What if the Targets Shot Back?

Caption: Meet Bill

Abstract:

How important is draw speed? Splits? Hit Probability? It’s hard to explain the difference between tenths of seconds and 90% vs 83%. Faster is better. Accurate is better. But… to what extent and impact in survival and mission accomplishment? Here we describe how by using a simple marksmanship test (the Bill Drill), done 3 times, we can through the power of tens of thousands of statistical simulations called “Monte Carlo” modeling, turn marksmanship data into more understandable metrics that can help your shooters understand the impact of being faster and more accurate.

What if a “Bill Drill” had a Bad Guy shooting back?

Professional instructors know the Bill Drill as a marksmanship test incorporating six shots at close range, to measure a student’s ability to present the firearm, align sights, press the trigger and control recoil at high speed. Normally a Bill Drill is fired from seven yards, with an 8” circle or USPSA “A-Zone” (6×11”) as the target. Skilled shooters will keep all six hits within the target, using time as their metric for success – a “World Class”  Pistol Bill Drill time hovers around 2.00 seconds from the holster, or 1.25 seconds from a Ready position.

“In the Know” instructors understand that students able to run a fast, clean Bill Drill are set up for success in a close-range gunfight; acceptable accuracy to hit vital areas, with dominating speed to the first shot and any necessary follow-ups. The real struggle is impressing the importance of these skills on students, and especially on leadership that is removed from the marksmanship space; the difference between a 2.50 and a 4.50 second Bill Drill doesn’t mean anything to them, because they don’t understand how big a difference two seconds can make. As long as they pass their qual (or all their subordinates do), what difference does time make?

The Bad Guy Does a Bill Drill – At Us: 

To emphasize the importance of time in a gunfight, let’s put aside the officer’s performance, and consider the “Bad Guy” they might face:

The bad guy we are likely to face in a gunfight will be motivated to kill you, but not well-trained in firearms usage. At close range, they will be fast to the first shot (they initiate the encounter) and shoot as fast as they can pull the trigger – but won’t hit much: 

• 1.00 second first shot
• .25 second “splits” (inter-shot intervals, or follow up shots) 
• 20% hit rate on a human target at seven yards.

Btw: Pick the threat characteristics that you want. We use the above data, based loosely on experience and discussions with folks who’ve studied this, however the basic approach is threat and marksmanship independent – as long as time and accuracy are measured together.

Now let’s look at an officer who has been trained to pass the FBI qualification – we’ll look at the seven yard stage. 70% hits are required to pass the PQC, but let’s assume a higher (85%) hit rate on this closer stage. The time standard is five rounds in four seconds from the holster – that’s also a one second presentation, but with .80 splits between shots. 

• 1.00 second first shot
• .80 second “splits” 
• 85% hit rate on a human target at seven yards. 

Here’s the timeline for a six-shot gunfight (“two-way Bill Drill”) between these two opponents: 

Time	Bad Guy Action	Officer Action
0.00	Decision to Shoot
0.3		Processes Threat – Start Presentation Perhaps this is optimistic, if you want a slower reaction time, we can model that.
1.00	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
1.25	SHOT (20% risk to officer)	SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.5	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
1.75	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
2.00	SHOT (20% risk to officer)	SHOT (85% risk to threat)
2.25	SHOT (20% risk to officer)	(Most likely been shot by now)

As you can see, the Bad Guy has already fired two shots (and has a 40% chance of hitting the officer) before the officer’s fired his first. Assuming the first shot didn’t end the threat, the Bad Guy has finished a Bill Drill with a (100% chance of a hit) as the officer fires another shot. 

There’s no guarantee that the Bad Guy’s hit will be lethal  (we wear body armor for a reason, and most handgun wounds to unarmored areas are survivable), but getting shot still sucks, and if the threat requires more than one shot to stop, this officer will get shot. There’s also the issue of the five shots that didn’t hit the officer, but may find their way into fellow officers, bystanders, et cetera…unlike police officers, Bad Guys don’t care about their backstop when using deadly force. 

It’s obvious that simply “passing” the qualification course didn’t set this officer up for success or yield an acceptable outcome – so how do we better prepare them? 

A Better Prepared Officer

What happens if the officer’s training incorporates the kind of time/accuracy balance that you, the motivated firearms instructor, would like to provide? 

Let’s take some numbers that are eminently achievable with a program that constantly uses a shot timer as a tool for improvement (we know, because we’ve done it). We can maintain the same hit rate (actually we improve it, but for argument’s sake we will keep it at 85%) but improve the first shot time and splits: 

• 0.60 second first shot
• 0.20 second “splits” 
• 85% hit rate on a human target at seven yards

Time	Bad Guy	Officer
0.00	Decision to Shoot
0.3		Processes Threat – Start Presentation (see note above)
0.90		SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.00	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
1.10	(170% chance of being shot)	SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.25	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
1.30		SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.50	SHOT (20% risk to officer)	SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.70		SHOT (85% risk to threat)
1.75	SHOT (20% risk to officer)
1.80		SHOT (85% risk to threat)
2.00	SHOT (20% risk to officer)

Now the officer fires the first shot, and he fires all six shots (with five out of six hits) with the Bad Guy only firing four.

Get Understandable Evidence via the ScoringTech Marksmanship Assessment (STMA)

The STMA takes a set of Bill Drills (or other drills/tests) for a population of shooters and does that Gunfight math I showed above millions of times between the shooters and an estimated threat.

Those “(your risk is 20%)” shots? It throws dice, and sometimes your number is up. Sometimes it’s his. Hit probabilities determine those odds. And you don’t shoot exactly .75 splits, or him .25 splits – there is variance. Which is why we have the shooters do at least 3 repetitions.

The STMA plays out that gunfight math, millions of times, and over time for each shooter and the entire population, some trends appear. This is called “Monte Carlo” simulation. It’s a very common and powerful statistical technique.

For the Marine Corps, we have a version custom for them that models a full Infantry Assault – from 300 yards to 3. Every Infantry company shoots this test, and our software competes each shooter against each other (and against other estimated threats). This assessment now drives Marine Corps marksmanship decisions – for the better!

Here is an example analysis from a tool we use to see results on the range at the end of shooting. It shows how a simulated POST class that passed the FBI Qual, as above, would fare against our threat.

None won even 40% of their fights with Bill. Many were done before they got a shot off… Event the winners had multiple shots fired on them by the threat, but hit in non-stopping locations.

Compare to a test group we did yesterday at a department practice (just 5 shooters).

The data shows what it takes to beat “Bill” more than 80% of the time… being consistently fast and ALWAYS accurate. Shooter 2, 100% accurate (all 8,9,10s), .78 draw +- .07, and .18 splits beat the threat 98% of the time – usually before the threat even got one shot off.

Consistent speed and consistent high accuracy wins.

In Conclusion…

And I’d add a corollary… don’t measure what you can’t understand. Measure things that the people being measured can understand, that are important, and that effect them

What’s a good split? What is a good presentation? Why does that matter? I want to pass the qual…

The STMA puts marksmanship into terms that your students and your leadership can understand and act on.

Contact us to schedule your initial assessment, or to discuss your mission and what kind of test we might cook up to best measure what matters to it.

Thanks for reading!

Ken Nelson
ken@scoringtech.com
Founder, Scoring Technology (makers of JMAP and Recoil)
Found, PractiScore