Urban Survival Skills - Firearms Proficiency

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received a question from a reader asking about "what level of training and what of skills I would recommend in order to make someone proficient in a given rifle and therefore be a contributing member of a Survival Group."

Timely enough, I received an article, by Jeffrey Wall, Staff Sergeant, California Army National Guard, that was published in Small Wars Journal, that related to the current state of training and proficiency in the U.S. Army on small arms, including rifles, carbines, pistols and machineguns, but really focused on the primary weapon which is the M-4 rifle, or carbine if you want to get technical.

I would advise all to go to Small Wars Journal and read the entire article, very interesting with the historical connections. In fact, you may decide to get a subscription. I am posting some of Wall's article as it is pertinent to the question I received about what level of training does one have to have to be proficient in a firearm. My comments in the article are in Italics.

Afghanistan has become a rifleman’s war.

Because we are fighting a counterinsurgency campaign against a tribal warrior society we have and increasingly continued to limit the use of supporting arms (machineguns, indirect fire such as mortars and artillery, and Close Air Support).

The result is that we must rely more and more on our riflemen to engage and defeat the enemy. We know that 52% of the fights in Afghanistan begin at 500 meters and go out from there. The problem is that we don’t teach soldiers to engage with their rifles at those ranges any more. The Army gave up teaching marksmanship as a primary Soldier skill in 1958.

Vietnam tended to reinforce the misconception of rifle marksmanship being of secondary importance as much of the fighting there was at close range – either because of the thick vegetation and/or because the enemy grabbed us by the belt buckle and engaged at such close ranges that we could not bring our supporting arms to bear.

In either case, near or far, we now must rely on our riflemen to do the work. The trouble is they are not trained for it.

Army standards are to – ideally - train a rifleman going to war with 58 rounds of ammunition – 18 to zero and 40 to qualify on the “Pop up Target Range”.....again, that's 58 rounds.

What is not trained when Soldiers are sent to war after having fired only 58 rounds? Long range marksmanship, range estimation, the effects of wind and gravity on trajectory, short range marksmanship, gun handling skills such as rapid magazine changes and enough practice to cement these skills. ( I would include malfunction clearing, transitioning from rifle to handgun, and shooting from disadvantaged positions are necessary skills as well)

So we are sending Americans off to war with minimal rifle marksmanship training to engage an enemy on his turf with inadequate skills. Consider that the pop up target qualification course is all fired with a battle sight zero out to 300 meters. No training in reading the wind is given, no formulistic method is taught for wind estimation or how to calculate a wind adjustment even though the rifle itself has a half a minute of angle windage adjustment capability. Worse still is that many Soldiers don’t even attempt to shoot the 300 meter targets preferring to save those rounds to ensure a hit on the closer range targets. They have no idea what adjustments need to go on their rear sights to engage at 400, 500 or 600 meters. What we have then are soldiers whose effective engagement range capability is 200 to 225 meters.

Presumably you see the problem - the disconnect if you will - between the reality of the war in which we are engaged and our training regimen.

The author goes on to explain the Squad Designated Marksman (SDM) concept where every infantry squad has a better trained and equipped soldier capable of engaging targets with precision at longer ranges. The SDM necessarily has an optic equipped rifle. Furthermore he makes the case of spending the money for the necessary ammunition for training, and in his view, 3,000 rounds to train all Soldiers to engage targets, proficiently, from 0 to 500 yards.

The author breaks down the ammunition expended at each range: 1200 rounds - 0 to 100 yards (the author says... "this is the range zone where the pucker factor is greatest; where the shooting skills must be instinctive, i.e. based on“muscle memory”);

1500 rounds to shoot known distance range to 600 yards and an unknown distance range to at least 700 yards; and, 300 rounds - 100 to 300 yards [this is really the easy distance, little gun handling under pressure is required and little adjustment for wind and gravity are needed.

Training/shooting at night, on moving targets (day and night) and using artificial illumination tools such as white light flashlights and/or IR scopes and IR non-visible lasers must be included. At least a rudimentary knowledge of reading winds and applying corrections should be considered.

