Student Review: Rifle Skills / Combat Team Tactics – ‘The Rage Switch’: 11Bravo
You don’t need to read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” to see where the good ole USA is headed, just look around. The “Cult of Political Correctness” and other extremist elements have rooted themselves in all levels of government. Elected officials openly side with street criminals over Law Enforcement and private citizens. While Illegal Aliens flood across the southern border, Homeland Security fills small town USA with Muslim refugees by the score. Soon, we will undergo forced integration by the “historic moment” masquerading as President, and, while the White House is doused in rainbow colors, savage race mobs desecrate war memorials and historic icons. As the prospect of financial collapse draws nearer every day, cyber attacks on water works, food distribution networks or the power grid grow increasingly imminent.
Mainstream propagandists shout “diversity will only make us stronger” yet the world is in flames over ethnicity and religion (Do they honestly think it won’t happen here?). Something bad is on its way. When the push-button world we live in crashes, life will take a sour turn.
As civilized society crumbles away and the animals attack private property, how will you respond? If your contingency plan is unclear or shrouded in confusion, there’s a place for you. Head to the back woods of West Virginia and take Max Velocity Tactical’s Combat Team Tactics (CTT). It’s a three day course focused on rifle manipulation and small unit actions. A Rifle Skills class is offered the day prior, presenting the opportunity for four days of intensive firearms training.
The course runs on a one hundred acre facility outside of Romney, WV. Max, a professional soldier with loads of real world experience, is the head instructor. He’s assisted by the 1st Sgt, whose pep talk on fatigue, the enemy’s intent and the proper mental approach to challenging situations is inspirational. Both men’s attention to detail and commitment to training will ensure you reap the maximum that the class has to offer.
If you add on Rifle Skills (it’s highly advised), the first two days will take place on a 25 meter box range. After zeroing in your rifle the exercises begin, shooting in controlled pairs at a paper plate stapled onto a target. The drills are many and varied; firing from the standing, kneeling and prone position, facing from the right, left and rear, and simple bounding movements. These drills are an opportune time to master the basics of marksmanship; find your cheek meld, maintain a solid grip with your strong hand, control the barrel with your support hand and manage your breathing technique accordingly so you make every shot.
As the training progresses, you’ll learn how to efficiently execute combat reloads and the time and place for tactical reloads. You’ll also be introduced to concepts like scanning, buddy awareness, RTR (reaction to fire) and learn to constantly check the ejection port on your rifle. Bad habits like turreting (spinning wildly with your rifle in an upright position) and removing your hand from the pistol grip when performing common tasks will be dropped.
A considerable amount of time is spent clearing the five types of rifle malfunctions. Tap, rack and bang resolve the first three; failure to fire, failure to battery and stove pipe. Double feeds and bolt overrides are a different story, but under Max’s instruction you’ll get the picture. Master them with speed and efficiency, because they will come up on the live fire movements.
Days three and four take place on the tactical ranges up and over the ridge. The lanes are moderately wooded and on an upward slope. They’ve also been infiltrated by multiple pop-up Ivan targets.
Actions like RTR, finding cover, bounding on the objective and breaking contact with peeling maneuvers will be conducted over-and-over. You’ll run the drills solitary (the jungle walk), in two and four man fire teams and also in two three man fire teams. The culminating event will be a squad level attack (a support team and two assault elements) on multiple objectives.
At first the drills are chaotic, because there’s so much to think about at once; marksmanship, scanning, communicating with your buddy and movement to cover while a little man in the back of your head scrutinizes everything. So, remember to slow down, get your head out of your weapon and think about what you’re doing. Don’t get sucked into the target and burn up all your rounds. Going black 2/3rds the way through an exercise will get you “that guy” status on the range and dead in real life; control your rate of fire!
As a continuous process, you will be honing your marksmanship skills. Equally important you’ll learn how to shot, move and communicate in a fire team. Finally, as a tertiary assignment, you can take the skills learned at MVT and give your 2nd Amendment loving friends, neighbors and family members the heads up (though you’ll encourage them to attend CTT too).
A lot of MVT alumni comment on physical conditioning; it’s true, you’ll want to be as fit as possible for the course, but there’s no reason to skip out if not up to par. In fact, being whupped offers a certain aspect not mentioned in the course description. When you find yourself short of breath, dripping in sweat and standing with rubbery legs, you’ve arrived at a pivotal point in your training. Will you retreat to sweet thoughts of mama or reach down deep in your soul and light the fire that sends you forward; seizing the objective with an unrepentant fury (1st Sgt calls it the “Rage Switch”).
Now, let’s reflect on a few passages from Matt Bracken’s essay “When the Music Stops: How America’s Cities May Explode in Violence”. What starts off as a casual Sunday outing gets marred in gridlock; you’re boxed in front and back. It doesn’t seem out of the ordinary, at first. Within minutes hundreds of “MUYs” (minority urban youths) have converged on the scene. Sounds of breaking glass and shrieks of horror fill the air. Women and metrosexuals are ripped from their vehicles and subjected to acts of violence they never thought existed. As the mob moves towards your position, you make a command decision, “Get out of the car! Get out of the car!”
The four doors on your sedan fly open and your family instinctively rallies at the rear of the vehicle. Popping the trunk, you retrieve two bags from the back, each one holding magazines and ammo for an AR-15 and a small caliber pistol. In moments, all four of you are armed; you and mother with the rifles and the balance to the kids.
“Right side, baby,” your wife says, as she’s already eyed cover in a nearby tree line. Moving off in a staggered formation you come under fire from soviet bloc small arms, though the rounds of 7.62 are wildly inaccurate.
“Contact left! Contact left!” you shout over the din of urban savagery. Simultaneous, the four of you get online and drop to the kneeling position, blasting the pack with a controlled and accurate rate of fire. The effects are immediate and the mob breaks down, but only momentarily. As they swarm again, you give the command to peel off in two man teams, wife and daughter, father and son, alternating movement and fire until reaching cover (you taught them this after getting back from MVT). Like a jack boot to a carton of eggs the message is clear- don’t f*ck with us!
In summary, the tactical training at MVT is spot on and the psychological endurance you’ll pick-up is unprecedented. On a personal note, I was ARNG Infantry during the 1990’s. At the time, a malaise had crept into the National Guard, largely brought on by the policies of the Clinton Administration. So, I ETS’d with a bit of an empty feeling. However, after four days training at MVT (CTT and Rifle Skills combined) that gap has been filled and is spilling over with rekindled motivations and a refreshing outlook on life. I’ll be taking CTT again and you should too; get some!
