Stoppage drills
Given your rifle is clean, and your ammunition loaded properly, it will rarely jam. Aside from carbon build-up the main causes of weapons jamming are a bad feed from the magazine, damaged or dirty ammunition and sand or dirt blowing into the working parts. Let’s look at these in turn:
The easiest way to get a bad feed is by allowing the rounds to work forward in the magazine so that when they are picked up by the advancing working parts they approach the breech at the wrong angle and jam across the face. Make a habit of tapping the back of your magazines against your weapon before you fit them. This tap will seat the rounds where they are supposed to be – at the back of the magazine.
If one of your rounds has got dirt stuck to it or the bullet has come loose and is ‘bent’ relative to the cartridge then this will cause a jam similar to the above. Check your ammunition when you load your magazines – by touch if you have to do it in the dark.
The standard stoppage drill for most weapons is ‘Cock, Hook and Look’ which is pretty self explanatory: pull the working parts right back and then engage a little lever which holds them there – if supplied on your weapon. Otherwise hold the parts back and look inside. If there is a round jammed by the working parts, and this is nearly always the case, pulling them back often clears it and you can turn the weapon over so it drops out. Let the parts move forward to load the next round and continue shooting.
In combat, if your rifle jams, cock it again and it will probably load so you can continue. If that doesn’t work, take off the magazine, check the rounds are seated to the rear, refit and let the parts move forward to load the next round. The cause might have been dirt in the working parts. It is surprising how quickly you can do the first stoppage drill when someone is shooting at you and 99.9% of the time it is all you will need to start shooting again.
Weapon handling
Before you come anywhere near a shooting match you must have had at least basic training in handling your rifle and shooting on a one-way range. What I suggest is that you should be able to shoot with reasonable accuracy from lying, kneeling and standing positions with either hand. Why? Because if you are right-handed and looking around a corner which is up against your right shoulder you have to expose your body to shoot. Likewise if you are left-handed and looking around a corner to your left. Train hard, fight easy.
Very often, when you come to shoot someone, you are in a bit of a hurry to get the shot in first, probably due to nerves or excitement if you are new to the game. The problem is that your relatively heavy rifle barrel is going to be swinging quickly towards the target and then past it. If you don’t fire at exactly the right moment you will miss. How do you get around that?
There are two things you can do to improve your snap shooting skills. The first is to swing low onto the target then lift the sights onto the target. This results in the final movement being up rather than across and is much more accurate as I mentioned with a pistol earlier. The second trick is to hold for a count of one before and after firing. This stops you snatching the aim away to shoot somewhere else before you have pulled the trigger. Believe me, it is a natural reflex when you are rushing and really does happen.
Whatever position you are firing from you should pull the weapon hard into your shoulder as this gives a firm, repeatable-firing position and leads to greater accuracy on both the one-way and the two-way ranges.
Raise the elbow of the shoulder in contact with the butt of your rifle until the upper arm is level. This feels strange but also gives a stronger repeatable firing position.
The forearm supporting the fore-stock of your rifle should be as close to vertical as possible and gripping forward of the point of balance on the weapon. The reason for the forearm being vertical is that there is a tendency for the weapon to rock or hinge very slightly on the elbow below it and keeping the forearm vertical both minimizes this and causes the grouping of rounds to centre on the middle of the target. The reason for gripping well forward is that is reduces the swing of the barrel as you are sighting.
Place the second pad of your index finger, between the first and second joints, against the trigger – not the pad at the end of the finger. Do not pull back to work the trigger but squeeze your finger smoothly towards your thumb. One of the greatest causes of inaccuracy in shooting is jerking the trigger and pulling the weapon off aim at the last moment.
Ammunition conservation
There is one other thing which can leave you of no use to your friends and at the mercy of your enemies. You can run out of ammunition. This is worse than embarrassing. Absolutely everyone gets a little exited the first time they are shot at and this makes them tend to fire off more rounds in reply than is strictly necessary. When you have been shot at a few times you will think nothing off it – and by that I mean shot at close enough to hear the ‘crack’ of the supersonic round as it passes over your head followed by the ‘thump’ when the sound of the propellant firing reaches you.
TOP TIP!
Aiming at your target
Always aim for the middle of the observed target, sometimes called ‘centre of mass’. This allows for you to make the greatest error and still hit your man. Any hit is a good hit as it will certainly prove an inconvenience to your target and allow you to approach and finish the job.
A standing man is a taller target than he is wide. Obviously. Therefore you have more leeway up and down where you will still hit him than you do left and right. In other words, you have to be more accurate left and right than up and down. Got that? OK.
The next stage in your initiation is when you have returned fire a few times at likely sources of irritation and after that when you have aimed shots at a few breathing targets. All these experiences allow you to calm down while you are being shot at and you will fire back more accurately. When you have got to this stage you are something of use on the battlefield.
So you are calm and collected in the fire-fight but what should you be doing? Well your weapon fires around 10 rounds a second on automatic so this way your ammunition doesn’t last long. As a general rule I suggest you fire single rounds at targets, short burst when ordered to provide suppressing fire onto an area and only blaze away on automatic when you are caught in an ambush.
There are one or two weapons which actually have see-through magazines so you can see how many rounds are left. I tested some in Germany and Austria recently, and thought what a great idea. I hope to see this spread as it is quite difficult to count rounds when using automatic fire and this can lead to a penetrating click at the firing pin strikes home just when someone carrying an AK47 is approaching you with evil intent.
Individual movement techniques (IMT)
I was taught this technique a lifetime ago and I thought it a little questionable even then. Today I think it is plain stupid and wasteful of men but I will explain the concept and leave you to make your own decision as to how useful it is.