James
It is good to see real life combat tactics discussed by Officer Tackleberry. I would respectfully add a few more very useful drills.
I am in agreement with Tackleberry that some of the more dangerous drills should be performed with paintball or pellet guns at first to lock in the safety training. but the ‘warrior inoculation” is both important and if done with a range safety officer or two safe. I seem to remember Galls or one of the other public safety catalogs selling a chamber safety plug that stuck out of the barrel a bit to assure that it is clear. One of the jurisdictions I worked at had an Emergency Response Team drill day went bad towards the end of the day. This happened when everyone was tired, a live magazine was somehow loaded and an officer got shot. On dry fire days no live ammunition is allowed to be loaded into any of the weapons; ammo and loaded mags should be under double lock, that means two locks on the box and two people with different keys, until the end of the drill. If there is concern make it a wooden box that can be easily but obviously broken open in an emergency.
A good CQB drill is to have an old army duffle bag stuffed with stacked newspaper and strung on a rope. Your coach pulls a rope on the side or bottom so it collides with you, the drill is to push away the bag step back and into a low firing position as you draw and fire a double tap.
Hand to hand drilling is essential since a large percentage of actual uses of force will involve the possibility of a grapple, Airsoft pistols or those colored rubber guns are perfect.
The exhaustion drill should be practiced for both rifle and handgun in all firing positions. Running wind sprints is the best way to get your body near to the point of exhaustion but squat thrusts, stepper machines, or exercise bikes should work fine too if space is limited. Since you are actually taking your muscles into an anaerobic state and stripping your blood of oxygen and glucose making your decision making process hazy you had better have a good range safety officer or two in addition to a coach. Once fighting for breath the coach will call out the drill as you move to the firing line. The first few drills must be dry fire only or with an inert firearm just to hone the range safety laws and practicing freezing and safing all weapons.
Other range conditions should include irritating smoke, burning pine other oily desert plants at a home shooting range should do that.
In Israel the tactics that the Ketat Konnut (town volunteer anti-terrorism team) practices are mostly pinning down and flanking although we also do some entry and room clearing work in case the army is unable to make a quick response.
All of the drills I mention from my US and Israeli training require a good coach. You cant go with a friend to a gun store pick up the weapons and training dummies and think you are ready to do the higher difficulty level drills. I would additionally caution the readers to find a qualified and certified instructor. My experience as a shop gunsmith and assistant range officer for my father for several years is that most customers were know-it-all hobbyists who learned everything from magazine articles and Hollywood movies. I suspect some might volunteer to coach but were likely not qualified. Shalom, – David in Israel