Who: Larry Vickers - Vickers Tactical
What: Advanced Tactics
When: September 22, 2013
Where: Council Bluffs, IA
Why: Advanced Tactics - Individual and Team.
Instructor: Larry Vickers - Vickers Tactical
• Retired operational member and combat veteran of SFOD - Delta with 20+ years of military service, all of which were spent in Special Operations.
• Years of experience in the firearms industry as a Firearms Instructor and Consultant.
• Host of television shows: Tac TV, Tactical Arms and Tactical Impact.
Students: A mix of LE, Civilian, Former and Active DotMil folks. Students traveled in from near and far to include California, New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and of course...Iowa.
Firearms Present: AR's, everyone ran an RDS on their rifle except for one student.
Course Overview: This was an advanced "Tactics" course NOT an advanced "Carbine" course. Students were expected to show up to the course with their firearms zeroed and their fundamentals squared away. We started the day off with a firearms safety brief, range familiarizations and medical brief.
As with all of Larry's Classes he went over acceptable accuracy standards for this course and articulated the reasons why you should hold yourself to a high standard on the range. We dove right into shooting on the move in relays and then worked through a few others drills that incorporated moving forward, backward and diagonally while engaging multiple targets and transitions to pistols.
The "meat and potatoes" portion of the course, vehicle tactics. We had three vehicles on site to shoot at, from , in and around; a small truck and two smaller two doors cars. We started with a ballistics test on one of the smaller cars examining how different ammunition impacted and traveled through the vehicle depending on the area of the vehicle that we were shooting. Larry demonstrated shot placement and the travel of bullets through the vehicles and then encouraged the students to try their own firearms...the main point I walked away from this exercise was that you don't know how certain types of ammunition will react on one car from the next, so get to better cover...FAST.
From the ballistics portion we moved onto all aspects of fighting in and around vehicles to include driving away from contact, bail out drills, strong and weak hand evolutions, and eventually individual and team tactics. One of the final exercises was firing from a moving vehicle with our rifles and pistols, this proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated and showed me that getting accurate hits on target SUCKS!
Excellent course in my opinion and I walked away with a much better understanding of the aspects involved with fighting in, around and out of vehicles. The team tactics portion was something that I had not done in many moons and I had forgotten more than I thought...jump in one if it's in your neck of the woods!
Topics Covered:Movement:
• Forward / Backward / Diagonal
Firearms Storage and Deployment from Inside of Vehicles:
• Firearms storage condition.
• Sling set up: "S" fold.
• Butt Stock position.
Fighting in and around vehicles:
• Driving away from contact.
• Disabled vehicles.
• Vehicles as cover.
• Shooting Positions.
• Individual and Team movement.
• Rifle and Pistol ammunition ballistics impact on vehicles.
Bail Out Techniques:
• Individual and Team.
• Contact from Driver's and Passenger's Sides
• Contact from the Front and Rear of the vehicle.
• Exiting the vehicle from the Driver's and Passenger's sides.
• Cover during/after bailing out.
• Communication between team members.
Shooting from Vehicles:
• Rifle and Pistol: Moving forward and backward.
V/r - Rob
