PMCI - September 2021

6MM TRAINING - VIRTUAL SHOT
2020 was a hard year for serious training without a doubt; COVID19 pretty much stopped some ranges from
even opening and our beloved guns lay dormant aside from us “dry” training with them at home, and like
never before the subject of “training aids” took on a high degree of significance! Iggy gets to grips with a 6mm
system he’s been using to keep his “edge”, VIRTUAL-SHOT. -IR
Around the world we are back out on the ranges
again and the good life seems to be restored!
However, every now and then we still have
lockdowns, and our shooting skills may have
slipped a little while we were not able to use
our guns as usual. A company in Australia has
quietly been busy developing a solution though,
a solution that’ not only fun but means you get to
use your beloved 6MM Training Platform safely in
the comfort of your own home and work on your marksmanship skills!
The Idea for Virtual-Shot actually started back in 2010 when
Daryl, one of the members of the Virtual-Shot team, was serving
as an Infantry Officer in the Australian Defence Force, having just
been appointed the Commanding Officer for a Mentoring Team that
was due to deploy to Afghanistan. They were set to deploy to a
patrol base and conduct mentoring and training with an Afghan
Company and had about 3-4 months to prep and get ready for
the deployment. A lot of the reports coming from the soldiers
already over there was that the engagements they would be
having with the Taliban were sometimes close range, but often
typically between 300-800 meters, and were usually what we
called ‘shoot and scoot’ tactics (where they would pop up fire a
few shots and then disappear not wanting to stick around and
get engaged in close combat). To prepare for this Daryl wanted
to refine his soldiers marksmanship skills, to increase their rapid
target acquisition and first round hit skills to be more effective at
engaging fleeting targets.
The difficulty he faced with this was that they very quickly burned
through their ammunition allocation and did not have enough
time or range access to spend the time they wanted at the range
perfecting these skills. Their unit made best use of the simulation
facilities on the Army base, but getting access to these facilities
was also difficult, because the simulation centre could only
accommodate 20 soldiers at a time and on a base of 5000 people
it was almost always booked out months in advance. Something
else was needed.
Daryl felt they needed an individual simulation solution that
would enable the soldiers to practice their marksmanship skills. The
laser-based shooting systems that were available were simply not
sufficient.
Fast forward five years! He had long returned from the
Afghanistan deployment unscathed; there were a few close
calls, and the guys had their fair share war stories to tell from
the experience. Daryl had since left the Army and started a new
career in software development (a different path to most Infantry
Officers). Whilst learning game development, he soon discovered
that the technology to create a personal shooting simulation system,
the kind that he had wanted for his soldiers was technologically
feasible with the advances in mobile technology, so from that point
he set about building it…
6MM TRAINING - VIRTUAL SHOT
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