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Archive for the ‘Training’ Category

Gunfighter Moment – Larry Vickers

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

“In your firearms training always have realistic accuracy standards. Remember that accuracy will generally suffer in the real world for reasons beyond your control as well as the unpredictable nature of most encounters. If you train for minimum accuracy standards on the range expect even less when bullets start going both ways.”

-Larry Vickers
MSG, US Army (Ret)

Larry Vickers is a decorated US Army Special Forces veteran and national pistol champion. Mr. Vickers has nearly two decades of special operations experience (1st SFOD-D), much of which was spent as his unit’s Primary Firearms Instructor. In addition to his special operations accomplishments, his competitive shooting has yielded a 10th and 9th place finish in the 1993 and 1994 USPSA Limited Nationals as well as a 1st place finish in CDP class at the 2001 IDPA Mid-Winter Nationals at Smith & Wesson. Mr. Vickers is a founding member of IDPA. In addition to being a highly experienced operator and national pistol champion, Mr. Vickers is also one of the premier 1911 pistolsmiths in the country and his work has been featured in several firearms publications and on the cover of American Handgunner. In addition to all this, Mr. Vickers has served as a consultant and technical expert to the firearms industry. Mr. Vickers is featured on two new firearms, tactics, and accessories focused T.V. shows called Tactical Impact and Tactical Arms.

www.VickersTactical.com

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

OR – Waterford Press

Saturday, August 4th, 2012

Waterford Press produces a wide variety of pocket guides to science, travel, nature and other wilderness pursuits. Additionally, they’ve developed a few that are targeted at the military market. Their Combat First Aid and Middle East Wildlife titles are easy to use and give you a down and dirty look at the subject matter. Additionally, proceeds from the sale of both of these guides goes to the Sierra Club’s Veteran & Military Family Initiative.

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Additionally, at Outdoor Retailer Waterford Press launched a new series called, “Pathfinder Outdoor Survival Guide” produced in connection with Dave Canterbury of The Pathfinder School. These waterproof guides are straightforward. I spoke briefly with Dave and he reminded me t hat in a pinch, they could be used as a survival tool. While they aren’t as large or, quite as robust as the issue Evasion Chart (EVC), he’s right. I could carry water with one of these guides, need be.

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The other thing that Dave mentioned is that he probably wouldn’t take all of the guides with him, but rather, pretrain with them as guides and carry the ones that are more technical in nature or that you need more help with. They are very lightweight and packed with great info but I don’t know if I’d carry all of them.

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One such title that is great for pretraining is ‘Building a Survival Kit’ which covers the 10 essentials for survival. At $6.95 each they are a great value, particularly as an introduction to the basics of various survival skills.

Check them out at www.waterfordpress.com

OR – Teva

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

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Teva is introducing their new Teva Sphere line of performance footwear.

Registration Opens for Elzetta’s Low Light Tactical Training & Zombie Shoot

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Just $89! Register now for a day of shooting, learning, and fun.

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The event will be held October 27th in Cave City, Kentucky. Zombies are just the foil. The event is really about low light shooting. Classes include pistol, rifle/carbine and shotgun training.

Register here ELZETTA.com/EventRegistration

John McPhee Aerial Marksmanship Training

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

John McPhee Aerial Marksmanship Training is now available from Alias Training & Security Services. These classes are open to interested military units, law enforcement, government agencies, and private classes are available to vetted hunters/civilians. That’s right, you can learn to engage targets from a helicopter.

Ariel Heavy Carbine Marksmanship course was designed to teach you to be “quick to shoot”, make the SHOT from a helicopter. Being accurate is final, but being accurate on the fly is better.

You will learn helicopter basics and safety considerations, the DOs and DON’Ts around helos. You will rehearse many shooting positions and techniques for making the SHOT. You will fly several courses of fire in progressive learning patterns to be as accurate and safe as possible as you become “quick to shoot”. Bring what you have; we will make you good with it. Learn to use your rifle, scope, reticle and any accessories for them. On the fly use hold offs, hold unders, and holdovers to increase your time to rapidly and accurately hit your target. You will shoot for score, for time and against your own skill to make the SHOT. Learn from your misses, where the shot went, why and correct for a hit in seconds or less. Teach you to correctly and rapidly reload, correct malfunctions and stoppages to get back in the fight on the fly.

Do these things while applying the Perfect Fundamentals of Marksmanship. Practice doesn’t make perfect, Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.

