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KEEPING YOUR CQC & CQB SKILLS SHARP

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but habituate yourself to something else.
                      --Epictetus

One of the greatest challenges of a small unit leader is finding the time to keep your soldiers combat ready in regard to their CQC and CQB skills.  Soldiers are pulled in so many directions that it is easy to understand why certain elements of their kit bag have to be rationed.  However, as the nature of warfare changes so too should our training priorities change to match the needs of combat.  

A dramatic shift in tactics has occurred since Desert Storm.  Now our military is involved in urban warfare.  The reliance on military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) has necessitated a shift in how all soldiers should be trained.  In urban warfare the front and rear lines blur.  No longer is any soldier exempt from possible contact with the enemy.  Today it doesn’t matter if you are male or female; infantry or transportation corps; you are a soldier who must be willing and able to engage the enemy at a moment’s notice.  

The key to keeping your soldiers prepared for close-quarters contact with the enemy is two- fold.  First, you must be creative in your time management.  Rarely do soldiers have large blocks of time set aside for combatives training.  Therefore, it must be woven into other areas in small segments.  I have found that doing this prevents your soldiers from becoming bored with the training.  Any task, when done for several hours, can become tedious and boring.   Don’t allow that to happen with your combatives training.  Connecting CQC and CQB training to appropriate tasks will also educate your soldiers on how these skills fit into their operational tasks.

Let me share a few examples of how combatives training can be attached to other, previously scheduled, activities.  The easiest and most consistent activity in which combatives training can be attached is morning physical training (P.T.).  Haircut inspections and P.T. are the two constants in the military.  That element of consistency allows us to plan accordingly and intelligently.  Utilizing a small portion of P.T. time for a combatives review is simple and it breaks up the monotony of the training.

Another example of where combatives training can be implemented into a tasking is in any exercise that entails vehicle movement.  Turn a vehicle inspection exercise into a lesson on handling an assault.  Include in your inspection an operational order to move the vehicle from point A to point B along a prescribed route.  At a certain point along their route have your soldiers execute how they would exit their vehicles and handle a near ambush.  This exercise could easily be changed to examine how to handle crowd control issues.  Place some of your soldiers at a makeshift roadblock.  Keep the majority of the role-playing soldiers calm while a few are designated as riot-inciters.  Have your soldiers set up perimeter security while others
try to defuse the situation verbally.  Based on their performance, have the role players respond by backing down or becoming physical.  

The second key factor in preparing for enemy contact is to be intelligent on what you train.   The first element, where we train, is concerned with intelligently attaching combatives training and scenarios to realistic tasks.  Knowing what to train is another beast in itself.  Subsequent articles will cover specific techniques, drills, and sample workouts.  I am concerned in this article in setting parameters and challenging you to develop your own regimens based on a set of considerations.

Consider what we know about current AAR’s relating to enemy contact: