Disrupting Aim Is Easy
When we were designing the TAD exercises, there was discussion of how far the protector should carry through when colliding with the attacker. By way of comparison, in our Defense Tactics training, in which students engage people they'll be taking custody of, we require students to complete the process right down to handcuffing, every single time. We want students to develop the muscle memory and habit of carrying through each action toward the goal of gaining safe custody. So in TAD, we wondered if we should do the same thing, and we tried this for a while. What we learned is that taking custody in the traditional sense (handcuffing, etc) is absolutely irrelevant to preventing assassination, irrelevant, in effect, to protecting our clients. There are likely a hundred people present who could be part of holding the assailant after the intervention -- but there might be only one person present who is in position and has the readiness to disrupt aim, and that might be you. So we don't want you thinking about any choreography or next steps. You have just one step: Disrupt aim.
We are not saying here that there is no duty to disarm the attacker, gain control of him, handcuff him, and manage him in a way that's safe for you, him, and others present. Rather, we're saying that all that is secondary -- and we want our protectors focused first on the primary mission: Disrupting aim.
Once you have reached the shooter, and you've connected with his arm, how far do you have to move it such that aim is disrupted? Almost no distance at all. If a capable shooter is aiming accurately at a target 25 feet away, and you change the angle of the gun by just one inch, the bullet will strike more than six feet off target. Even a quarter-inch of movement can make the decisive difference.
People might assume that it's best to charge an attacker with all the momentum possible, with enough force to knock him to the ground or completely disable him. In fact, moving the attacker's arm just slightly will almost always destroy accuracy, and after accuracy is destroyed, then protectors can work on disabling/disarming, controlling, gaining custody. The first and most pressing mission is simply to disrupt aim. Knowing that this is the primary mission makes it easier to attain.
By way of analogy, we put food in our mouths, chew it, swallow it -- and it's then that the real work (digestion) begins. Digestion occurs without conscious effort on our part. One might describe the whole process as eating, however all steps rely upon the first and thus foundational step of putting the food in our mouths. In protection, fully resolving the attack situation has many important steps, but disruption of aim is the foundational step, the fundamental action on which success rests, and thus it's the main thing for protectors to consider as they select their positions.
Broken down into its elements, the mission of the protector who is acting projectively (positioned to interfere with possible attackers) looks like this:
- Disrupt aim (thus instantly meeting your primary goal)
- Disable/disarm (preventing continued danger)
- Control the attacker
- Gain custody
Ideally, these steps occur fluidly, one after the next without a clear line between them. But you will have already succeeded if you accomplish the first assignment first: Disrupt aim. So go in knowing it's a goal you can reach.
While the race between attacker and protector might be won by either side, the race between protector and bullet cannot ever be won by the protector. Accordingly, our best opportunity to favorably influence outcome occurs when we are close enough to connect with the arm, hand, gun, or body -- before the bullet exits the barrel.
Once the gun is presented and aimed, the assassin needs to move just one finger whereas a protector who is beyond arm's reach must move all his mass -- and that takes time. In some of the attacks we studied, successful intervention was accomplished by members of the public who were closer to the attacker than protectors were (Compendium cases Delanoe #374, Ford #439, Clinton #450, Chirac #575, Karzai #577, FDR #1396, for example). We point out the fact that some assassinations were made unsuccessful by untrained members of the public in order to stress again how easy it can be to disrupt aim, and how important positioning is.