military combat!!

[M Larsen]

Initial training most be more than just Brutal and easy to learn. It must teach foundational fight strategies that are not seriously degraded if the soldier does not have complete mastery of the techniques. It must also lay a foundation for further training at a unit where growing technical expertise will allow the soldier to employ the more advanced tactics and strategies often required on the modern battlefield.

Our method is to use simple takedowns more reminiscent of a football tackle than a Judo technique, competence in basic ground grappling and aggression to take the fight to the enemy. Dominate the fight through the sense of objective that understanding the BJJ concept of dominant position gives you and then finish the fight with whatever means available, elbow blows to the face if you have forgotten everything any more technical.

As a soldier’s technical ability grows, they learn to control the fight by controlling the range, angle, level etc, a natural progression of techniques from ground grappling to takedowns to striking to contact weapons, each building on what has already been taught and reinforced through various types of free play and competition.

Add various drilling techniques and situational training to make combatives an integrated part of training and the result is soldiers who can actually fight.

Matt Larsen

[Guest]

No offence. But all the logic seems a bit flawed to me, and the whole process complex.

So, you couldn't teach them boxing quickly enough for it to make a difference, but you could with ground grappling. But who said boxing had anything to do with it?

You have the responsibility to train all these guys, and you obviously take it seriously. You'll have to go with your instincts. I'm sure that they're tough guys anyway, and will only rarely need H2H, since theyre armed to the teeth!

[Guest]

Matt. Go here

http://pub182.ezboard.com/battlefieldforum

Its a growing forum. A bit like the Close Combat forum, but without the arrogant few that threw their weight around.

[kengar]

Matt,
Well it does sound like you're doing something positive there. If I disagreed with you about the competition, don't know if I did, then I'll step back from that and agree the competing could be a good way to motive and push people to excel.

[PBR549]

Ok, let me clear something up for those that have obviously never cleared a room or a trench line. If I were a point man entering a room or going through a trench, and I encountered a situation where I had to take an enemy to the ground, I wouldnt have to wait for my fellow soldiers to "run" over to me. They are right behind me. There is no "running over" to me. The guy behind me has his weapon at the ready and starts killing the enemy and when the room or the leg of trench line is clear, they can help with the enemy that I have on the ground unless I have already taken care of him. Its not at all ignorant

[ryanhall]

I wasn't going to comment on this thread again until your last comment.

If I were a point man entering a room or going through a trench, and I encountered a situation where I had to take an enemy to the ground, I wouldnt have to wait for my fellow soldiers to "run" over to me. They are right behind me. There is no "running over" to me.

Congratulations, you managed to find a hypothetical combat scenario in which going to the ground would not spell certain death for you. Here's a better idea in that same situation: put the other guy on the ground without going there yourself. What if your guys got pinned down behind the door by overwhelming fire from the opposing side? You would be in rough shape.

when the room or the leg of trench line is clear, they can help with the enemy that I have on the ground unless I have already taken care of him

One major strike against the ground is that it lacks any true finishing techniques. How do you plan to take care of the other soldier? He won't just sit there and die because you've practiced ground fighing with your buddies in the platoon. He can have a sidearm, a blade, and the desire to use them on you in short order. Nothing less than an "I'm gonna kill the bastard" attitude will serve you very well. Sorry, but confidence booster or no confidence booster, the ground is not a very good place to train for actual combat.

As a soldier’s technical ability grows, they learn to control the fight by controlling the range, angle, level etc

That's nice, but what does it have to do with military hand to hand combat? How does one control the range against a potentially armed enemy in a totally unfriendly environment? What would the benefit be if one were able to do it?

I agree with Matt that having competitions does push people to excel, but then again, excelling in something that isn't particularly useful in the first place might not be worth the effort. If the idea is to boost morale and reward achievement, as is seen in the Best Ranger competition, then fine. But some obviously see it as Hand To Hand Combatives that creates a fighter capable of using his skills under combat conditions. I am not convinced that it does. Training conventional methods (boxing, BJJ, etc.), a fighter is built quickly, but not overnight. Matt, you mentioned confidence and relative levels of skill after training. Do these soldiers train enough to actually use what they have learned? Give them a system like Fairbairn's and you have an aggressive and dangerous hand to hand opponent in a very short time. How long does it take to teach someone new to boxing how to throw a cross that will knock a normal to large man out? A while. How long does it take to teach a chinjab, tiger claw/eyegouge, knee stomp combination that will take an attacker off his feet? Not long at all. I can tell you that from personal experience. Both ways will make a figher, but one will do it faster. Frankly, I think that the latter method will make a more effective fighter than the former, especially if his Combatives (old school or RBSD) training is augmented by competition such as boxing.

