AAR - 3 Rivers Tactical Training Solutions - 2 day AR Carbine I Aug 30th, 31st 2014

[John A Brown]

3T conducted a 2 day Carbine I course on August 30th & 31st, 2014 at the Beaver Valley Rifle and Pistol Club.

Weather was interesting. Very hot and humid on day 1 with no rain. Not quite as hot, very humid, and off and on rain throughout all of day 2. We got out of the rain a couple times but there were no major issues.

This was a somewhat unique class in several ways. First, for the first time in over two years I didn't have any repeat students in the class. Everyone in the class was training with me for the first time. Second, everyone in the class was attending their first, formal, professional carbine course. This meant that everyone was pretty much starting out at the exact same point, and while some students progressed faster in some respects than others, it made for common ground for all.

Weapon and Gear

No major weapon issues in this class. Almost everyone had a quality, mil-spec AR. We had one shooter break a dust cover spring, but it didn't cause any issues.

I was very happy to see that the vast majority of the class had Aimpoint red dots. No issues there. We had one ACOG, and two shooters ran iron sights. Thankfully there were no EOTech's in this class.

One shooter (Chris) ran an AK on day 1 and an AR on day 2.

A few shooters had sling issues - their sling was either mounted to the carbine incorrectly, was not long enough, was a piece of junk, or a combination of all or some of the above. The VCAS sling from Blue Force Gear and the VTAC sling from Viking Tactics are the two best AR slings on the market today. Two point adjustable slings are your friends for many, many reasons.

But you need to have them adjusted to the proper length and mounted to your carbine properly, otherwise you will fight your sling for two days. This gets very frustrating, very fast.

One final issue we had was that almost everyone showed up with an AR that was DRAMATICALLY under lubricated. And by that I mean almost everyone had absolutely zero lubrication on their bolt and bolt carrier group. This is a common thing that I see in every single Carbine I class. AR'S have a lot of metal rubbing against metal. You need to have a significant amount of lubrication on these parts or you will begin to have malfunctions in short order.

No matter what you've been told or read on the interweb, it is not possible to overlubricate the AR platform weapon system.

After the safety and emergency medical briefing we went through our zeroing exercise at 50 yards. A few students had a little difficulty, but nothing major.

We moved right into the fundamentals of carbine marksmanship and weapon manipulations. Weapon manipulations (loading, reloading, and malfunctioning clearing) are the hardest thing for people to grasp when they are taking their first carbine course. I refer to weapon manipulations as "running the gun", and this is really the difference between someone who would be considered a beginner and someone who would not.

Not 100%, but the experience level of pretty much everyone in the class with the AR platform carbine was as follows: Go to their local gun range, sit on a bench, and shoot their AR from either a rest or with use of a sand bag.

None of the above has any application to using the carbine in a self defense scenario other than learning sight alignment / sight picture and maybe a little bit of trigger control.

The acts of aiming the AR platform carbine at a target, pressing the trigger, and hitting the target are very easy. Doing the above with the use of a bench and rest or sandbag are absurdly easy - because the bench and rest are doing 90% of the work for you.

If you want to learn how to use the carbine - really learning how to use the carbine - you need to pick the weapon up in your hands, stand up on your feet, get accurate hits, and learn weapon manipulations.

We spent several hours going over carbine fundamentals and weapon manipulations with dummy rounds. After zeroing we probably didn't fire another live round for 3 hours. This was time very well spent, as none of the students had every been taught weapon manipulations. Spending a good amount of time on weapon manipulations pays off tremendously down the road, and failure to do so significantly reduces the learning experience for the students.

At each of my Carbine I classes I give each student three 5.56 dummy rounds that are theirs to keep. Throughout the entire two days they randomly mix these dummy rounds in with their live ammo. These dummy rounds eventually make their way into their magazines and into the chamber of their carbine, inducing a malfunction. I've been a firearms instructor for a while now, and I still know of no other way to train students to clear malfunctions. You need to encounter malfunctions randomly in order to truly learn how to clear them. The surprise factor matters. A lot.

