The WHY of Force On Force

[YammyMonkey]

I see where you're coming from Jeff & I agree that having to think through stress will make you better regardless of the situation. That said, I think the best way for someone to learn to be calm during a fight is to fight just like learning to be calm while risking a 100' groundfall off an ice climb in front of your new girlfriend is to actually climb.

Regarding the MILES courage- that's why we need to seek out good training partners & be good training partners who take this stuff seriously instead of treating it like the neighbor kids & their airsoft exploits. Likewise, the fact that getting hit with a SIM or UTM round actually hurts helps drive the point home while teaching you to work through the pain- all good things. The same can be said of airsoft pellets, but to a lesser degree.

 

[PPGMD]

Also you can counter MILES courage by instant remediation, show them what they did wrong, and have them do the drill again, until they do it correctly.

 

[Jeff White]

I was certified to be a Trainer/Controller (before I ever heard the term observer/controller although they might have been using it at NTC then) in 1985. Since then I've used airsoft, paintball and simunitions as engagement simulators and have seen examples of what we called MILES courage in all of them.

Picking the right people to be your OPFOR/role players and controller personnel is the best way to deal with it and my experience mirrors Horsesoldier's in that the training is more effective with small exercises with only a couple training objectives.

All force on force training isn't created equal and training that is conducted by someone who doesn't know what they are doing (not necessarily being ignorant of the training objectives they are trying to meet, but in how to actually conduct meaningful force on force training) can be worse then not doing it at all.

It's also hard to find OPFOR/role players who will understand that they may not be there to win their fight, that they are just a live training aid so that someone else may learn something. I didn't have as much problems with that in the Army as I did in LE training. The people who volunteer to play the bad guys are often the more aggressive, driven to win people. Sometimes they have the tendency to think that handing out a humiliating defeat is always their job and they may break from their scripted role to win totally wasting the exercise if that wasn't what the trainer intended to happen.

I would say that good force on force training is harder to find then good marksmanship and manipulation training.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

Jeff White: "... but I stand by the other tried and true stress inoculation methods to teach someone who to work through their fear."

Agree there.

I was afraid of heights as a kid. So one day I free-climbed a standpipe. Nearly crapped myself. A few years later I free-climbed Mount Katahdin. I'm not afraid of heights anymore.

As the result of a rather disconcerting experience involving commercial air travel, I later developed a fear of flying. I couldn't very well confront that fear in the way in which it was developed, so I made a private study of commercial aviation disasters and their causes, and began a hobby of aviation wreckchasing. I'm not afraid of flying anymore. Whoop, whoop (pull up!).