ‘front sight press’”. I remember one young Marine, freshly returned from Iraq, saying ,with awe and bewilderment: “All that stuff they teach you in School of Infantry, it really does work”.  Stories like these are reassuring; and, in truth, we all believe that what we do in training will have an effect when we are on the two way range. Yet there is always the nagging doubt that maybe it isn’t true, maybe it won’t work, and we have all heard and read enough stories to support these doubts.  Furthermore, if this approach is true, it can also be disconcerting; if we find we have trained ourselves to do the wrong thing.  Famously, California Highway Patrol Officer James Pence was killed as he worked to reload his revolver. Reportedly, the coroner found the empty brass of his spent cartridges in his pants pocket.  In a situation where split seconds meant the difference between life and death, he took the time to save his brass, because he had always done it that way on the range.  He defaulted to training.  We call these bad habits training scars, and it is a subject that deserves a post of its own.

The second approach is what I will call Default to Instinct. This school of thought holds that we can only modify behavior so much; in the end we will turn into cavemen seeking to fight, take flight or freeze.  Massad Ayoob is probably the modern pioneer of this method.  Early in his career he began interviewing cops who had been in gunfights. He found that the methods being taught in the seventies and eighties were not working in actual gunfights; at least, not very well.  He looked to modern scientific studies that found that under the stress of a life and death situation, the body reacts drastically; muscles become stronger, but lose their dexterity; some senses are sharpened, others are dulled; even the perception of time changes.  In light of this, and in combination of his findings from interviewing a great number of gunfight survivors, he developed his Stress Fire method.  This was basically an attempt to simplify the gun fighting methods developed by Jeff Cooper, and translate them into a system that would work well when the body was under the influence of adrenaline, as one would presumably be in a life or death struggle. Others have taken this much farther. Abandoning Cooper’s methods all together, they teach us to focus on the target, hold the pistol with a death grip, in addition to an entirely different concept of trigger control.

Rob Pincus is, perhaps, the most high- profile apostle of this method, although many of these techniques were taught by such old- timers as Ed McGivern and Rex Applegate, back in the twenties.

The danger with this approach (as I see it), is that in an attempt to teach people to fight with their instincts, bad habits are reinforced and ossified.  For instance, there is evidence that humans, when startled, bring their hands up in front of their faces in an instinctive reaction to protect that most vital part of the human anatomy.  Default- to- instinct instructors teach students to start all drills from the startle location.  So far so good, but who is to say they are not creating a training scar?  If my hands are at my belt when I am faced with a threat why would I bring my hands to my face first, then to the weapon in my belt?  To the default- to- instinct instructor, this self-fulfilling prophecy is not a training scar, but an affirmation of his doctrine that you will bring your hands to a position in front of your face when startled.  Instructors of this philosophy like to make cave man analogies, wherein they assert that modern weapons are nothing like the spears and clubs carried by Stone Age peoples.  They assume that our primitive ancestors used tools that worked with human instinct, and not in opposition to it.  I personally find this preposterous. The same skills (poise, a cool head under pressure, relaxed alertness) that will serve you well in a gunfight, will also serve you well when throwing a spear at that charging mastodon.

The third method is not espoused by any instructor I know of, but is probably the most widely- held by gun owners.  I’m calling this the Rise To The Occasion theory.  This theory holds that as long as one possesses a gun he will be able to deploy it effectively with little or no training, should the need arise. This is so preposterous, once it is put into words, that one wonders why it is so popular.   One instructor told me that for every hundred people who take his CCW class, which is mandated by law, only three come back for more training.  Using a gun effectively is a skill set somewhat similar in difficulty to driving a car; how many people would give their sixteen- year- old child the keys to the car after only eight hours of instruction?  Yet, most of those same people carry a lethal weapon with little more training than that.

As preposterous as this theory sounds to those who take their commitment as an armed citizen seriously, there is a body of evidence to lend some validity to this theory.

First, as poorly trained as most gun owners are, most criminals are even less so. Combined with that fact is the reality that most criminals have a profit motive, and will not risk getting shot simply to steal a wallet.  The truth is, it doesn’t take that much skill to deter the casual criminal.  Fortunately, the causal brigand seems to be the most common form of criminal in action today.

