Detailed AAR: Minuteman Rifle Course, 4-5 April 09

Allright, grab your note-taking material, hold all questions til the end.

To recap the basic facts about FPF Training’s Minuteman Rifle Course, 4-5 Apr 09:

Class size: 12, usual gamut of civs and mil.

Gear: unadulterated WASR-10 w/ a Specter sling, six magazines; Beretta 92-G in an old mil-issue holster.

Round count: about 400 7.62×39 (all Golden Tiger), about 30 9mm.

Ranges: 5 yds to 100 yds, majority were at 25.

The course started with paperwork and then about three hours of classroom work. Safety is a big topic, for obvious reasons. Murph uses the basic four safety rules, handed down from Gunsite, so nothing outlandish, unheard-of, new, complex or misleading. Muzzle awareness is also a major point, and the subject of considerable discussion and demonstration. He also went over the range rules (as distinct from the basic safety rules), which concerned the dos and don’ts for our specific range.

Other lecture topics include a very interesting session on detailed disassembly of the AR– I’ve been doing that for 20 years and I still learned something– with the obligatory showing of the video of the little girl field-stripping her gun. He gave a great comparison of the various M4-geries, showing which ones were built standard with certain key features, and which were not. (Very eye-opening.) He also gave what I thought was the best, bare-facts-only discussion of why a 50-meter zero is better for an M4 than a 25-meter zero. There was also a good leavening of John Murphy SOP humor, off-color cracks and one-liners. Altogether, good stuff, although three hours is about the max and we were all ready to head out start slinging lead.

Rapid chow-stuffery ensued, and then we convoyed to the range, on private land a few miles outside Culpeper. The facility is evolving, but there was plenty of room for twelve shooters on a 25-yd line, and about half as many for 50; clever use of terrain also yielded a single lane for 100 but we didn’t use that til Day Two. I thought it was a good range, well-bermed, and with the improvements underway it’ll soon be a very versatile place to shoot. I’d shoot there on a daily basis, if I could.

Day One shooting began with zeroing at 25, then again to 50 to illustrate the difference. Because I was shooting a stock WASR-10 with its open notch and blade sights, I chose to get as good a zero as I could at 25, and just note the holdover for 50. Good choice for the course, but I might change it later to 50. (Note: bring a front sight tool, no matter what kind of gun you have. It makes life much easier, and with the AK it’s a must.)

Then we went back to the 25 to begin the beguine, as the Greaseman would say. The rest of the day was spent in presentation drills with single shots, moving to controlled pairs and hammers, all basic stuff but then again this course is about mastering the basics. The distribution of shot holes began to migrate slowly towards a central point, and everyone started to feel pretty good about the way things were going, and that’s the way we ended the day.

Day Two dawned cool and bright, and the sun found us on the 25-yard line, picking up where we left off. After verifying zero again, we stepped off to more of the same drills we did the previous day, and some more interesting things as well, among them: lateral movement, fore-and-aft movement, transition to the pistol (when, why and how to do it safely and effectively), a variety of non-standard positions, shooting from behind cover (when, why and how to do it safely and effectively), and a couple of deceptively simple exercises to test focus, trigger control and other fundamentals. Again, good stuff, and a goldmine of TTPs for future training.

Day Two concluded with a simple but effective moving target drill, and then some steel plate shooting at 100 yards. I love shooting steel– I like the instant feedback and I like to see how the round rocks the plate (or not, based on caliber; there was a marked difference in the hits from the 5.56mm vs the 7.62×39). Both plates were painted black, and from the firing point one was in the sunlight and the other was in shadow, which made it challenging even for shooters with optics. For me, the offhand shots at 100 were extremely difficult with the AK– translation, “I missed every fucking shot”– but once I got some support I started to hit. However, even at kneeling and prone I had the worst time connecting with the plate in the shadows. I wonder if the placement was deliberate, as a teaching point about not always getting your targets presented as you’d want them. (See a recent Farnam Quip on that very same subject.) This is where a good aperture sight or low-power optic begins to show an advantage that isn’t apparent at closer ranges.