Topics covered:
Basics of the Heavy Carbine rifle
Weapon manipulation
Helicopter Safety
Weapons Safety
Load/ unload clear weapon
Scopes/Reticles
Zeroing
Ammo, overview
Ballistics
Fundamentals of Marksmanship;
Malfunctions
Hold offs;
Holds
Land-marking
Reloads
Mounting accessories

**This class is open to; AR-10 platform guns of any caliber, AR-15 platform guns of any caliber**

Instructor: John McPhee & other SOF instructors
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DLS Mil-Wraps and SOF Studios Partner to Bridge the Gap Between Customizable Live & Virtual Training & Simulations

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

The accelerated growth of Defense Logistics Support, Inc. fueled by its innovations in military and commercial polymer application technology, caught the eye of Simulations & Training company Special Operations Forces Studios, Ltd. The newly formed strategic partnership between these two organizations will provide the Department of Defense (DoD) with access to turn-key solutions that bridges the gap between live and virtual training.

Spearheading SOF Studios’ Adaptive Training & Simulations Team is its President and Co-Founder, a recently retired member of the US Special Operations Command who brings 17 years of Special Operations expertise, leadership, live-combat, and Combat Development experience to its unique and well-balanced roster.

Supporting SOF Studios’ president are proven leaders with extensive and award winning experience in both “AAA” console and socio-mobile games production, program management of $100m Department of Defense projects, and the delivery of proven Science & Technology analytics, and human performance measures to the DoD.
“Timing could not have been more perfect,” says Trevor J. Kräcker, Director of Operations at DLS, Inc. “our partnership with SOF Studios will assist the Defense Department in a number of ways—one is by providing customizable and sustainable training solutions through games technology on mobile and stationary platforms that the soldier can access seamlessly around world.” “We thank God every day for how He has guided our work and for the honor of providing greater safety and effectiveness to our troops in harm’s way.”

Gunfighter Moment – Mike Pannone

Saturday, July 28th, 2012

Good luck is for novices, bad luck is for everyone. Bank on skill, you control it.

I leave nothing to chance and I train on worst case and least likely possibilities more than is common. I assume any “luck” I experience will be “bad luck” and I want to be prepared for any possibility. In my operational employment in SOF and later as a security contractor people would often say “good luck” before some event that could have adverse or catastrophic results. I would nearly always respond “thanks but I hope luck has nothing to do with it. Luck breaks both ways.

-Mike Pannone

Mike Pannone retired from the Army’s premier assault force (1st SFOD-D) after an explosive breaching injury. A year after his retirement America was attacked on 9/11 and he returned to help serve his country as the head marksmanship instructor at the Federal Air Marshals training course and then moved to help stand up the FAMS Seattle field office. In 2003 he left the FAMS to serve as a PSD detail member and then a detail leader for the State Department during 2003 and 2004 in Baghdad and Tikrit.

In 2005 he served as a ground combat advisor of the Joint Counter IED Task Force and participated on combat operations with various units in Al Anbar province. Upon returning he gave IED awareness briefings to departing units and helped stand up a pre-Iraq surge rifle course with the Asymmetric Warfare Group as a lead instructor. With that experience as well as a career of special operations service in Marine Reconnaissance, Army Special Forces and JSOC to draw from he moved to the private sector teaching planning, leadership, marksmanship and tactics as well as authoring and co-authoring several books such as The M4 Handbook, AK Handbook and Tactical Pistol shooting. Mike also consults for several major rifle and accessory manufacturers to help them field the best possible equipment to the warfighter, law enforcement officer and upstanding civilian end user. He is considered a subject matter expert on the AR based Stoner platform in all its derivatives.

www.ctt-solutions.com

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Alias Training & Security Services. Each week Alias brings us a different Trainer and in turn they offer some words of wisdom.

Haley Strategic Partners Disruptive Industries AAR

Friday, July 27th, 2012

Disruptive Industries is a unique, invitation-only event bringing together Haley Strategic Partners’ industry affiliates with military and law enforcement representatives. Many in the defense sector do not have military or LE backgrounds and this event gives them a little taste of what it’s like. For industry, experiences like this are invaluable.

Disruptive Industries is designed to teach, inspire, build relationships, open communications and create new channels for innovation in the defense sector. Every experience has been devised to accomplish each of these tasks in one way or another, from training classes to meals and other organized social events. And they did all of that. Feedback from the participants was that the experience really opened their eyes. The operational side of things got to learn about what it takes to develop new products and the industry reps learned quite a bit about how their products are used and received direct feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Literally every company that participated walked away with with new thoughts on what and how they build as well as a new appreciation for who they build for.

During an ice breaker the first evening we went around the room introducing ourselves and Travis Haley set the tone. He talked about “why” he does what he does and explained that he is in the business of helping people. That really resonated with me seeing as how that is exactly why SSD was created. In fact, my original site, The Gear Guru was created for exactly the same reason. What followed was four days of learning, fun, friendship and inspiration.


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