The Truth about Tactics
A focus on hard skills makes soft skills better.
It’s no secret that misinformed opinions abound. Some comments under videos and posts reveal it:
Formal studies confirm this phenomenon, with Dunning-Kruger Effect being a famous one. This video discusses how many people misquote Dr. Dunning’s studies, which further proves the findings:
This article has more details:
Occasionally, reason prevails:
After watching and reading numerous Close Quarters Battle tactics videos and articles, I decided to test some of them out with a friend using Airsoft guns.
I had previously participated in formal CQB training in the Marine Corps, specifically Security Forces at De Luz Combat Town, Camp Pendleton. My buddy is not trained in CQB techniques or weapons handling; his only previous “experience” was playing First Person Shooter video games. I acted as an attacker with the intent of breaching the room while my buddy would defend it and prevent me from making entry.
Long story short, most of the tactics I had learned and practiced beforehand went out of the window; it was about 50/50 on who would shoot first. The two things that consistently did help were:
Being a better shooter helped land hits when the decision to shoot was made.
Pieing the room to clear it.
I Iearned some valuable lessons:
CQB can be a game of chance.
It’s surprisingly easy for an untrained but motivated individual to smoke someone trained and practiced in CQB.
Marksmanship skills are more important than CQB shenanigans. “Good” tactics vary. Consistent, fast hits do not.
One of my favorite quotes from an instructor: “There’s a million and one ways to do CQB and not one of them is necessarily right. If there was one single tactic that worked 100% of the time, everyone would be using it.” The fact there’s so many different tactics, approaches, and discussions about this demonstrates the point.
Here is the difference between training shooting skills tactically and competitively: There is no difference. Shooting is shooting. Objectively improving your grip/mount, vision, manipulation, accuracy and speed in one setting helps for the other.
I have been on a two way range. I have trained tactics and CQB at some of the best schools available. I have trained with Green Berets and Grandmaster-level competitive shooters. They all have one thing in common: You can never train the hard skills enough.
Hard skills are what enable you to employ tactics. Tactics, while not simple, can be learned rather quickly. It often comes down to having a base of tactical knowledge and then making decisions on the fly and improvising. Improved hard skills enable better improvisation.
If you can’t control your body or base your decisions on the context of whether you are in a match or a gunfight, then you should not be involved in either activity.
- @HavocTwoOne
The difference between soft and hard skills
Hard skills are specific, measurable abilities. Hard skills can be assessed objectively and learned. There’s not much leeway between good and bad in any context.
Soft skills are subjective and vary greatly. Soft skills are not readily measured because “good” is entirely dependent upon specific situational factors.
Tactics are very subjective and epitomize soft skills. It’s about minimizing risk and maximizing the chance of success, and they vary greatly depending on the environment and situation.
Marksmanship is very objective and epitomizes hard skills. Good shooting can be readily measured, and improving it is consistently beneficial in every environment and situation.
This does NOT mean tactics are unimportant, only that they’re subjective, difficult to quantify, and situation-dependent. Working through a specific situation and making good, fast decisions will be helped by getting measurable, predictable hard skills to a level such that you no longer have to give them much thought. This frees up “processing capacity” to pay attention to the immediate environment rather than fumble with low skills you should have already developed before.