Addressing Fratricide in CO Training

Posted on by The Tactical Hermit

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Fratricide of “friendly fire” has been an unfortunate part of war since time in memorial. Several things contribute to “blue on blue” incidents, most of them stemming from poor communication between supporting units. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan War have seen their fair share of friendly fire incidents, one of the most tragic being when NFL star Pat Tillman was shot by his own Army Ranger platoon in Afghanistan in 2004. The most recent FF incident in Afghanistan involved  five SF Operators who were mistaken for enemy insurgents and bombed by a coalition aircraft.

So what can the CIVILIAN CO learn from these unfortunate military incidents? Isn’t this a military problem and not a civilian one? To answer that you have to first understand that to keep growing your skill sets as a civilian operator you have to always be looking for situations to learn from, regardless of the source. As a legally armed civilian, fratricide is a very real and potential issue and is something all CO’s need to address in our training just like the soldier on the front line. As civilians, we must understand that the “fog of war” is not exclusive to just military personnel in a war zone. No matter WHO you are or WHERE you are, the “pandemonium” of combat is the same.When you consider all of the anatomical issues working against you (tunnel vision, loss of fine motor skill, time distortion, increased heart rate) and then add the possible environmental stressors (poor visibility due to weather or time of day) the odds start stacking against you quickly. Although we can never take away the fog of war, control the weather or change how stress affects our bodies and minds, we can do the following:

  • Improve our odds by taking on the proper combative mindset so that we can make the right decision at the right moment
  • Learn to work with how our bodies respond to stress versus trying to find cute solutions around them
  • Drill realistically to reduce the probability of a friendly fire incident.

Training Philosophy

I still remember  the burly ex-army MSgt. instructor that taught my advanced CCW class I took a few years ago. The guy looked like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Bo-Bo Baggins. He was undoubtedly one of the shortest, hairy men I have ever met. “Every round you fire out there in the WORLD  will have  at least one lawyer attached to it; therefore, be G@# damn sure of your TARGET before you squeeze that trigger or you will be showering with your ass to the wall for the next 10 to 20 years of your lives while you are in PRISON!” he would yell as he walked down the line watching us like hawks as we cleared malfunctions and addressed threats down range. “Also consider that under stress, out there in the WORLD, you might get trigger happy and be tempted to fire just at movement before you have ID’d your target..take my word for it now, DON’T DO THAT!! I can tell you from experience there is nothing worse than to find out you have shot one of the good guys, or your buddies, by accident.”

That comment turned a few heads, because you could tell there was emotion behind it. After lunch, “Grizzly-Bo-Bo” (as I will affectionately call him), confessed to us that he had been “involved” in a “blue-on’blue” incident 6 years ago in Iraq where 2 soldiers were killed accidentally when they did not communicate their position during an ambush. During the AAR and de-brief  it was discovered that NONE of the National Guard soldiers involved had been thru anything but a 30 minute lecture on “Avoiding Fratricide”; no hands on training, no live-fire  drills, nothing. In the end, all of the soldiers involved were exonerated in the shooting, but it left a lasting mark on Grizzly Bo-Bo. He went on to tell us that not integrating some type of counter-fratricide training in any type of setting, whether it be Law Enforcement, Civilian or MIlitary is pure stupidity. It is a REAL threat in mortal combat, no matter the environment or circumstance. That being said, for the remainder of the afternoon (over 150 rounds) we all worked on “No-Shoots”  and “Cognitive Stress Drills”.

I left that class with the very profound sense of  responsibility placed upon me as an armed civilian and CCL Licensee. I also realized that to be truly prepared, the armed civilian (the CO) needs to have in their core training curriculum a set of drills to INDUCE DISCRETIONARY SHOOTING, or in other words, to THINK before they PULL THE TRIGGER. The safety of my family and innocent by-standers depends on it! Now I know in some “tactical” civilian training circles, this type of training is basically sneezed at because it is believed it induces “hesitation”in the response time and therefore increases the chance the shooter will not “act” at the crucial moment and will be hurt or killed in the altercation; I call BS to this ideal. It has been my experience that this type of training, if done repetitively, will not only will make you a better, smarter, safer shooter, but also a more accurate one to boot.

Discretionary Shooting

There are basically three components to “Discretionary Shooting” in civilian self-defense firearms training: Communication, Background and the Shooting drills themselves. The Communication part involves knowing where ALL your friendlies are before you go HOT. The Background part is basically a second “contingency” layer to the communication part. It involves knowing what is BEHIND that wall, that couch, that counter, etc. because bullets PENETRATE most mediums very easily. Now in a perfect world, we would have x-ray vision like Clark Kent and be able to see thru that wall 10 seconds before we need to make the shot, but of course it is not. The bottom line here is to attempt to AVOID shooting in the direction of where we are unsure of. Bullets do crazy things when they leave the gun guys, take my word on it. Remember: Every bullet has a lawyer attached to it. We have to ID where our FRIENDLIES are, ID our HOSTILE targets & ID our backgrounds. I know it seems that taking responsibility for every round that leaves your weapon is a HUGE undertaking in a high stress life or death situation and  just  seems like one more thing to have to worry about while some asshole is trying to kill you, but that is the price to be paid to be a responsible armed civilian in the world we live in today.

On to the drills. Most of us are all familiar with “no shoot” targets being integrated into hostile targets. This has been the standard “discretionary” drill for a while now. It is also the “Hostage 101” type target when training HRT and SWAT teams. For the civilian however, the “Cognitive Stress Target” is one of the best to induce overall discretionary shooting, better accuracy and just overall “tightness” to your shooting. I have been using the DT-ANTQ-A  and the 4 Color Discretionary Target both from LE Targets for a while now and they work great. There are a hundred variations to the types of  discretionary drills you can do with these things, but in my classes we focus on integrating movement, reloads and clearing malfunctions just to name a few to make it challenging. The basic premise of these targets is to have either a number, color, shape or a combination of all of them called out by your partner and then the shooter address them with a set number of rounds (for example each target gets two rounds).To make things interesting you can also call out either “all odd or even numbers”. You can then time each shooter to add stress or maybe have them run an “O COURSE” or do some quick exercises before engaging to get that heart rate up and add some real world stress.

So in a nutshell, there it is guys..a subject not really talked about a lot on most “tactical” forums and certainly not drilled on in most civilian self-defense shooting classes. But take my word for it, if there ever was a skill-set that will make you a more responsible CO and keep you out of legal hot water (and prison for that matter) this one is it!

Stay Armed, Drill Responsibly, and Stay Dangerous!!

 

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