COol Guys...
The "Immediate Aftermath" is airing within the next couple of weeks, I think it will be one of the highlights of the season. It answers some of the questions you asked and others...... Short answer: You're not a cop, stay away from the bad guy and keep an eye on him while communicating effectively with LE/Witnesses/Others.
Keep in mind that we taped 95% of this season back in October and November. One episode was taped in early December in Colorado. The next season of TBD isn't going to air until Jan of 2010, and we'll be incorporating some of the ideas from viewers of this season. MEanwhile, we have a surprise project that will begin airing in July with the same crew, but slightly different topic set.
As for "force on force", there are several ways to do "force on force"... and a big difference between Scenarios and
Drills. Simply using sim guns (any type) and saying that the training is "reality based" doesn't cut it for me. For example, I don't believe that student-on-student scenarios are nearly as valuable as scenarios run with trained/prepped/scripted role players. 2 guys squaring off and waiting for a buzzer to see if "shooting and moving" makes sense is a game, not a scenario or even a drill... much less a premise for defensive tactics development. Choreography, anticipation and human behavior often combine to create self-fulfilling prophecies when you have student-on-student drills like that. Not to mention that the lack of actual recoil makes it
significantly easier to make rapid follow up shots while moving.
I've done a lot of force on force and a lot of dynamic live fire in realistic settings (moving, reactive and interactive targets). I can assure you that there is a huge performance degradation when you both move fast enough to be significantly safer and shoot live fire.
(take a look at this video and the linked podcast for more on that:
Shooting in Motion)
What you are seeing in the scenario sections of TBD are very much like the most effective force on force training scenarios that we can run for students. Of course, in this case, even the "student" is a role-player.
The drills that we share on TBD (like the "find a safe backstop" drill) are designed to be "take aways" that a typical motivated and safe viewer can recreate and practice at the average square range without a huge investment in equipment, a ton of prior training or a lot of unreasonable risk. F-o-F drills fail on the equipment note and suffer from the "no trained role-players" on the second.
There is no doubt that it would be harder to find a safe backstop in a dynamic situation. That said, the drill matched the scenario, which was certainly plausible and realistic, which we presented in the convenience store.
It is very hard to realistically simulate situations and balance speed, precision, recoil, safety, movement, etc.....
All that said, I hear a lot of good things coming out of Suarez and his instructors.... I just don't know if some of the F-o-F iterations are as valuable as some of the internet buzz suggests based on the descriptions. All I've seen are some video clips.
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Thanks again for watching the show and the great feedback.