[PBR549]

I havent managed to find anything. I am refering to situations hat are quite possible on the modern battle field. For a Airborne / Air Assault / Ranger Infantryman or Special Forces (which is who our combatives program benifits), we will typically find ourselves fighting in cities and trenches(trust me, I have seen so many trenches here in Korea it isnt funny) where just the scenario I brought up applies. I said in an earlier post that the same will not apply in a wide open battle field such as a woodland environment or desert. There is no reason to even think of hand to hand when you have a Bradley Fighting Vehicle or an M1A1 Abrams Tank.
And as for finishing moves on the ground, I carry a knife that if need be, I can use. And of course, once on the ground, my plan isnt to put the enemy is an arm bar, its to gouge out his eyes or something to that effect, but if all I can do is hold him a bay, then I know my buddies that are few feet can square me away.

[Guest]

"I agree with Matt that having competitions does push people to excel, but then again, excelling in something that isn't particularly useful in the first place might not be worth the effort."

Ryan, for me this is the best post of the thread.


(I had to say that, since you gave me the hat trick......)

[M Larsen]

One thing you all might find interesting is that we are conducting post combat interviews with trrops who are engaged in actual hand-to-hand engagements, every thing from clearing a trench and your weapon malfunctions to handling unruly POWs. The questions are along the lines of what equipment were you wearing, what was the ROE, what physical events preceded the action etc.

Some of the events are pretty interesting. For example there was an incident where two SF guys had a bad guy put the muzzle of his AK in the window of the car they were driving and attempt to shoot them. They dragged the guy in through the car window and subdued him on their laps. Right now the number of documented incidents is small enough that it is still only anecdotal but as the database grows we will be able to evaluate and adjust our program.

Some early results are that every recorded incadent, even with troops not trained in ground grappling has involved ground grappling, many effective chokes, fights being finished by the buddy shooting the bad guy.

The weapons fighting we teach is a combination of lessons from Dog Brothers style Kali, the Fairbairne/Applegate knife program, and lessons from the western martial arts. We put all of these together and constantly strive to learn what really works by using various forms of live training. For example, the method that we are currently using to train on fighting with bladed weapons is to use a stun gun to simulate a knife. The class starts with the question “when do you find out you are in a knife fight?” and the answer is usually when you are stabbed. You never know whether or not the enemy is armed until it’s too late. You must therefore assume he may be armed and fight appropriately. We then put the students in a circle facing outboard and slip the stun gun in one of their pockets. We then pair them up and have them grapple. No one knows whether or not his or her opponent is armed.

The lessons that they learn is that with a few exceptions, the fighter that dominates position is the one that has a chance to employ the weapon, even if his enemy is the one who started out armed, and that the ability to control the enemy they gained by attempting various submission type techniques allows them to control the employment of the weapon.

The high end of training here is the combination of simunitions, Tony Blauer’s High Gear, and electricity to simulate bladed weapons. If you have any ideas on how we can improve our program let me know. That is why I am on these boards.

Matt Larsen

[ryanhall]

Matt,
You're the professional, and it sounds like you have a pretty good system going. All I can do is offer my opinion. If it were me training the soldiers, knowing what you know from your studies into what the people you train are capable of after your program, my advice would be this:

1) Keep training grappling. I don't think it's got much use at all on the battlefield, but if it keeps the soldiers motivated and involved, then it is the hook that you need to make people train the other stuff.
2) Compliment the grappling with a large dose of simple strike and killer instinct training. No boxing blows, no Thai kicks, nothing technical. They're great, but they take a bit to make them work. I would stick to teaching a simple power shots: chinjab, hammerfist, knee stomp, elbows, headbutt, knees, ax hand. Students can go full bore on dummies and bags. Most of these things don't really need to be trained on another person, because they are meant to be a non-stop barrage of nasty shots aimed at ending the fight. If you would like to, however, there are ways that throat strikes and the like are trained on a resisting opponent. The major drawback is that, when protection is used, people often don't show the proper reaction dynamics. They'll take a shot to the big pad over their windpipe and throw a combination without missing a beat. Unrealistic.

The problem with primarily training grappling:
even if you say "don't go to the ground unless you have to" ten thousand times, they will do it anyway. If you teach 20 hours of boxing and 50 hours of grappling, the grappling will probably override the boxing under pressure. I get twenty hours of boxing in about two weeks. Did those two weeks make me a fighter capable of knocking someone's head off? No. Takes a lot more than that. Unless, of course, you are not playing by the rules and you use power strikes that can be learnt and applied in an hour.

