I had a chance this weekend to screen the entire 4-DVD set of Magpul Dynamic's Art of the Tactical Carbine, Volume II and I wanted to share my thoughts with my fellow INGOers.
First, to keep things in perspective, a little background on MY background: I have ZERO professional training time behind a carbine. I've only been building my own carbine since early this year. Since then I've been consuming massive amounts of information, so I had lots of "theories" in my head to compare with those taught in the DVD, but nothing more. Volume II is based on Magpul's "Carbine II", which is indeed an advanced course. I would not feel comfortable taking this actual class without some basic carbine manipulation training first.
Disc 1 & 2
The first two discs were filmed during a Carbine II class given to a mix of industry professionals, mil/LEO, and regular joes. Magpul Dymanics Instructors were Chris Costa and Travis Haley. These two presented themselves very professionally and believed in what they taught.
Instructions given were clear, concise, and made sense. They did a good job of articulating why they believed in a certain method, but also showed how certain methods could be adapted to better fit different shooters. They started the session by zeroing the carbines. They they presented a template they called BSA (balance of speed and accuracy) where they shot from varying distances in varying positions. This was to show that if you're shooting tight groups then you need to shoot faster, and if your groups are wild then you need to slow down. Once everyone had established their baseline, Costa and Haley began moving them through various techniques and drills, building them on top of each other one at a time.
A note about Costa and Haley-- they both have different styles but they seemed to work well together. Chris Costa is a poster child for 'consistency'. He looks the EXACT SAME everytime he moves the carbine from shoulder to shoulder, or when he drops into urban prone. His actions are quick and minimal movement is wasted. Travis Haley also wastes no movement, but all his actions are smooth and precise. He certainly moves like someone who's been on the receiving end of flying bullets before. In concert, its a bit scary to see these two, even in slow motion, run like a tandem dance team.
During a break Costa gave a quick lecture on mindset by reading a story about a soldier who received the Medal of Honor. In the incident that earned him the medal, this soldier was pulling his friends out of harm's way while taking 7.62 hits to the legs, getting ran through with a bayonet, and getting his head beat in with the butt of an AK-47. Not only did he save the lives of his fellow soldiers, even after their rescue chopper went down in flames, but he managed to kill several enemy soldiers with fallen AKs and his bowie knife (which is the only weapon he came to the fight with). When a second rescue chopper finally picked them up, they put him in a body bag and declared him dead. To convince the medic otherwise this soldier had to spit blood at him. It took him a year in a hospital to fully recover from all of his injuries. The mindset of "never stop fighting" is extremely important in any life-or-death situation, and this soldier was an excellent example of that.
Disc 3
Disc 3 is chalk full of demo drills. You can select from a long list of all the drills presented in the first two discs. In each one, you see either Costa or Haley run the drill several times at several different speeds and different camera angles. They go from full speed to 30% then 50%. These are great for following along with your own carbine. (with all necessary safety precautions taken, of course)
Disc 4
Disc 4 is all about gear. I was at first excited to see that Costa and Haley would be discussing many different types of gear, like slings, optics, M4 configurations, weaponlights, etc. I was sorely dissatisfied with their discussion.
I'm guessing it was due to legal constraints, but I was frustrated that they could never call a piece of kit by its REAL name. Not once did you EVER hear them utter the words 'Aimpoint' or 'EOTech' or 'Surefire'. During the optics presentation they had a table full of red dot sights, fixed power scopes, and variable power scopes, but they kept talking in unscripted circles and it never really made much sense. There was no techical data presented, and they were very unclear about how they felt about each one.
They did stress that building your carbine is a very personal thing, and that only YOU can really decide what's best for your application-- I did appreciate that. However, they would never really come out and say "We prefer Aimpoints for our application because of X, Y, and Z." It was obvious they did by looking at their own personal guns, but they never said why. They did make passing references to how "some optics can be removed, tossed on the concrete, reinstalled, and still hold zero", which I personally know is a marketing demonstration that Aimpoint uses, but not everyone might know that. They were just too darned vague and wishy-washy.
Overall, I'd HIGHLY recommend anyone interested in running a carbine take a look at the DVDs put out by Magpul Dynamics. If anything, its already caused me to think more about my personal sling mount placement, as well as get me hyped-up to take my first carbine course. I wish I had seen the first one first, but I really enjoyed Volume II. Plus, for $50/set, its an incredible bargain when it comes to high-quality training DVDs.