We started off the range portion talking about sight offset. It's a simple concept but was new to most. It's something that absolutely needs to be known and understood when engaging from around 15 yards and less with the carbine.

From there we moved into rhythm and drills and getting accurate hits repeatedly. I use the two sided paper targets from Viking Tactics for these drills. I really like the humanoid side of these targets that show not only the proper area where you want to get your hits, but also the human skeleton.

Over the course of the two days we covered quite a bit to include kneeling and prone positions, multiple threat engagements, proper use of cover and concealment, supported and unsupported barricade engagements, shooting under a barricade (simulated vehicle), carbine to pistol transitions, transitioning the carbine from your strong side shoulder to support side shoulder and why and when you might do this, and we ended day 1 with the night shoot.

Below is Mike making proper use of cover / concealment



Below is Phil from the standing position at 50 yards. Good technique. Not the piece of brass that was just ejected from his carbine.



Below is Matt, who attended the class with his Dad Gary. Both are attending my Carbine II class coming up in a few weeks also. Matt and Gary ran irons all weekend.



Below is Chris shooting strong side supported barricade. Chris ran his AK on day 1 and his AR on day 2.



Below is Matt shooting under a barricade, which also simulates shooting under a vehicle. This is a very interesting picture. When getting into these unusual or unorthodox shooting positions, you sometime just need to play around and figure out what works. Getting a sight picture in these positions is not always easy. Note here that Matt has his buttstock on his left shoulder but is still firing his carbine with his right hand. Figure out how to make it work and get to it. Well done Matt.



Below is Charlie shooting strong side supported barricade. Charlie ran a Bravo Company / EAG Tactical AR - one of the best mil-spec AR's on the market. He also was the only shooter running an ACOG.



Below is Phil shooting support side supported barricade. Phil came on day 2 as a little refresher for the upcoming Carbine II course. Phil has a lot of very significant training experience. And it shows.



Below is Matt during the strong side shoulder to support side shoulder transition drills. I know it's hard for some people to believe, but AR's actually do work when shot from the left shoulder.

This was another great class filled with fantastic people who left their egos at home and came to the range to learn - and a whole lot of learning occurred. We battled the weather a bit on Sunday but it didn't have a major affect.

I'll be posting some more pictures shortly.

I welcome everyone's comments.

John
www.3riverstraining.com

[Suburban]

Robert here,

I traveled pretty much the whole way across the state to take John's class on a recommendation.

"Weather was interesting."
Ha! Like, "May you live in interesting times."

The night shoot was an eye-opener. It's pretty amazing how blinding that brightly-lit gunsmoke is on a dark night. My EDC light proved to be rather inadequate compared to my 500 lumen weapon lights. I think I should do something about that.

I feel like I left the class improved by maybe 5% (or I sucked less by 5%, if you prefer), but I learned a lot, and I think I about doubled that improvement, with just a little bit more practice. I've still have room for improvement, "smoothing out the rough edges" of the Carbine 1 material.

As near as I can tell, I went through something close to 400 rounds of .223, and only put about 25 rounds through my pistol. I've shot a lot more, learning a lot less.

That's all I got for now. Late. Tired. . .

[DDM4_510]

The Carbine I course provided an excellent foundation to build my skills upon with my M4 carbine. This was my first professional-led course and the instruction was exactly what i needed to help course correct any bad habits as well as reinforce proper safety and gun-manipulation techniques.

John is a straightforward instructor who provides well-supported techniques to bring you up to speed with how to handle a carbine. His depth of experience in the field and as a professional instructor really help to drive home the techniques and weapon manipulations -- he always has a real-life scenario to support what he is teaching. The two-day course was full of training that can be easily replicated at home (using the dummy rounds) to help strengthen skills and comfort with the carbine.

