[Razor]

I just had a discussion on another forum on the MACP, so I'll add my posts from there as they sum up my outsiders (wasn't active duty when the Army-wide MACP was implemented) view. Yurk, please feel free to let me know where I've gone astray as far as the conduct of the program both at Benning and at Bragg. I think folks will find my views tend to dovetail with NDD, which is encouraging as he's a medic and knows stuff. FYI, ARH is an Australian that was arguing that the MACP wasn't deeply based on BJJ, but rather only a starting point. KIT is an experienced police officer that has gone 'hands on' with suspects numerous times, but works under LEO rules, not a soldier's ROE. I apologize for the length.

ARH, I don't know which version of 3-25.150 you have, but the 2002 version (which I have) has three chapters dedicated to only ground fighting. The only strikes referenced during the advanced ground fighting POI (Level 2, an 80 hour course conducted at Ft Benning; good luck having units give up an NCO (Level II instructors are suggested to be E-5s) for that long!) are unarmed attacks, and of those two involve knee strikes (and one of these is a knee/punch combo, but I counted it for both), two are punches, one is a headbutt, and of the remainder 10 are chokes and 6 are armbars. Of the chokes are armbars, there are only a handful (I'll count later if you insist) that are basic moves; the rest are variations of them in different positions. So, this means that if the bad guy does this, I do this and not that, but if he does this, then I don't do this but do that. That takes a great deal more training time than units will allocate (based off 10 years in conventional and SOF units), and 90% of the Joes won't practice it to become proficient.

Sure, maybe the very first block (pared down from its current state to be even more simple) could include ground fighting, but strikes including weapons access, SOME weapons retention, and your standing buddies ending the fight for you need to be added to a Get Tough/Kill or Get Killed type POI that focuses on ending the fight with a kill.

KIT, I have a great deal of respect for your LE/RBFC knowledge, but what applies to a police officer doesn't often, and in fact rarely applies to a soldier in combat. Sure, there are SOME videos of troops taking soon-to-be detainees to the ground, but its not as prevalent as you might think, and in counterinsurgency operations, most of that action should be relegated to police-type forces, using the military to reinforce them in extreme instances.

No bang on Matt Larson, but he spent his career (IIRC) in units that had the time and dedication to really train in these techniques. He never had to pull a Post clean-up detail, or lose 75% of his troops during Red Cycle committments, or conduct some of the PC-friendly Army classes his conventional peers lose so much training time to.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not attended any level of the MACP training. I have, however, received feedback from combat arms guys that have, so my comments are based off personal combatives experience and their input. Also, FM 3-25.150 is fully releasable to the public, and the course description is from the publically-accessible Ft. Benning website, so discussing these items will not result in any kind of security violation.

With that said, let's discuss some Army realities here for those unfamiliar. Anyone that's spent anytime in the US Army will understand the limited training time in a unit. Since there are many different types of units with widely varying jobs, most often the available training time is dedicated to one of three things: tasks that directly relate to the unit's mission, tasks mandated by higher (co, bn, bde, etc...all the way up to the Department of the Army, including those PC classes), and most recently tasks related to basic, life-saving combat skills that will keep the unit's troops alive. This last category often includes Combat Lifesaver (CLS) and advanced shooting courses (usually run by the Army, as a conventional unit isn't going to shell out the money for SFC Jones to go to a civilian school; if he does its on his on dime and own time). Unlike police officers, most soldiers doing direct combat jobs (to include those units that have been temporarily 'converted' to Infantry) don't operate without at least a buddy, and more commonly with a fireteam or squad of other troops. This means that a fight going to the ground is very rarely one-on-one, and the resisting subject usually ends up with several other guys on top of him, or receives multiple rifle butts, muzzle strikes, booted kicks or other behavior modification techniques, especially should he find himself on top of our grounded soldier. Yes, I've seen 'detainee takedowns' go to the ground, but only the most dedicated bad guy is going to try to wrestle with you and several of your buddies sticking the muzzles of loaded weapons in his face. I also am well aware of the USSF MSG that, during CQB, went toe-to-toe with an bad guy right after shooting a couple others. AFAIK, he didn't use any BJJ-related skills; he tossed the guy off his back (height/weight advantage), pulled his weapon free of a tangle and shot the guy until he stopped moving. He received a Silver Star for this action, along with a great deal of publicity. Have you heard of many other stories like this? So, the likelyhood that a soldier would need more than perhaps the most basic (and the Combatives FM goes well beyond basic) of ground fighting skills isn't very likely at all, unlike the polic officer that takes his life in his hands everytime he steps out of his patrol and confronts or chases down a suspect. Soldiers have Rules of Engagement (ROE), but its rarely as restrictive as a police officer's force use of force rules. The Army's most prevalent response to aggression from the bad guy, even in current operations, is to kill the bad guy.

We all have to perform time management in our lives; some more detailed, som less. Trust me when I tell you the Army as a whole does a great deal of time management for training. Anything beyond Level 1 (heck, even some of those skills) requires a great deal of time to learn and become proficient. That's time units almost never have to spare, between mandated pre-deployment training, deployment, operations, redeployment, post-deployment, maintenance and sustainment, leave (trust me, all but a Todd-like Joe isn't going to spend the first free time he's had in a year doing Army training), and unit training before the cycle starts again. This means the unit's leadership needs to prioritize its limited autonomous training time. Therefore, unless a unit knows that it will be expected to conduct a great deal of detainment operations, combatives training of any sort is so low on the list that it will probably get relegated to one continuous week during PT (an hour or less), or once a month for a couple hours, if that. This is why I agree with Tony--I believe the Get Tough course POI was specifically designed for troops that had little training time before combat employment, and therefore was limited to easy to learn, easy to retain techniques that a soldier wouldn't have to spend much time learning, and were straightforward enough so that they were easy to remember in a crisis.

Ok, so now that we all have an understanding of the limited training time available to a unit, let's discuss the MACP course for a moment. According to the FM (and I don't know if this is actually taking place or not, but I can find out), soldiers of all Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) receive a 10 hour block of instruction spread over 5 days in basic ground fighting skills. Again, there are no strikes included in the POI, nor is there any weapons access/retention skills taught. The first 4 hours are spent on various methods of escaping the mount and passing the guard, while another 4 hours are spent on chokes and armbars--hardly a quick lethal move, especially for a beginner. The last 2 hours are spent on review of what they've been taught. Again, no instruction on pulling a knife while on the ground, no instruction on accessing a firearm (yes, more than SOF guys can carry a pistol as a secondary), no instruction on getting your buddies involved in capturing/killing the attacker. This is the sum total of what every troop (maybe) receives in combatives training, regardless of unit of assignment.

According to the MACP concept plan, dated 2005, any additional combatives instructor instruction is limited to those soldiers that attend one of the resident courses taught at Ft. Benning (except for soldiers stationed overseas; they can be taught by Mobile Training Team). The concept plan goes on to describe the four levels one can be taught by attending one of these courses. I'd like to take a moment here to point out the available training time factor I mentioned above. Again, those with Army experience may recall how difficult it was for a unit to give up a soldier (or more) for a week-long Combat Lifesaver course, normally taught at the same location at the soldier's unit. Additionally, the unit has to spend part of its limited training budget to pay for the soldier to travel to Ft Benning (not cheap), and potentially for room and board, depending on the 29th Infantry Regiment's food and billeting availability. So not only is the unit losing an NCO for multiple week, (Levels 3 and 4 are only taught at Ft Benning, and are required for a unit to have a graduate of one of these courses to conduct Level 1 and 2 training) its spending from a limited budget to do so. Sure, some units woudn't care and would see an opportunity, but that's much less common than you'd like to believe.

Continued...