The Survival Group should consider having at least some of their people equipped with a magnified scope, not only to scope for effectively at longer ranges, but to use the magnified scope as an observation tool.

As far as specifically answering my reader's question, which is a very good question, I prefer not to talk about amounts of ammunition needed to achieve a certain skill level,...it may take hundreds of rounds for someone and tens of thousands of rounds for some else. Resources, which mean time and money, will always restrict training. A smart trainer will find ways to mitigate these restrictions.

Anyone relying on a rifle to protect himself/herself and others should be able to accomplish the following tasks:

Disassemble, clean and re-assemble the rifle; load and fire the rifle applying the seven fundamentals of shooting (stance or position, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger control, breathing and follow through);

Be able to zero the rifle at 25 yards placing three rounds at the point of aim in about a dime sized group;

Shoot accurately,..I think a fair measure of accuracy for a novice shooter would being able to shoot and hit a 8 x 11 inch target up to 200 yards using iron sights with a rifle; as the shooter starts drilling center mass of his target, start doing it faster. As the shooter starts shooting inaccurately, then slow down. Speed is built through a constant repetition of this cycle.

Note: I say a 8x11 target, since a piece of typing paper is 8.5 inches by 11 inches and this replicates the vital chest area of a human. Therefore, you always have access to low cost targets. Then your standard is keeping your shots on this paper at all distances.

The shooter should be able to reload the firearm (magazine exchange, aka tactical re-load, and emergency re-load, aka from a empty weapon)...in order words, reload and get back into the fight.

Correct stoppages and malfunctions and get back into the fight. Training using blank rounds or empty cases in a magazine will force a shooter to confront and remedy stoppages.

This above skill sets are pretty minimal and do not include applied tactics such as shooting utilizing cover and shooting from degraded positions. Not do they consider the high stress environment the Survival shooter will be in. Some physical stress can be replicated and incorporated with exercise such as running, pushups and other physically demanding exercise before and during firearms training. You can incorporate "dry fire" training as well to help build muscle memory and confidence in your fellow Survival Group members. If you consider the environment you live in and will be surviving in, and consider the possible threats you will face, then apply that to realistic training, I think you'll be successful. Hope I answered your question well enough.

Survival Site Security - Obstacles and Early Warning

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following question,....."I have a small cabin about 2 miles on a dirt road, over two small hills from a state highway. The State Highway is mainly used for traffic between two towns,...one of a population of 70,000 and the other of a population of 18,000 and more of a resort town. As you get off the highway onto the dirt road accessing my cabin, and there is no nothing else on this road, you head towards my cabin where you would have to crest a small hill about 300 yards from my cabin, which would then be into my site. The area is forested with pine and smaller deciduous trees. I am debating on blocking (barricading) the dirt road, like felling some trees, to create a barrier to people driving to my cabin, but know that it may draw attention to our location. There will be five of us here initially, me, my wife, my 12 year old son, and another couple. Any ideas or suggestions?"

UrbanMan replies: I think I know where you are at. Just kidding. Sounds like you are not going to be on a major refugee route, although you may think it if tens of thousands of people start heading towards the smaller resort town.

You are right to consider not drawing attention to yourself with a barricade on the dirt road near the State Highway. I would be very careful to sterilize signs of driving off the highway onto your dirt road. Erase or sweep away the tire signs. The leaves from the deciduous trees may help hide any sign as well.

Near the highway, you can position some deadfall to make it look like the road has not been used and is impassable or at least hard to get through without a flat tire. You will need to make it look as natural as possible. Still, you need to be ready for some people who may be taking this road to get off the highway for safety. Best case is if gas is at a premium or even if they are walking, they may not walk the two miles to your cabin. It is probably necessary to sterilize signs of travel all the way to the cabin as well.

Speaking of flat tires,... spike sets are good anti-vehicle obstacles. There are three types:

Man Made commercial - we use these to stop vehicles we are pursing and you have probably seen these on TV. I don't know if they are available for purchase to the public. These are made with hollow, large sharpened needles (like hypodermic needles) to allow the air to rapidly escape a punctured tire.

