Simulated Marksmanship Performance Methodology: Assessing Lethality, Mobility and Stability Across the Preparation, Execution and Recovery Stages of a Military Field Training Exercise

Marksmanship, a key cornerstone of military training, is one area of military assessment that includes standardized quantifiable measures. However, assessment of marksmanship in a traditional live-fire setting can be costly, time consuming, and dangerous, while frequently only providing rudimentary objective measures of performance. This research created an enhanced combined marksmanship assessment methodology, which builds on earlier static and dynamic methodologies. The successful portions of previous methods, to include static and dynamic shooting with acquisition assessments, were integrated and additional pertinent assessment areas were added (i.e., targets of varying height and increased distance to force gross movements in transitions across engagements), while minimizing execution time and still using a mobile, low-cost weapon simulator. This methodology is executable in any setting, is easy to assemble, provides streamlined metrics on the entire marksmanship process across two critical shooting styles, and can track changes in marksmanship across various performance periods throughout a training cycle.