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AAR Sentinel Concepts Critical Carbine Employment 7/22-7/24

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AAR Sentinel Concepts Critical Carbine Employment
Big Springs Range owned by Brownells, Searsboro ,Iowa
Hosted by Central Iowa Training Group
22-24, July 2016

Weather: Hot AF.  Mid-90s each day with 100% humidity.  Wind and cloud cover variable or non-existent.  Steve did a great job of keeping any heat-related injuries at bay by providing numerous and plentiful opportunities to hydrate and get under shade.

Attendees: Five LEOs from DSM metro PDs assigned to tactical units.  Nine civilians with two being relatively young (17 and 21).  Everyone did a great job of being safe. 

Instructor
Steve "Yeti" Fisher of Sentinel Concepts.  I have seen Steve's name pop up quite frequently over the years.  The first time I heard of him was when he was with Magpul Dynamics then more with he was an AI for Pat Rogers at EAG.  Most recently, his name has been associated with his own training company, Sentinel Concepts.  This was my first contact with him and I can honestly say he did not disappoint.  Steve shows all the marks of a teacher and not just an instructor.  In that way, he reminds me a lot of Pat Rogers.  Steve's approach is to explain the hows and whys of what he's teaching, demonstrate it slowly, then again full speed.  He presents material as one method of accomplishing a task.  He doesn't tout it as THE method or the ONLY method.  Just another method for his students to try aka no ego interference.  If they like it and it works, great.  If not, no problem since everyone is different.

Gear
AR-pattern rifles with one Sig MCX.  Optics were mostly RDS composed on two MROs, one XPS, two variable power optics, and the rest being Aimpoints of some kind.  The XPS made it which surprised me.

Day 1
Take a 2-3 day Carbine 2 course, extract the fundamentals and drills, and you pretty much have day 1 of this CCE class.  Steve used this day to give the line a quick refresher, knock the dust off skillsets, and evaluate class proficiency to determine the content of days 2 and 3.  It was a relatively relaxed pace but a beginner with little prior knowledge or experience would have struggled.  Make no mistake, this is an advanced carbine class.  Some students may find the re-hashing of previous material frustrating but in addition to the aforementioned reasons for such a day, Steve was also improving our fundamentals.  Ready positions, sling management, and even things as simple as stock extension were touched on and changes made resulting in noticeable improvements in performance.  I was (note past tense) a nose-to-charging-handle shooter until Steve showed us that running the stock full out can work better.  While this day was mostly a refresher, I certainly improved with such attention to the basics/fundamentals.

Day 2
Building on the previous day, Steve introduced major topics like reloads, malfunction clearances, transitions, multiple targets, and shooting from barricades.  Again, lots of questions about why we do things the way we do.  I really like this method of instruction where Steve asks the line a question such as why do we do tactical reloads and when.  This is a look into how we our brains are digesting the sensory information which translates to physical actions.  My two biggest takeaways from this day were to pay attention to where my eyes are looking and control of external stresses to keep them from impacting my performance.  I'm only racing myself and if I lose control because in my head I'm racing the guy next to me or I get frustrated with an imperfect reload, that's not an excuse to miss because I brought the gun up and squeezed off the shot in haste. 

 

Speaking of misses, Steve really beat it home that misses may have consequences.  I train because I have people who depend on me to protect them.  If I can't control my response to stress and my "solution" is to bring the gun up faster, hit the trigger faster, and outrun my sight picture, that time and effort was wasted which translates to the bad guy having more time to kill me and mine.  It all comes back to fundamentals and self-control.  I was 5 seconds behind the top shooter of Steve's 1-5 drill but I ran it clean because in my head, I was telling myself to ignore everyone watching me and ignore the clock, just run the drill clean.  Run the drill clean and establish a baseline of performance before pushing the gas and attacking the time. 

Day 3
Shooting on the move was the major theme of the day.  Again, Steve was fixing the fundamentals.  I have always shot hunched over when shooting on the move.  Steve presented a different approach and it worked for me and just about everyone else.  Less dot movement meant faster acquisition of the dot and thereby better shots.  All of this built to a ladder drill which was a series of sprints with a carbine.  There's a mental aspect to this drill as you may or may not have shooters downrange of your muzzle (not directly in front of it but off to the sides in different shooting lanes).  While everyone stays in their own shooting lane, for the uninitiated, this can be somewhat of a mindfuck.  But this drill was great as it demonstrated that you can be completely winded and still make good shots at various distances with some self-control, specifically, over your respiration.  Go back to the fundamentals of breath control as it relates to shooting and send it.  The day closed with a tag out drill where students engaged steel targets from behind barricades.  If the shooter behind you was faster and you were occupying the shooting position they were moving into, you were out.  Running and gunning for extended periods of time on one of the hottest days of the year was rough but tied together a lot of the previous days information and was a good way to end the shooting portion of the class.

There are so many small points and takeaways from this class that I picked up that if I included them all, this AAR would be 3-4x longer.  The gist of it is that Steve is a great teacher who isn't afraid to slaughter sacred cows if it means making his students better shooters/gunfighters.  He doesn't rely solely on the physical execution of techniques but also pokes the brain to get students to think about what they're doing and why.

My gratitude and appreciation go out to Steve for coming to Iowa to teach, Romper for organizing the class, Brownells for hosting us and letting us use their great facilities, and to the other students for coming out to learn and for being safe.  This was my first time training with Steve but certainly not my last.

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This class was also a test bed for some contract manufactured parts as these classes subject parts to more aggressive firing schedules than most retail customers will put them through.  I intentionally ran my gun dirty and with a suppressor to stress the parts as much as possible.  Everything performed as I expected with one notable exception: the BCG.  I know where I won't be sourcing BCGs from based on this one sample...

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This class was also a test bed for some contract manufactured parts as these classes subject parts to more aggressive firing schedules than most retail customers will put them through. I intentionally ran my gun dirty and with a suppressor to stress the parts as much as possible. Everything performed as I expected with one notable exception: the BCG. I know where I won't be sourcing BCGs from based on this one sample...

Cocktease!

 

Seriously though, that's impossible. All BCGs are the same. My $80 BCG from Uncle Cheech's Tactical Warehouse and Emporium is just as good as the BCM, Colt, LMT, Knights everyone else has. You just pay more for names. /sarcasm

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Cocktease!

 

Seriously though, that's impossible. All BCGs are the same. My $80 BCG from Uncle Cheech's Tactical Warehouse and Emporium is just as good as the BCM, Colt, LMT, Knights everyone else has. You just pay more for names. /sarcasm

:rofl:  A funny meme popped up in my FB feed the other day.  It said, "Behind every blade of grass will be a cheapass trying to fix his budget rifle"

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