Man Made Field expedient - these wooden boards with nails pounded through and as someone drives over they get a flat. Large 16 penny nails work well. You can even build hinged spike board that as a tire drives over it the weight bears on the hinge and drives the sides of the board up and projects nails into the lesser protected sidewall of the tire.

Natural Spikes - fabricating from all natural material such as branches, cut and sharpened smaller branches. The sharpened "spikes" are then rubbed with dirt to reduce their signature and make them appear old. The idea is to make it seem like it was a natural obstacle that caused the flat, otherwise these people, who may intend you harm, will be suspicious, more careful and ready for any other obstacles or booby traps, as well as your other defensive capabilities.

You can position deadfall and logs, making it seem natural and channelizing vehicle traffic into your anti-vehicle traps. A 30 to 36 inch length of 8 inch diameter log, or larger, can be buried so that only 12 to 16 inches are sticking out of the ground to create a obstacle to high center or rip out crank cases or damage half shafts as vehicle drive over them. These can be made to look like just stumps of trees that were cut down.

You can dig a ditch in the road making is impassable for a vehicle and have a covered and camouflaged bypass. This ditch could be effective if it is hard to see, like around a corner or bend in the road, and looks natural like it was created from water run off.

I know a gent who buried a series of extension cords in PVC piping from his house to a curve in his entrance road that he couldn't see his from his house, and placed a simple IR beam light unit so that when the beam is broken a buzzer rings at his house alerting him to approaching traffic.

And I know another guy who did a little more of a professional job wiring a pressure plate over a cattle guard and that when a vehicle's weight pressing the plate down it makes a connect, it either turned on a light or activated a buzzer at his house (can't remember which). I believe both these guys use 110/115 v power and do not know if they have made allowances to use batteries if/when the power infrastructure shuts down during a collapse.

Obstacles on avenues of approach (roads, trails and natural lines of drift) are good ideas, but more professional or trained adversaries will approach your site from covered and concealed routes. Ensure you manage these and have a plan if attackers occupy positions of advantage around your cabin.

For legal reason, I am not going to get into field expedient explosive booby traps or pre-placed charges. But it is a common technique to emplace command detonated explosives, usually devices that produce anti-personal fragmentation, where people will seek cover once a vehicle is disabled...as well as emplace in dead zones where you cannot observe nor provide direct fire onto any potential attackers.

Anyway, I hope this gives you some ideas. Sounds like you found yourself a good Survival location - just work on mitigating the risks. Some additional resources would be any of the series of excellent (and cheap) books by Ragnar Benson on a wide range of related Survival Topics. The one's I find most useful are below:

Urban Survival Firearms - How Much Ammunition Should You Stockpile?

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com recently received a question from an Emergency Services Professional on why did I suggested stocking 4,000 rounds of ammunition for each primary battle rifle. We're counting M-4 and AR variants as battle rifles for the purpose of Survival, as if say an M-4 is your primary gun, and that's what you are going defend you and your families lives with,...then it's a Battle Rifle as far as I am concerned. This same Emergency Services Professional stated that his primary battle rifles are AR gas pistons platforms in 6.8 caliber and wanted to know why I recommend the .223 Remington, aka 5.56mm.

Okay, fair enough questions, here's what I think:

The gas pistons AR platforms are great guns. I have shot many of them, just don't have a privately owned one, yet. Even then, it'll probably be in 5.56 caliber. No doubt the 6.8mm SPC is a much better stopper, but 5.56 ammunition is cheaper, more available, and you have a wide choice of bullet configurations for diverse needs: Full Metal Jacket (Ball); Frangible; Jacketed Hollow Point; Reduced velocity Tactical loads, and, soft nose lead bullets up to heavy bullet in a 77 grain for those longer range or precision needs.

I've had a civilian version of the CAR-15 in 5.56mm for decades, and several years ago, upgraded to a couple Rock River gas tube M-4's that function well. So part of my decision to stick to the 5.56mm is financial - I already have several, and after 33 years of using, training on and teaching the AR variants, I guess I am just used to it.