Secondly, there are instances of people who truly have risen to the occasion in a gunfight.  Case in point is F.B.I. agent Edmundo Mireles, who, in midst of the infamous Dade County shootout, figured out how to fire and reload a 870 Remington with only his weak hand, his right arm being totally destroyed by a rifle bullet.  It is noteworthy that men like Mireles are the exception, not the rule, and that while he had never practiced that technique before, his training and familiarity with that weapon system were certainly helpful to him when he had to learn it under fire.

While I agree with Clint Smith, who said: “The back alley at 2 am, faced with a gang of thugs, is not the best time to learn Kung Fu”, it is nice to know that it is possible to rise to the occasion; however, there is simply no way to foresee every possible problem that one might face.  Even if we could, it would be unwise to use up all of our training time studying the more obscure problems, to the neglect of the most useful and broadly applicable techniques.

In the end, while most instructors favor one or the other approach, all believe in and practice all three of the approaches outlined above, to a certain extent.  As a student, you will have to decide what makes the most sense to you and find an instructor that fits your personal preference.  You can usually read the school’s literature and find out rather quickly where their philosophy lies.

All of the anecdotal gunfights referenced here are recorded in Massad Ayoob’s excellent book the Ayoob Files.

Book review of A Historical Perspective On Light Infantry by Scott R McMichael

 

Light infantry is a much- misunderstood concept. Quite often light infantry is defined by the equipment they don’t have,  as in: “we don’t have helicopters like the cavalry, and we don’t have tanks like the mech/armor, so we must be light infantry”.  This book seeks to explain the characteristics of light infantry, and how such units are best led, deployed, and trained.

Here are a couple of points that stood out to me on the reading of this book.

1-I have always, somehow, thought of light infantry as highly trained or “elite”, but many of the forces profiled in this book were conscripts, and did not undergo extensive selection or training (their training was different from other infantry units, but not necessarily more strenuous).
2-Guerrilla/ insurgent tactics are not necessarily light infantry tactics, and vise-versa.  Prior to reading this book, those two were closely linked in my mind.
3-Dug-in positions were used extensively by many of these units. I had always thought the highly mobile nature of light infantry would preclude digging in; finding this was not so spurred me to read FM5-15
4-Marksmanship still matters. Repeatedly, the importance of accurate fire was mentioned.
5-Long- distance endurance marches were critical. I have heard more than one veteran of the Iraq war expound upon the irrelevance of the ruck march; then again, that was, by and large, not a light infantry conflict.
6-Pack animals are essential if you are going into territory without roads (see FM 31-27).
7-Light infantry is most effective when deployments are relatively short.

 

My friend and mentor, Dr. Christopher Larsen, read this review and added this comment, which is pertinent to anyone interested in the subject:

“And lastly…Light Infantry MUST NEVER find themselves in open or easily traversed terrain when combating mechanized/mounted forces!

Light Infantry can ONLY defeat Mech Infantry and Cavalry if they can channel these powerful forces into appropriate kill boxes.”

Care Under Fire

 This is a review I wrote up for a class I took in October 2014.

 I signed up for S & S training solutions Care Under Fire Course, because I teach a lot of firearms classes to some very novice students, and I wanted to be better prepared in case I should ever have to deal with a gunshot wound.  I had taken training with the Red Cross and my local ambulance district, but I was looking for something more in-depth, dealing specifically with trauma.

The class was primarily taught by Cole Sammons and Kyle Wright; combat infantry and EMT, and combat infantry medic, respectively.  While both of these men knew their material, and, to boot, had plenty of battlefield experience to back it up, what I appreciated most was their skill as teachers.  Although the students came from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from EMTs to guys with no experience, no matter what level of skill or knowledge a particular student had, they were always seeking to bring him up to the next level.

As the course name “Care Under Fire” would indicate, this class focused on the kind of care an infantryman might need to administer on the actual battlefield.  That being said, I should point out what this class is not.  You won’t be learning to set up an MASH unit and do direct blood transfusions, suture wounds, or re-inflate collapsed lungs.  This class focused on stabilizing the casualty, and getting him either back into the fight, or to a place where he could be safely evacuated.  If you are interested in the higher level, grid- down “ditch medicine”, I recommend you take this class first. Once you see the level of manpower required in just the initial treatment and evacuation of a critically wounded person, you may rethink your grid- down hospital fantasy.