As for my gear and my angle on the course, I treated this as a foreign weapons prep for an upcoming deployment, to get me ready to use a battlefield pickup with the one magazine in the gun and maybe one more lying around, and an issue Beretta 9mm (which I normally wouldn’t be caught dead with, pardon the expression). So, I had the gun slung across my broad manly chest, the Beretta in a mil holster dummy-corded to my belt, one or two spare magazines in my back pocket, Leatherman, and blowout kit in a cargo pocket. And that was it. Off the line of course I had the spare mags and ammo, front sight tool, speed loader, cleaning kit, etc. But I treated it as a come-as-you-are affair, which I believe will be not only applicable to the fabled lands beyond the Khyber but to any domestic unpleasantness.

The WASR-10 behaved magnificently. I had put about one or two hundred round through it, no cleaning or lube at all because I wanted to see how long it would run without maintenance. At Murph’s insistence I accepted a small squirt of Slip 2000 on the bolt, but it wasn’t much and it wasn’t applied with any care. The gun ran and ran and ran, no double-feeds or failures to extract; the only hiccup was one round that failed to fire. I ejected it, saw it had a light strike on the primer, loaded it back and fired it. The only failures were the ones that we induced for training purposes, using fired cases in loaded magazines.

The magazines (attention Mule!) were all the standard ribbed stamped steel ComBloc 30-rounders, the two that came with the gun and four more identical to them that I got off GunBroker.com. No issues whatsover, they all ran fine. Boringly fine. A bit on the heavy side, but reliable. The Specter CQB sling worked well; I wore it tightened up rather than loose, because I don’t like a gun dangling, so the tradeoff was that for imminent action I pulled the sling off my left shoulder.

As for drills and manipulations, this is still my formative experience with the AK system, but I have drawn some preliminary conclusions. One: for serious work you will have to make a deliberate decision on how to approach the safety catch. You can try to use it like you would an AR, where you move it on and off constantly, depending on the threat; or you can consciously decide to switch it to “Fire” and leave it there when action is imminent knowing that you incur a risk and you have to be 100% vigilant about handling discipline. For training purposes we obviously have to opt for safety, and Murph watched me like a hawk, but it did cost me time and effort. Not sure I’d want to opt for safety on the two-way range, but I see the pros and cons of both sides. Still thinking about that one. Bottom line is it’s hard to work the safety and bring the gun into action as smoothly and effectively as you can with an AR.

Second preliminary conclusion: mag changes require thought. Because of the position of the magazine release, you can’t release the magazine AND simultaneously reach for the new magazine AND maintain the firing grip, in an emergency reload. You can (attention Mule!) maintain your grip while you reach for the new magazine, and then use the new mag to hit the catch and swipe the old one out. (Google “AK 47 magazine changes”.) It needs to be done with a little force, decisively, but it’s fast fast fast once you get the knack. That’s the emergency reload. The tactical reload seemed to me to be done best by removing and stowing the old magazine, and then grabbing and loading the new one. If anyone has a better way, PLEASE let me know, I’m all ears.

As for running the charging handle, I opted to maintain the firing grip, rotate the gun to the left and reach over with my left hand and use the heel of it to run the bolt. I tried it once with using the index-finger edge, but it didn’t work as well. Use the heel, although mind you don’t get it caught between the bolt and sheet metal of the receiver. ‘Cause it hurts like hell.

Third and final preliminary conclusion: the AK gets the job done. It’s not a match gun, but it is a true fighting gun. It has more than enough inherent mechanical accuracy to put the rounds where you want them to go within reasonable distances, if you have the patience and desire to get to know the gun. And it won’t let you down. I like it. I REALLY like it.

All in all, a great course, and a real bargain for the cash outlay. This course hit the mark for its intended purpose– “practical manipulation and rifle skills for engagements out to 100 meters,” with an emphasis on one man working alone, with what he can grab at a moment’s notice. John Murphy runs a damn fine show, and his courses are always evolving and always improving. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.