You mentioned chokes as finishers. I read the manual, and I noticed one or two particularly nasty chokes were missing. The rear naked choke, surprisingly enough, is pretty humane in comparison. If you employ the rear naked choke the way it's meant to be done and it sinks in, the other guy has about 5-10 seconds. If you don't get it that good, he has longer. If you suck at it, he's not going out at all. Now, I would like to point out that escaping a rear naked choke that has sunk in is, in my opinion, extremely difficult to do (near impossible). That is, unless you have a knife. In that case, you saw their friggin arm in half. Soldiers carry weapons, and even though you maintained the best possible ground fighting position (chest to back), you died. Not the way to be if you ask me. Groundfighting is just too dangerous a proposition for it to demand the majority of the training time.

This wandered a bit, but I hope it was helpful. Thanks for taking the time to explain your system here.

--edited for spelling

[kengar]

One thing you all might find interesting is that we are conducting post combat interviews with trrops who are engaged in actual hand-to-hand engagements

That is pretty interesting, you gain the knowledge of those who have been up close and personal with the enemy. That definitely shows the army in trying to push for a more combat functional fighting system. I do feel that ground work is needed in a fighting system and knowing how to drop your enemy while staying on your feet is invaluable.

If I were a point man entering a room or going through a trench, and I encountered a situation where I had to take an enemy to the ground,

Would it not be better if you attempted to knock them down or back with a strike so you can create distance and use your weapon. If your clearing a building or trench, as you stated, there is minimal room to move around so now the first option you want to take is to directly take someone to the ground and block the passage for your squad to maneuver.
I have praticed clearing rooms many of times, and if were to come into CQC I would never consider taking them to the ground as my first option. It would be a last resort, if it had to go there. With the equipement I was carring, holding onto my weapon, a low-line kick, a strike with the butt of the weapon/hand to knock them back or down would get me better chances of taking out the enemey soldier with less risk that is involved in grappling.
You did say that you would use nasty fighting tactics, that's definitely the right attitude, but that takes me back to the begining of this thread about the manual not having vicious tactics in it.

It is a positive that you all are working to improve H2H in the Army and I'd enjoy seeing more posts from you about what is going on with the training and data you receive back from soldiers.

Ken

[PBR549]

The manual is a skill level 1 text. Well, what you do in CQC and what I do can be different and still work fine. We have practiced takeing the enemy to the ground in the trench and in room clearing, your right, you can get in the way of the rest of your team, but sometimes that is something you will have to deal with.

[M Larsen]

“I do feel that ground work is needed in a fighting system and knowing how to drop your enemy while staying on your feet is invaluable.”

If this were as easy as it sounds, a boxing match would be a very exiting four or five seconds. No holds bared fights usually do not end in a knock out even though almost every sort of strike has been within the rules in one venue or the other simply because the body is not as fragile as some would have you believe.
Imagine if I were to go to a bar tonight and get into a fight, what do you suppose that the enemy’s plan to defeat me would be. The odds are probably a million to one that he would try to strike at me until I received enough damage that I couldn’t fight effectively. Almost every one, certainly most Americans and Europeans have this plan, so much so that you could call it the almost universal fight plan. Your options are basically to play along and try to beat the guy at his own game, hoping that you win because you are more aggressive or some other possible advantage, or to come up with a plan that takes advantage of his weakness. That is that the universal fight plan requires that the fighters mutually consent to staying at striking range.

“Would it not be better if you attempted to knock them down or back with a strike so you can create distance and use your weapon. If your clearing a building or trench, as you stated, there is minimal room to move around…”

These two statements would seem to be at odds. If your weapon is functioning you should use it, if that is within the ROE. If your weapon malfunctions and you are far enough away that you have the option, you should get out of the way, let your buddy shoot him, and try to get your weapon into operation. If however you are too close for this to be an option, you should put your muzzle through his face and hit him with momentum, and then dominate the situation. The bottom line is that the winner will be the one whose buddy shows up first with a gun. If you drop the guy dead at your feet with the kung-fu death grip and his buddy comes in with a gun, you still loose. Of course all of this is theory just like “The last place you want to be on the battlefield is on the ground”, but it is a theory that is being proven on battlefields around the world as we speak.
You might also find it interesting that on the day the first Ranger Battalion got back from Afghanistan they called us to give them an MTT. The battlefield had taught them what worked. The third Battalion came back the other day from Iraq, and guess whom they called.

One more note, what PBR549 said about skill level one is true. The initial training bears about the same relationship to what we expect soldiers to do on the battlefield as BRM does to combat marksmanship. The dime and washer drill may seem far removed from engaging fleeting targets from unfamiliar firing positions through optics etc, but no one seriously doubts that BRM is necessary to develop marksmanship ability. In the same way passing the guard will probably not be necessary, but the feel for dominating the enemy that you gain through positional grappling will.

