Shroom Man 777 wrote:Including the shooting at paper targets with people standing a foot away from em? And shooting someone wearing a vest?
Yup. The later is certainly not typical but I have seen video of this done in USA America in pre youtube age. It's certainly dumb in my mind, but it definitely would have value as part of a overall program.
The thing is one has to question who actually needs to be on the bounce that much, but isn't already fighting a war or otherwise exposed to combat. It's not that much, but I bet Russian bodyguard certificates literally exist that say 'has been shot by xxx on xxx as part of xxx' that entitle the holder to an extra paycheck per year or something.
Does SEAL training have this?
Certainly not the later, if only because the Army lawyers would stop it by this point, and it'd actually consume serious money if you did a lot of it for repairing or replacing the armor, but the reality is other aspects of SEAL type training would probably average out more dangerous already. Just look at that FBI hostage rescue team that had several people killed in a helicopter-ship training boarding exercise a few years ago, flown deliberately in bad weather. Back in the Cold War (when all training deaths were higher anyway, in part from the vehicles being less safe) losses like that were downright typical.
If you start saying we can't do this or that too much...you leave yourself open to people who might have no sense in the first place. And welding torches, and explosives, and well now tanks and robotic helicopters and that whole literal terrorist black mesa thing, and yeah.
But I'd also point out within groups like the SEALs and SAS its only a fraction of the teams that are actually kept spun up for really high precision room clearing operations with hostages, as opposed to just shooting everyone dead, and others specialize in other tasks. But when private and VIP escort training comes into play, you've got a very wide range of requirements and standards involved to say the least.
Honestly I'm very big on gun safety, but I'm also not counting on guns for my life on a regular basis. And at the end of the day too, I think an argument can be made that the counter terrorism theater thing the world is running right now does work, because so much of the terrorist supply is so bloody stupid in the first place. We really can hope to scare them into never climbing out of their holes.
The_Saint wrote:I can't find the photo of Prince Charles & Princess Diana in the SAS 'Killing House' at Hereford sitting at a table experiencing what would happen if they were in a hostage situation.
It's not really that tacticool dumbshit if even the British are willing to put the royal family in the line of fire.
For kill-house type exercises to have actual training value in the first place you really need the instructors inside the kill house. I mean sure in 2017 you could do a lot with hundreds of cameras, but even now that would make it hard to evaluate exact precise details, and I can't imagine 1987 CCTV being usable for that at all. Not worth it, not a good approach, just put some people in the damn house so they can tell people exactly where they fucked up. They should be good enough not to frigging shoot the wrong person, but how long that takes, how they go through the halls ect... all needs constant attention to detail to get a good result. You are trying to act literally, faster then the other person can act. Maybe you have a flash bang, but oh great that gained you a maximum if like 1.5 seconds of incapacitation, and possibly less if they expected it.
So end result is you have instructors standing throughout the kill houses, and often other
students used as hostages.
The use of students as hostages thing still happens from my understanding, though it's supposed to be within reason, and sitting through exercises like that is supposed to serve as a sort of baptism of fire in its own way.
The look of the chest on the shooter doing the 'get shot then shoot back' training looks suspiciously thicker than the other guy in the same scenario. I would wonder whether there's either additional plates being worn or if it's a Type 3 or 4 vest and so (theoretically outright) proof against 9mm, alternatively the other shooter might be firing reduced charge rounds.
Remember as far as western body armor goes the protection standard is not probabilistic based. The edges of a vest are non protective, but everywhere else SHALL stop the damn bullet. So even allowing for some caution a III-A vest should bloody always stop a 9mm round from a pistol with non AP ammo. You could decrease the risk margin further by using frangible bullets, or even just unjacketed lead or a hollow point.
The velocity range is already so low reducing the charge isn't too relevant compared to the bullet composition, you can't download velocity too much below the default or your handgun probably won't cycle right.
The vest does look thick, that's probably because its not made of highly stressed (expensive) material in favor of durability and cost to replace, ossibly a steel plate based vest with a rubber spall shield on it, those can withstand many hits even if closely grouped or directly on the same spot. Kevlar type vests are not amazing at this.. They might also have put one of those steel plates in front of a normal III-A vest, I kinda think that might be exactly what was going on, and certainly, no pistol bullet would ever penetrate that, and you wouldn't get any soft tissue damage. Though at that point I wonder how much the person would even feel.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:
I don't doubt body armor was worn in that particular exercise (and probably the others... though I wonder why they were helmet-less...).
Because helmets are mainly about stopping artillery and grenade fragmentation, its only since about 2011 era that you could buy a helmet that would stop any form of military rifle fire, and yet was not so heavy that a human could not physically use it for long periods because of the weakness of the human neck. Which suggests to me that F1 drivers would be the best armored knights...
Anyway very recently you can now get a reasonable weight helmet that can stop even 5.56mm SS109 bullets, though not anything more potent, and they really do work since this was proven in the Pulse Nightclub shooting, utterly saved the life of the first SWAT officer in the door. But that's recent, and still not typical, also my understanding is its still not completely certain protection, helmet shapes are very complex so its very hard to assure protection from everywhere. The problem being the armor can't deflect much before it will hit your skull, and that limits the ability to absorb energy.
So with helmets not even certainly proof against pistol fire SOF in hostage rescue kind of situations have little reason to use them, and for a long time were typically using hockey helmets or similar gear, because they did still want random blunt injury protection, and such helmets are way lighter. The guys in that kill house photo sure look like they do have hockey or rugbee kind of helmets too.
The US used to use a .45cal round as its artillery fragment simulator, now they use special slugs, but that's basically where your protection level is for like I dunno, 98% of helmets on the planet probably, or less. 9mm might or might not go through, those Russian 7.62mm handguns were adapted in part precisely because they would penetrate helmets at short ranges on a reliable basis, and that's using the normal ball ammo and such.
SOFs deploying on actual battlefields, those guys will bring helmets, and train with them beforehand.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956