Rockwell Tactical Group Review Thread

[SuperMoose]

Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of taking my first organized training. I’m writing this review for several reasons, but mainly because prior to my taking this class I was unable to really find any information on the company running it other than their website.

The class was run by Rockwell Tactical Group. I stumbled upon them from a post on AR15.com in the PA Hometown forum, when someone asked for recommendations of classes. Knowing nothing about them I venture over to their website and did some reading. After browsing the website I decided to sign up for the Pistol 201 class.

The class was to be 1000 rounds over a period of two days (10 am to 5 pm). The website and e-mail I received prior to the class said that I would need to bring a holster, a magazine carrier that would hold two magazines, ammunition, eyes, ears and knee pads (optional). The range where the class was held was about an hour from where I live so I chose to commute each day.

A quick note about myself, I’ve been shooting guns since I was 12 years old. I was introduced to them in Boy Scouts. Guns were not something my family owned or talked about when I was growing up. I bought a shotgun when I turned 18 and was told to get rid of it. (As you can see that panned out well…) When I was 21 I purchased my first handgun. Since then I’ve been shooting handguns for the past 5 years and started to shoot IPSC the last two years. I’m familiar with drawing, some movement, multiple targets, reloading, barricades to some degree and other miscellaneous things.

Day 1

I arrived at the range at 9:30 just before the instructor got there. He arrived and brought supplies into the range. During the next half hour 3 of the other participants showed up, with 1 arriving later due to a prior obligation. We milled around for a short amount of time, loading magazines, introducing ourselves to one another and general small talk.

The class was being taught by two instructors. They are both veterans and Green Berets. They had both been deployed and been in multiple firefights. It was made clear that the style shooting they were teaching was combat oriented.

The other participants were a husband and wife, an older gentleman and a middle aged man. I was by far the youngest in the class. I believe they had all taken the Pistol 101 class earlier in the year. The woman who was there had only shot a gun less than 5 times. (More on that later).

We started promptly at 10 AM with warm up drills. We ran three different ones. There was a half and half (shooting 10 rounds at 10 yards into a spot on the target in 10 seconds and then halving the distance and time but maintaining the round count) and two others. After doing that we went right into discussions about movement while shooting.

The instructors discussed the principals and demonstrated it. Then we practiced without live ammunition and then moved into live fire. I’ve done shooting while moving to some degree. Competitively is much different than tactical. It’s no longer running to a target to shoot, its shooting while moving. I’d done some of it before but not all that much as it’s hard to find ranges that allow this. I learned some new tips and tricks and felt comfortable doing it.

The rest of the day we went over drawing, multiple targets and stress. The drills picked up in pace and difficulty.

There were some things that were new to me during the first day and some that were not. That being said there were things I noticed about my own shooting that I needed to fix. My grip didn’t allow for the slide to lock back every time after the magazine ran dry. I had to play with that some. I accidently engaged the magazine release while shooting after my index finger was hitting the magazine release. This is something I’d experience while shooting competitively but never was able to diagnose because it was happening much faster and there wasn’t time to think what went wrong.

All of my classmates were able to keep up or exceed myself. The couple had some issues that were fixed when the instructors had them try a different gun. While I will say the woman did go slower than everyone else at no point was my experience hindered by this. And while everyone was moving faster than her, I don’t believe her experience was hindered either.

Day 2

Began the same was as Day 1 with the warm up drills. Then we brought out barricades. The day was spent learning how to shoot around them, unconventional shooting positions, pieing and some other odds and ends.

I had previously shot around barricades in IPSC but always considered them an obstacle and never anything useful. That thought process was changed.

Unconventional shooting positions were covered. While kneeling is not unconventional, I’d never done much of it. We also covered prone and supine and when you might find yourself in these positions.

Pieing was covered and the visualization that was given by standing on the target end (blue guns were used) helped the perspective of what the target would see. It’s not nearly as much as one would expect if you’ve never done it before.

We then cooled down with the drills we started with and sat down to debrief.

Experience

While not everything was new to me, it was certainly a great experience. There were a lot of things I knew but I didn’t always put into practice. Having someone there over my shoulder made me more conscious of those things. There was a lot of new information. I feel that I soaked a lot of it in. The problem is going to be finding a place to practice some of them.

The instructors were top notch. They relayed experiences from their deployments and training to help paint a picture for some things that weren’t as obvious as others. They were easy to approach, informative and were genuinely interested in passing on knowledge. At no point did I get any impression they were disinterested in the class or participants.

While the range wasn’t what I’d call ideal and I did feel it was a bit constricting with what we could do, I don’t think my experience was destroyed by it. The range was very gracious in allowing us to use the facility.

After spending two days training, I learned a lot about myself, how I shoot and the improvements I need to make. I also added a number of tools to the toolbox to employ going forward.

I’d highly recommend Rockwell Tactical Group for training. My first training experience was certainly a positive one and at no point did I feel that there was anything negative to report. I’ll certainly be back in the future to participate in another course.


And of course everyone loves pictures!

[B.A.]

This is good to know, I just signed up for their ak101 course may 6th. A review of that class will follow.

