[HTML1] Larry Vickers' TacTV traveled to Russia and got a look at the training that goes on in the top tier of Russia's federal security and law enforcement service, the FSB.
It's interesting to hear Vickers talk about how dangerous and risky the drills are, then walk off the platform by saying, "but, it's Russia." At the end of the video, he stresses the training he's depicting is the final stage in a progression of training for very high level operators. This mitigates the disdain for this type of training that's reserved for the skinny-tie-and-pony-tail crowd and the seeming irresponsibility of running open enrollment (and un-vetted) students through drills in which a lapse can have deadly consequences.
Sure it's dangerous, there's even what looks like an AD an unaimed warning shot fired into the ground during the scuffling. But, the fact that training just goes on is an eye-opening look at the differences between training mentalities. Can you imagine any class in the US just rolling on after a student has an AD or fires an unaimed shot? In reality, this portion of the video shows us a key component of high value, scar-free training. Train like you fight. Don't stop and have a safety freak out. A shot was fired with a muzzle pointed in a safe direction, no one was injured, shit happened and the threat persists: carry on.
Of course, like Vickers says, this is a top tier unit and a discharge like this occurring at lower levels of training should evoke the stop everything/safety stand down response.
It also tells me that I would want anyone performing these drills to run them with sim guns about 100 times without a flaw before running it with live rounds. In fact, I see little benefit (little, not zero) from running these drills with live rounds. The potential for injury is way too high to justify the last 5% of realism in training that comes from the noise and violence of live rounds.
What do you think? Are Americans too risk averse with our training or are there just too many knuckleheads out there to even consider putting folks downrange with live rounds in play?