Since the drills and weapon-manipulations were new to me, it would have been great to fit a few more rotations of shooting and practice into the course. That being said, it wasn't like i did not have a chance to shoot and there has to be a balance with 10 people in the class to make sure all have range time.

I did not use an optic during the course and did fine through all the exercises, but can see how a quality red-dot could make some of the drills easier to navigate and work through. Which leads me to another topic - equipment. Selecting the proper carbine (commercial vs mil-spec) as well as supporting equipment is essential. Having ALL of the required equipment and SOME of the recommended gear was ok but in the Carbine II course i will have made the investment to have all of the recommended/nice to have gear as well. Once again, John has real-world experience to back up his gear recommendations, and the classes demand that you have all the right pieces in the proper places.

This course, and i am sure all other 3 Rivers Tactical Training courses, are packed with great education, training/drills, and an opportunity to be lead by a high-quality instructor. Not to mention providing the chance to hang out at the gun range for two-full days. If you have a carbine then you should take this course - there is so much more to learn about the weapon then just sitting at the range shooting paper targets or watching YouTube videos of other guys shooting and training. Make the investment and get some training under your belt.

That's all for now - Matt

[John A Brown]

Bob and Matt,

Thanks for the kind words - and Bob, thanks for coming from across the state and incurring additional costs to attend the class.

Carbine I is not a high round count class. It's a learning class - fundamentals, zeroing, proper gear (especially sling) setup, - the list goes on.

I've taught as an instructor and attended as a student 2 and 3 day carbine classes during which you shoot 500 rounds a day. They are fun, but to run that sort of course for a group of students attending their first professional carbine course would have been a waste of a lot of ammo ($$$$) without first taking the time to get the fundamentals squared away - and there is no shortcut to getting the fundamentals and weapon manipulations squared away.

John
www.3riverstraining.com

[John A Brown]

Below is Bob doing a strong side shoulder to support side shoulder transition.

Just about everyone feels like a fish out of water when doing this drill for the first time, but after 5-10 repetitions it becomes much easier.



John
www.3riverstraining.com

[MB223PGH]

Hey guys - Matt here (the other one) :

I was extremely satisfied with Carbine 1 from 3T. I learned A TON during these two days from John. Also, this class was enlightening in numerous ways. For example, you cannot over lubricate your AR. I have always used a thin layer of grease on the bolt carrier's four rails & charging handle and oil on the bolt, gas rings, and cam pin. John SOAKED his BCG in oil to prove a point that ARs will run when over lubricated as long as there is no oil in the carrier key. I liked how John took time to cover manipulations, malfunctions, and the 7 fundamentals of carbine marksmanship. I also like how John used real world examples in his lectures (missing your target really made me think). If I recall correctly, John stated that no one will care that someone broke into your house and you had to defend yourself - the only thing that anyone will remember is the news story about how you killed your neighbor with a stray round.

Gear I need to get rid of:
SERPA HOLSTER! (raven phantom on order)

I am going to keep my EOTECH (flame suite on!) but it will not be on my main/go to rifle.

Gear I'm glad I wore:
PIG gloves, BANSHEE plate carrier w/ usgi tacos, VCAS sling, 5.11 taclite pro pants

I cannot say enough great things about this class. This class made me a better shooter and I found some new shooting buddies. Charlie, Mike, Phil, and I went shooting this weekend and practiced what we learned and did a few VTAC drills (el presidente, 2x2x2, 1-5, etc). By the way, those dummy rounds are little bastards!

[John A Brown]

Hey Matt,

You did great in the class and I'm glad you learned a lot. There is plenty to learn in a professional firearms training class. A lot of it happens during discussions when not actually shooting.

One point of clarification - I did NOT over lubricate my BCG. At all. That was the normal amount of lubrication I always use.

It is not possible to over lubricate an AR platform weapon.

And please don't speak badly of dummy rounds! They are your friends.

John
www.3riverstraining.com