[Keith A]

I went to the Carbine 101 course on Monday. I would gladly post a review if Moose doesn't mind, since this is his thread. For now I will say the course is definitely worth the time and expense.

[SuperMoose]

That's fine. I'll edit the title accordingly.

[justashooter]

i have known Jared and Paul personally for a long time and can vouch for them. the sandbox experience is real. these guys are the point of the spear. you will see them at gunshows local to lancaster from time to time. the real deal.

[Keith A]

Ok, here is my review of the Rockwell Tactical Carbine 101 course.

I have been in the Army for 18 years, active, national guard and reserves. I was combat arms (artillery and infantry for about ten years and transferred to ordnance after that). All of the live fire shooting on the m16 platform I have done was from the various prone and kneeling positions, never fired live from standing positions. My only deployment was to Kosovo as an infantryman. I took this course because I have a pending deployment coming up to Afghanistan, and wanted some real world training.

We met at Moor outdoors in Lancaster. We were going to be shooting at a privately owned range that is used by one of the Lancaster PDs special teams, and the property owner's family. We met at Moor's so we could convoy to the range together because the range would be nearly impossible to give coherent directions to. Jared (primary instructor) was in the lead vehicle, and Jared's brother Jeff was in the trailing vehicle in case anyone got separated from the rest of the group. It was about a ten minute drive to the range. The students for this class ranged from a kid who looked about 18, to a college professor who drove up from Virginia. There was a total of nine students. Max class size is 10, and one guy didn't make it due to illness.

Those who needed to zero or confirm their zero did so, as the rest of us got our gear ready and got to know each other. There was then a safety brief and medical personnel were assigned. Jared had his aid bag and was the primary medic due to his SF medical training. One of the other students who completed the RTG Shooters First Aid course was the secondary.

We went over the 8 fundamentals of shooting and then began with a few of the easier drills. We then went into the importance and demonstrations of each one. Once we were comfortable with those, we performed one of the drills that Moose described. 10 rounds in ten seconds, halve the distance, ten rounds in five seconds, halve the distance, and then ten rounds in 2 1/2 seconds. This was to establish a baseline of skill level, to evaluate failure points, and showed how effectively one could shoot rapidly utilizing the fundamentals. When Jared demonstreted this he fired at an almost full-auto pace, and had a nice, tight shot group

Some of the other drills were designed around RTGs own RTG 1 targets.( You can see them in some of Moose's pics) They are a standard sized sillouette surrounded by different colored shapes with numbers in them. The instructor would call out a color, shape or number or a combination of each. One of the drills was to fire controlled pairs at each in prescribed period of time. We then did the same drill firing varying strings at each rather than controlled pairs. We then repeated the drill alternating between the high ready and low ready positions. Another drill we performed was to alternate between center mass, groin, then head. Three shots center mass, two shots groin, two shots head in the prescribed time interval.

We then went into the procedure to switch from strong side to weak side shoulder and then did a drill alternating between the two-- 2 shots strong side,switch to weak side, two shots weak side, switch back to strong side as we moved towards the target.

Another drill was firing varying strings at targets at various distances. We alternated targets engaging the closest first, the second closest, then furthest.

Then there were failure drills. We would rig up each others mags and action to fail, and then performed the various remedies to clear the stoppages.

We then did the drill again where we fired ten in ten seconds, ten in five seconds, and ten in 2 1/2 seconds to evaluate how much we improved.

Some of the other topics covered were tactical reloads, gear selection and setup, and the use and importance of slings.We then did an AAR.

My gear setup was a Stag Arms model 3 with Vortex strikefire and YHM back up sights. I used C Products and D&H magazines. I had an Ares Armor Huskey 2-point sling. Everything worked flawlessly through the 500+ rounds.

Jared is a very non-intimidating, laid back and approachable guy. He was open to all questions, as well as critiques and suggestions. His background is 82nd Airborne followed by 5th SF Group, and he is currently in the 20th Group (Reserve). I believe he said he had 4 deployments to Iraq as well as training troops in various countries.

One of the gear related mistakes I made was going in with a bunch of pre-loaded mags. Since we almost always used ten and twenty round counts for the drills, I had to strip rounds rather than load. For my first formal instruction course, I was pleased that I had everything I needed, and that all of my gear held up. I will be happy to answer to answer any questons anyone may have.

There are some pics from the course on Rockwell Tactical Group's facebook page.

[SuperMoose]

Nice review. I edited the title to reflect this is now a review thread in general.

[SuperMoose]

Question when do you typically hear from them about where and what time to meet. I'm going to the class on Monday and haven't heard any thing from them even after emailing them yesterday and I'm getting a bit nervous.

What class are you taking? I heard from them a few days prior to the class. If you don't hear anything by tonight shoot me a PM and I'll contact one of the guys over there for you.

Is there no information on the website?

[Keith A]

Don't know if this is resolved yet but I PMed B.A. a copy of the e-mail I recieved from them for the Carbine 101 course. Should be bassically the same info.

[SuperMoose]

Don't know if this is resolved yet but I PMed B.A. a copy of the e-mail I recieved from them for the Carbine 101 course. Should be bassically the same info.

Hey PMed me that he heard a response. Review coming after the class he said!