Matt Larsen

[ryanhall]

If this were as easy as it sounds, a boxing match would be a very exiting four or five seconds. No holds bared fights usually do not end in a knock out even though almost every sort of strike has been within the rules in one venue or the other simply because the body is not as fragile as some would have you believe.

Sorry, Matt, but you are misrepresenting information here. The body does not drop with the touch of a hand, but it goes down very easily if you hit it hard in the right places. Your boxing match comment is not applicable here for the following reasons:
1) Only upper body hand strikes are allowed.
2) Boxers make a living out of moving their heads to avoid punches, hence they/we will be a hell of a lot better at it than anyone you are likely to run into.
3) Gloves are worn.
4) Weight classes are in effect.
5) A solid chin shot ends a fight in any round against almost every boxer (some have rock solid jaws, but they are the exception, not the rule).
6) The fist is really not a preferred method of striking in open combat.

Every strike has not been allowed. If you doubt that a hard axe hand will collapse your wind pipe, I'd be glad to prove otherwise to you. You also seem to forget that, in Muay Thai fights, a solid and powerful elbow or knee to the head ends a fight at anytime on any fighter. Period. Strikes to the groin tend to cause a man to coil up in pain. I've seen it, done it, used it, and can tell you that anyone who says a groin shot doesn't hurt (badly enough to bring you to your knees if it's a hard one) has never been hit there or has issues that they will need to work out with their girlfriend.

Strikes, especially a barrage of them, to the eyes, throat, testicles, knee, temple, back of the neck DO stop people in their tracks. Big people, small people, muscular people, committed people. I don't see this point as open to discussion. The fact that you make a reference to a no holds barred fighting arena and boxing match in a discussion regarding battlefield combat shows that you're reaching a little bit. That is, unless well-conditioned and mentally prepared fighters who know one another's style to a 'T' enter into single unarmed combat while wearing bicycle shorts on the battlefield. Since this doesn't happen too often, any comparison to the ring or octagon is misplaced. Also, relying on your buddy to show up with a gun (while it would be nice) is a poor strategy when compared to equipping soldiers with the mentality and know-how to kill an enemy with their bare hands before anybody shows up.

By the way, congratulations on being selected by the Ranger batallions.

[M Larsen]

“if you hit it hard in the right places”

easier said than done

1) tell that to Joe San
2) They also work on their timing and accuracy quite a bit and aim at the biggest targets that a person has and do not connect reliably
3) Gloves are to protect the hand. Imagine the state of orthopedic surgery at the turn of the century and it is easy to understand why it was the boxers themselves who insisted on gloves. Striking without gloves is a good way to hurt yourself. This is a lesson that the MMA world learned once again and started wearing gloves so that fighters would be able to strike without injuring their selves.
4) Weight classes protect the little guy. I guess if we can train our soldiers not to be the little guy you would have a point. That not being the case, you are left trading strikes with someone who can both take and dish out more punishment.
5) Boxers do go down pretty reliably to a good shot on the button. They also have a pretty tuff time putting a shot there despite extensive training. I havn’t yet heard how an uppercut will be more likely to land for example if thrown by someone with very little training but an open hand.
6) I agree on this point.

I do not doubt that an axe hand will collapse your windpipe; I do however doubt that it is as easy a target to hit reliably as some would think. I have trained quite a bit in Muay Thai, I have even fought in Thailand. Elbows are very effective strikes and yet even the best Muay Thai fighters seldom knock out their opponents. This is because real opponents fight back. If you have not trained against a fully resistant opponent, you have no idea whether or not you will be able to do the things you think you can. As for groin shots, I once kicked a sailor square in the junk when I was a Marine. He punched me in the face.

A barrage of strikes is exactly what you can expect from most opponents. The person that gets stopped in their tracks is just as likely to be either one of the two who are slugging it out. If that is your plan, you are playing his game.

Refusing to draw any lessons from MMA because of its limitations as a test bed is probably not the best answer. Better to look at its limitations and learn what it has to offer. For example, Boxing style closed fist strikes to the head are a good way to break your hand, etc. It is far from perfect, but it is better than hitting your other hand.

Lastly, There is a good reason that we have over 400,000 soldiers. We fight in groups. We should train to fight in groups for the same reason that we train to fight with weapons, it works better.

Our program actualy came from the Ranger Regt. to the rest of the Army. I was in the Regt. from 1988 unilt I left to rewrite the doctrine and start the school. There are however always naysayers.

Matt Larsen