The class was mostly hands- on, and used the crawl- walk- run teaching method.  First, we had a brief classroom session followed by hands- on practice of the various techniques and procedures.  Then we quickly moved to the obstacle course. A common fault of firearms/survival instructors is that they often water down the physical aspect of their subject matter.  I am happy to say that is not the case at S&S. We had to sprint, in full kit, 100 yards carrying two 5 gallon jugs of water, then low crawl 20 yards to our first casualty, while the op-for fired blanks and threw smoke grenades at us. Once there, we had to assess the situation, rally any comrades who could still fight, and neutralize the op-for. Only after we had stopped the incoming fire and established security could we begin moving and treating the wounded.

So why the blanks, obstacles and fireworks?  Simple. It all creates stress. It is relatively easy to sit in a classroom and apply a tourniquet. Things start to get more real when you are out of breath, and surrounded by smoke, noise and confusion.  Remember, a human being can bleed to death in as little as 3 minutes, so you want to be able to do this under any circumstances without fumbling.  Which brings to mind another point: these guys are combat medics, and some of what they teach is the exact opposite of what you will learn in the world of civilian first aid.  Not saying one is right and the other wrong; it all depends on the situation.

After the obstacle course, we moved on to fire team and squad- sized operations.  If you come to an S&S class, be prepared to do infantry stuff.  The emphasis of this class was medical, but we still got in some patrolling and reaction to ambush.  Again, this may seem out of place, until you think about it: no one schedules an emergency, they happen when you are trying to get other things done… again, more stress.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the things we learned in this class, but I hope to give an idea what it was like to anyone who might be interested. Be forewarned, it’s all about problem solving.  Cole likes to throw you surprises, and see how you deal with it.  He even tossed in a couple of moral and ethical dilemmas.

If you spend time around firearms and knives, or just like infantry stuff, I highly recommend this class.  You will learn how to treat trauma wounds and what supplies you need to do it.

For more information about S&S go to http://www.sstrainingsolutions.com/

Independence day with One Shepherd 2011

This is a report I wrote about the first shooting event I participated in with One Shepherd.  As I read it now, I am struck by how much my ideas about and knowledge of  small unit tactics have changed in the past six years.  Aside from editing some spelling and grammar, I am posting this just as I wrote it then.  

I spent the holiday playing army with One Shepherd.
  There were 12 men in the force I was assigned to, divided into three teams. Our mission was to patrol a 60 acre demilitarized zone, consisting of two fields grown over in waist- deep grass.  We did not know the mission of the other force, but they were divided into four 2 man teams who were to infiltrate, spy, and link up to ambush us.
We had night vision, they did not.
From 7 pm to 3 am, we saw no one.  Even with such a large force, patrolling 60 acres of tall grass is exhausting.  In a real life situation, I would not attempt it unless it were a high value standing crop.  Even so, I would not try to maintain constant watch, but send out a random number of patrols each night at random times.
A little after 3 am, all hell broke loose.  One of our teams made contact, and sustained 50% casualties, but the enemy was on the run.  We advanced on them, and again took two more casualties at a choke point in the road.  By now we were the mishmash survivors of the three original teams, with our most experienced leaders dead.  The enemy was doing a good job of breaking contact  (by which I mean returning fire long enough to slow us down then retreating.
They made their last stand near the crest of a hill just behind a bend in the road.
  We advanced up the hill by bounds for some 200 yards, which was exhausting, but fun, featuring lots of adrenaline.  Near the top, I was killed.  
All in all, I think we sustained 40 to 50% casualties, while only three of the enemy managed to escape.
Keep in mind that the guys on the infiltrating force were the oldest and most experienced; I pray I never face criminals with their level of skill.
In a real situation, I would concentrate on stealth more. The attitude of the defending force was, “this is our ground, we don’t have to be quiet, we belong here.”  Neither would I risk so many lives on an aggressive assault across known danger points, especially when the enemy is already doing what I want; running away.  This artificial aggressiveness is because fire fights are fun when you know that no one is really going to get hurt.
  I need to learn to shoot at night. Looking for your front sight outlined in the enemy muzzle flashes is a bad place to be.  I am installing a tritium front sight on my rifle.
It was great to perform this training exercise with a really classy bunch of guys, who were ready to help a new guy.
If you come out to one of their events, bear in mind the median age is about 20, so you will need to be ready to keep up.
All in all, I thought it was good training, and at 100 FRN, a real bargain.

For information about One Shepherd: http://www.1shepherd.com/