Urban Shield and events like it are the pinnacle of civilian combined arms and multi-echelon training. Last year the Oakland event had lanes for EOD, CSAR, SWAT, other first responders, and the entities tasked with coordinating responses to large emergency events in the Bay Area. Events included; terrorist attack on Bay Bridge, Dignatary protection (SBT’s lane), Medical Training, Aircraft Interdiction, Maritime Interdiction, Active Shooter, and BART operations. All pertinent and important training events not just for bay area departments but really any major metropolitan city.

The training value is clear and sought after. We put multiple international teams come through our lane including Brazilian and Singaporean tactical officers in addition to many many American tactical teams. The value comes from the multi-echelon and concurrent nature of the training. Your command echelons are working to coordinate units and capabilities, your EMS is responding and working with officers on the ground, team leaders are faced with tough decisions in scenarios they rarely if ever train for and they get to observe their team under the stress with no sleep and complex challenges. Officers benefit when they are being challenged with novel scenarios which require skills far and beyond room clearing with cool toys. The training includes communicating effectively with the public, trauma medicine, rapid planning and implementation of orders, intelligence gathering, and obviously the tactical components.

In order to maximize training time, effectiveness, and dollars the smart decision is to implement multi-echelon and concurrent training.  This is true for most applications outside of very specific skills training; it holds up from weigh lifting to police work. THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD ALWAYS BE DOING.

So you’re going to the range? Great. Plan your courses of fire, how many iterations, how many rounds, who is safety, emergency contingencies. What are your people doing in between iterations? How about a trauma bleeding management class out of the way of the firing? This is the wound that requires a tourniquet etc. Pertinent. Constant. Realistic. Reinforcement of the things your people should know, that’s concurrent training. Which does double duty to reinforce the gravity and level of import of the main effort in your training plan (range day). Involve as many levels of the organization or partnered entities as possible. This provides more seamless transitions in real world events; the benefit of multi-echelon work.

Working a vehicle take down? Great. How about iterations in which it turns out to be a regular traffic stop even though your officers are keyed up to start (don’t care what they say on Youtube, this is a bad idea) muzzle punching windows. Good time to cross train with Fire as they do it every day and learn the most effective means (that won’t damage your weapon, zero, or risk losing it by essentially passing it to the bad guy).

The standards for combined arms, multi-echelon, and concurrent training are doctrine in the military for good reason. It takes many years to be able to implement this training archetype to its max potential, but you can start tomorrow, it just takes some creative thought and buy-in from your partners. To speed to process you could find people with the expertise to train your trainers (SBT’s Jon and Todd for instance). The best part of this type training is its effectiveness extends to all facets of life, not just the Urban Shield stuff we are about to get into here in California.

Check out what the American tactical officers, Navy E.O.D, and international teams got up to with our gear at last year’s event.

We will be back to update you on the quality training we expect to see this September in the bay area.

-Paul @ SBT

Extra stuff I found while writing this blog:

I was scanning Army FM 7-0 (Training for Full Spectrum Operations) which has lots of interesting pieces to say on the subject. Plain speech but the words come from hard earned lessons:

“1-30 Managing training for full spectrum operations presents challenges for leaders at all echelons. Training develops discipline, endurance, unit cohesion, and tolerance for uncertainty. It prepares Soldiers and units to address the ambiguities and complexities inherent in operations. During the Cold War, Army forces prepared to fight and win against a near-peer competitor. The Army’s training focus was on offensive and defensive operations in major combat operations. As recently as 2001, the Army believed that forces trained to conduct the offense and defense in major combat operations could conduct stability and civil support operations just as effectively. However, the complexity of today’s operational environments and commanders’ legal and moral obligations to the population of an area of operations has shown that approach to be incorrect. Recent operational experience has demonstrated that forces trained exclusively for offensive and defensive tasks are not as proficient at stability tasks as those trained specifically for stability. For maximum effectiveness, stability and civil support tasks require dedicated training, similar to training for offensive and defensive tasks. Similarly, forces involved in protracted stability or civil support operations require intensive training to regain proficiency in offensive and defensive tasks before engaging in large-scale combat operations. Therefore, a balanced approach to the types of tasks to be trained is essential to readiness for full spectrum operations.”

Totally different genre:

You may have heard the myth (and subconsciously accepted an appeal to authority) that you can’t do cardio without sacrificing muscle building when it coming from some pretty big guy. He claims that since he chose not to do cardio (because it hurts) he was able to get big… Well, a writer for Arnold Schwarzenegger (a notorious “pretty big guy”) pointed out with scientific sources that this concept was incorrect. In fact, concurrent training (training multiple disciplines/muscles/skills) is more effective for overall gains long term than specific strength training.