FBI Changes Training Tactics

[PegLeg45]

More emphasis on CQC.

FBI focuses firearms training on close-quarters combat

The FBI has quietly broken with its long-standing firearms training regimen, putting a new emphasis on close-quarters combat to reflect the overwhelming number of incidents in which suspects are confronting their targets at point-blank range.

The new training protocols were formally implemented last January after a review of nearly 200 shootings involving FBI agents during a 17-year period. The analysis found that 75% of the incidents involved suspects who were within 3 yards of agents when shots were exchanged.

The move represents a dramatic shift for the agency, which for more than three decades has relied on long-range marksmanship training. Apart from the new shooting regimen, agents also are being exposed to technology borrowed from Hollywood in which they can apply skills acquired on the shooting range to virtual scenarios involving the pursuit of armed suspects in schools, office buildings, apartment complexes and other potential targets.

The virtual simulation technology, developed by Georgia-based Motion Reality, won a 2005 Academy Award for technical achievement in character animation. The motion-capture technology was used in The Polar Express and The Lord of the Rings.

In its law enforcement adaptation, virtual scenarios are fed from computers in agents' backpacks to viewfinders that transform an empty room into virtual worlds where agents are pitted against animated armed suspects — many of them in close-range encounters.

John Wilson, chief of the FBI's virtual simulation program, says the system also is capable of "negatively rewarding" trainees' bad decisions by transmitting jolts to their bodies that simulate gunshots.

"The thing that jumps out at you from the (shooting incident) research is that if we're not preparing agents to get off three to four rounds at a target between 0 and 3 yards, then we're not preparing them for what is likely to happen in the real world," says FBI training instructor Larry "Pogo" Akin, who helps supervise trainees on the live shooting range.

The FBI's research predates more recent fatal shootings of local law enforcement officers, many of whom were victims of close-range ambush attacks while answering calls for service or serving warrants.

A Justice Department analysis of 63 killings of local police in 2011 found that 73% were ambushes or execution-style assaults.

Bud Colonna, chief of the FBI's Firearms Training Unit, says the circumstances involving the local law enforcement fatalities added "a lot of weight" to the changes ultimately implemented by the FBI.

Colonna said FBI Director Robert Mueller personally oversaw the live firearm training changes, meeting with instructors at the bureau's sprawling training facility here and taking part in shooting drills.

Until last January, the pistol-qualification course required agents to participate in quarterly exercises in which they fired 50 rounds, more than half of them from between 15 and 25 yards. The new course involves 60 rounds, with 40 of those fired from between 3 and 7 yards.

The new exercise also requires that agents draw their weapons from concealed positions, usually from holsters shielded by jackets or blazers, to mimic their traditional plainclothes dress in the field.

Training analysts say the FBI's new emphasis reflects a growing movement by law enforcement agencies across the country to prepare for encounters with armed suspects in schools, office buildings and other locations where officers are now being trained to pursue shooters — often in close quarters — in an attempt to limit potential casualties.

"After Columbine, it became very common for law enforcement agencies to speak about the need for active shooter training," says Scott Knight, former chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police's Firearms Committee. Knight, also police chief in Chaska, Minn., referred to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado that left 12 students, one teacher and the two gunmen dead.

"With their findings, the FBI has determined that they are confronting these (close-range encounters) and need to be prepared for them," Knight said.


more at link:

http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1811053?preferredArticleViewMode=single&ref=nf

[MikeBjerum]

Talk about moving slow!

Private instructors have been using FBI Fact Sheet information for years to support the need to maintain a seven to ten yard safe zone, and to be prepared for instinctive shooting at less than ten feet.

We use their information to develop and support training, and well behind the curve the FBI finally opens their eyes to the facts in their own office.

I am glad they are finally waking up, but it makes you wonder where the trainers have been.

[jaybet]

They've been JAMMED up against that government teat for so long they don't know what year it is.

[jnevis]

But according to others on here,  they're not allowed to improve training with more ammo, its because they're stockpiling.

My guess, after trying to implement better technology and tactics into the training curiculuum for both Navy Security and flight crew, they ran into the wall that is HQ, whether DoD or DoJ.  Appointees that have zero practical experience but have connections and have never lead people into harms way.  Look at the article again, the course was 50 rds, now its 60.  That means a budget increase, along with ordering more ammo to allocate to training.  Then it also means more range time that agents aren't in the field.  It all boils down to money.  They don't want to make the course longer, or cost more so they disapprove expenditures or any policy changes until someone finally has enough and pitches a big enough fit or is killed because of it.

[tombogan03884]

It took the FBI several years to even get permission to carry guns, after the "Kansas City Massacre" and then it took more dead agents before they started any sort of training at all.
That was why they had to hire Texas Rangers to shoot Dillinger.
The fact that FBI is behind the curve on firearms training is no surprise at all.
In fact it is SOP.

[Sponsor]