Training for a Gunfight: Military Analysis of 133 Firefights

Most people think that if they go to the range, take the occasional class or two, then they are ready for a gunfight. Unfortunately, most people are wrong. Even our military and police forces often don’t have a solid understanding of what kind of skill with a weapon is actually required in a gunfight. This article will review some research that aims to correct that deficit. Keep reading to see which of the 22 factors are most common in direct fire engagements.

It’s a common military aphorism that we are always training for the last fight. I have found that that is often true enough. It might be more accurate to say that we are always training for someone else’s fight. Too often, training and doctrine is solely based off of one trainer’s experience or knowledge. Very rarely do we have the luxury of looking at a broad sampling of gunfights, or firefights, to determine what commonalities exist.

In this article, we will be discussing a masters thesis entitled, Engage, Destroy, Survive: Characteristics of US Army Pistol, Carbine, and Rifle Direct Fire Engagements in Modern Combat,written by Major Matthew Simon.

In his thesis, he conducted an exhaustive search for interviews of military personnel who had been engaged in military fire fights. He reviewed cases from the Korean War, Vietnam, as well as the Global War on Terror. The vast majority of the case studies he reviewed were from infantry and special operations forces, but there was a smattering of other support personnel as well.

He then categorized them into 22 different categories of marksmanship. This allowed him to determine what traits were most common in firefights, allowing for better training for combat personnel. The following are the characteristics he classified each engagement by.

22 Characteristics of a Fire Fight

If you’re a nerd like me, and you decide to read the whole thesis, you’ll notice that different operational environments required different sets of marksmanship skills. Having some experience with military marksmanship, I would have thought that there would be more differences than similarities, but I was wrong. There were quite a few drastic overlaps, and some strong commonalities between all firefights.

The Most Common Aspects of a Firefight

Surprisingly, the most common aspect of these engagements was the requirement to engage more than one target at a time. This was a constant, regardless of the weapons platform examined. Pistols, carbine, and rifle operators commonly reported engaging multiple threats.

The next most common characteristic was engaging the enemy within CQB distances, less than 50m. This was followed by combat personnel engaging with more than one round, and in limited visibility conditions. The author defines limited visibility as low or no light operations (with or without NVGs), as well as smoke obscuration.

Interestingly enough, soldiers reported almost never engaging from the kneeling position or from places like foxholes. They did report using barricades, or cover about 16% of the time.

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Special Forces, and Infantry Engagements

These engagements were slightly different than the combined total of all 133 engagements that the author examined. The chart below depicts the 22 characteristics for them.

This chart compares Infantry and Special Forces engagements to all other personnel. You can see for these soldiers, whom we might expect to have the most engagements, are even more biased in their engagement characteristics. They are often engaging multiple targets, from close range, during low light conditions. Over half of their gunfights were under these conditions. The next thing we need to ask is does this hold true for others ?

Does This Generalize to Civilians and Police?

Having experience in the Marine Corps and in law enforcement, I would say there is some applicability towards police and civilian self defense uses of force. These situations are certainly not apple to apples, but we have some data on these engagements as well. Check out my article on, “11 Research Based Concealed Carry Tips From Criminal Video Analysis”.

In that article I analyzed video from police and civilian uses of force for 14 different traits, and discovered these engagements had some striking commonalities as well. These are the most common traits of civilian uses of force.

Civilian and Police Gunfight Data


  • Average Engagement Range: 9 Feet
  • 2 assailants was most common
  • 73% of the scenarios required the good guy to shoot and move
  • 83% of engagements were successful

There were tons more lessons from that analysis, so I highly encourage you to give the article a read. We can see that for civilians and police officers we are likely to engage more than one threat, just like the military. We are also likely to be at close range. For these scenarios there was much more movement than was commonly seen in military scenarios. This was often caused by the extreme close range of the engagements for civilians.

You will also find that after watching just a few of these videos, nearly all of them required multiple shots to stop the threat. This is also very much in line with the military engagement data from above. Now that we see that there are some commonalties in all engagements, let’s talk about how to train for them.

Choosing a Realistic Training Standard

For most of us, we don’t have to worry about conducting a night time raid on an ISIS compound, although I know some of my readers do. So we should focus a little more on the civilian considerations.

I highly recommend checking out the Tier Three Tactical Pistol Shooting Standards. They are close range, fast, and require excellent technical ability as well as recoil control. Here is just one drill from the standard.

I’ve had a few readers try this with full sized and subcompact pistols. It is doable with practice. As of yet, I’ve had no one record an advanced score on all drills.

Training For Military, and Tactical Teams

This style of training is going to be a little more difficult to prescribe. First, I would recommend training in low light conditions more often than day light conditions. Most teams operate at night more often than day, and yet they spend more time shooting during the day than night!

Secondly, I would recommend more drills with 3+ rounds per string of fire. We spend a lot of time on up drills, and two round drills, but the data indicates that we are likely to shoot more than this in the real world. Lastly, I would recommend focusing on target transition drills at multiple distances.

I can also recommend two books, both by Kyle Lamb. The first is, “Green Eyes Black Rifles,” (Amazon Affiliate Link). This book covers everything you would need to know about fighting with a carbine. The second is, “Stay in the Fight !! Warriors Guide to Combat Pistol,” (Amazon Affiliate Link). Both of these books incorporate Kyle’s more than 20 years experience in Delta Force. I own both and think they are a great buy.

Final Thoughts

Remember these recommendations are the starting point for mastery of the skills needed to defend yourself and others. True expertise is a long road, but I’ve found that the fastest way to improvement is to train with those that are experts at what you aim to achieve.

I highly recommend getting started in USPSA, practical pistol shooting. It will increase all aspects of your shooting ability, and I promise you that you’ll get your ass handed to you by some old guy who probably fought in ‘Nam. Now get out there and start training.

3 thoughts on “Training for a Gunfight: Military Analysis of 133 Firefights”

  1. Many thanks for posting the link to the research and also your work and thoughts on civilian self defense.
    I revisited the “3T Standards” yesterday on an outdoor range and was fortunate enough to record mostly “intermediate” times, all hits where they were supposed to be.
    First 3 shots, no warmup, in 1.99-pleaded with that.
    Keep up the good work and stay safe and healthy!

    Reply
  2. In the diagram shots are from 3 yds, then move left and right. When moving either way are you suggesting firing as we move?
    Move right fire three , return center fire three, move left fire 3 ?
    Your info is outstanding.

    Reply

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