I recommend the 4,000 rds per battle rifle as a Basic Load, as after a collapse, ammunition may just not be available. A serious firefight may take up several hundreds of rounds up to a thousand. Would not like to find myself low on ammunition after one or two serious dust ups. Avoiding fights when I can, but surviving the one's that are unavoidable. Would be great to have 10,000 rounds per main gun.....I am not get there I would surmise that most people simply are not that dedicated to Survival Preparation, nor financially able if they wanted to or have the financial will power to spend money on and stock these amounts.

Note: A Cursory search of 5.56x45mm ammunition prices show that 1,000 rounds of 55 grain FMJ (M193) to be around $460; while 1,000 rounds of 62 grain SS109 steel core penetrator (M855) to cost around $500.

Plus you should account for ammunition needed for training. If you bring in new people to your survival group, making them proficient or at least usable on your main rifles would be a good idea.

Urban Surival Planning - New Pandemic Threat: NDM-1

A new pandemic threat has cropped up with a SuperBug originating from India that could spread around the world -- in part because of medical tourism -- and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.

Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain . U.S. health officials said on Wednesday there had been three cases so far in the United States -- all from patients who received recent medical care in India , a country where people often travel in search of affordable healthcare,….or Medical Tourism. By the way, we may see more of that as Health Care in America gets more expensive and scarcer.

NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called Carbapenems. Experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it. "It's a specific mechanism. A gene that confers a type of resistance (to antibiotics)," Dr. Alexander Kallen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in a telephone interview.

With more people traveling to find less costly medical treatments, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the study, said he feared the new superbug could soon spread across the globe. "At a global level, this is a real concern," Walsh, from Britain 's Cardiff University , said in telephone interview. "Because of medical tourism and international travel in general, resistance to these types of bacteria has the potential to spread around the world very, very quickly. And there is nothing in the (drug development) pipeline to tackle it."

Almost as soon as the first antibiotic penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects, prompting researchers to develop many new generations of antibiotics. But their overuse and misuse have helped fuel the rise of drug-resistant "superbug" infections like methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA.

In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, Walsh's team found NDM-1 was becoming more common in Bangladesh , India , and Pakistan and was also imported back to Britain in patients returning after treatment.

" India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and it is likely NDM-1 will spread worldwide due to the Medical Tourism," the scientists wrote in the study.

Walsh and his international team collected bacteria samples from hospital patients in two places in India , Chennai and Haryana, and from patients referred to Britain 's national reference laboratory from 2007 to 2009. They found 44 NDM-1-positive bacteria in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in Britain , and 73 in other sites in Bangladesh , India and Pakistan . Several of the British NDM-1 positive patients had traveled recently to India or Pakistan for hospital treatment, including cosmetic surgery, they said.

NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to many antibiotics including carbapenems, the scientists said, a class of the drugs reserved for emergency use and to treat infections caused by other multi-resistant bugs like MRSA and C-Difficile. Kallen of the CDC said the United States considered the infection a "very high priority," but said carbapenem resistance was not new in the United States . "The thing that is new is this particular mechanism," he said.

Experts cited two drugs that can stand up to carbapenem-resistant infections -- Colistin, an older antibiotic that has some toxic side effects, and Pfizer's Tygacil. For many years, antibiotic research has been a "Cinderella" sector of the pharmaceuticals industry, reflecting a mismatch between the scientific difficulty of finding treatments and the modest sales such products are likely to generate, since new drugs are typically saved only for the sickest patients.

But the increasing threat from superbugs is encouraging a rethink at the few large drug makers still hunting for new antibiotics, including Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Anders Ekblom, global head of medicines development at AstraZeneca, whose Merrem antibiotic was the leading carbapenem, said he saw "great value" in investing in new antibiotics. "We've long recognized the growing need for new antibiotics, he said. "Bacteria are continually developing resistance to our arsenal of antibiotics and NDM-1 is just the latest example."

What does this mean to the Urban Survivor faced with possible wide spread viral outbreaks? Minimize contact with personnel outside your Survival Group. Develop safe protocols for handling or communicating with refugees as well as standard operating procedures for disinfecting people and material or equipment. Plan on a quarantine area and measures to provide water, food, shelter and warmth to personnel who have to be placed there for the general safety of the Survival Group.