pmcimagazine.com
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TRAINING:
COMBINED FIREARMS COURSE
Ever since PMCI was launched we’ve worked closely with the team at the ESA in Europe due to
their meticulous training programs, and were delighted to see a new course had been added to their
ever-expanding curriculum. We asked Bartosz Zukowski, Director of the European Security Academy
UK, to give us the lowdown.
H
ere at the European Security Academy in
Poland we provide all kinds of Security
Courses and Training for civilians as well
as for governmental units but we felt
that something was missing! If we are
talking about Firearms Courses we have
various short three days courses where
our students can learn from the basics
how to use a handgun or carbine on our
Tactical Pistol/Tactical Carbine which
takes place three times a year. After
those courses students can progress
through Dynamic Pistol/Carbine where all the drills are done
on the move, with time pressure, with multiple targets and
specifically designed tasks. I did all of them and all I can say in
short is: they are AWESOME !
Last year myself and one of the ESA instructors came to
the conclusion that it would be great to have something in
between, something that gives a taste of all modern weapons
systems that are used by contractors all over the world,
something that students won’t forget about for a long time and
come back for more. The task wasn’t easy as we had to fit lot
of material into three days which is normally done over seven
days training. After a long conversation, careful planning and
litres of coffee we came out with an idea to run a three day
COMBINED FIREARMS COURSE. Now we needed one more thing
to accomplish our mission and get it running; the “green light”
from the ESA Managing Director.
Getting that wasn’t as hard as I thought, he mostly agreed with
the idea, but some of the training parts had to be removed and
he suggested what we could add instead to make it a three
day course on three different weapons systems in one go. At
the end of the meeting he found the idea of the course so
innovative, attractive and beneficial to the students that he
decided to place that course in regular ESA Training Schedule
and run it twice a year in 2016. WOW what could I say? I was
more than happy, and now it was the time to see what students
reaction is going to be and their feedback. We set the 1st date
and it was early November 2015. People started signing up fast
as soon as we released the training programme online.
To be honest I was expecting it as the training programme
was very innovative, designed to teach students how to work
with Glock 17, Submachine guns such as Swiss APC and German
MP5 including KURZ version, and the Sig Sauer M4 Carbine. The
cherry on the cake was night CQB scenarios with FX Simunition
“Force on Force” Drills, but let’s start from the beginning.
Day One; after registration our group which was comprised
of ten shooters went through weapon familiarisation. Our
Instructor brought all the units mentioned above plus handguns
such as HK UPC/Berreta/SigSauer and explained about the
safety on the range as well as how to operate each of the
firearms. Students also had an opportunity to disassemble and
assemble all of them which was a lot’s of fun for most of them
considering the fact that none of them are available for shooting
due to tight gun legislations here in the UK. Before lunch the
group was familiarised with all the units we were going to use