Accuracy is "final"... earlier accuracy means you live, they don't. Hit Factor scoring treats all shots equally. First to last. But we'd all agree that actual gunfights reward earlier hits quite highly. So while we do use HF and related metrics to guide overall marksmanship direction, to avoid the "test" skewing behavior we also devise a way to reward getting the first hit (or hits). They are called "battles"... we divide the shooting tests into battles. These can be mano vs mano or unit vs unit. We take test metrics and boil them down to: - time to first lethal hit - time to N subsequent stopping hits - time to non-stopping hits - performance variance in all of the above We then, for each shooter or unit run hundreds of thousands of simulated fights (monte carlo simulations) for each battle in the test. "Winning" means you killed ALL the other guys first. Casualty means you got hit while winning. Dead... you lose. It turns hit factor scoring into a race to get early lethal hits. Exactly what we want to incentivize. We run battles as part of post testing, generally against their pre-training, but also against collective metrics we've collected at a vast scale. We've also worked with SMEs to develop battle metrics for opponents (near peer, drugged up 3 time loser, etc...). Each day we run millions of battles to update lethality leaderboard ranking units and individuals by how quickly they kill everybody else. If you optimize for HF but not for early hits, you lose. Don't do that! In these images I show an anonymized battle result of a recent training post-test. They did very well against the fleet. We also show their expected lifetime and the metrics that lead to their success. The final chart is how they performed when they won, and how they performed when they died. If you want this for your org, LMK, happy to help.

Advancing organizational marksmanship skills is built on advancing personal skills. Organizations need training plans, "what to work on", "what to sustain". For the USMC we divide the hit factor testing into 5 areas - zero + 4 tests doing yardage and skills needed in an assault converted to a defense with ranges from 3 to 300 yards. We divide those skills up into 6 areas + zero and rate every individual and unit (squad, platoon, company, battalion, class, school, division and service-wide) relative to the best that has done the test. The 1st image is part of a Marine shooters report card, where they are rated on 6 aggregate skills. This shooter is good at first shots, not so good at reloading and transitions and recoil mgt. We then look at where time went (2nd image). Green is in standard, red past standard. Here you can see, visually, that indeed they are slow/variable on splits (probably a stance problem), and also on reloads. The 50% reference is basically 50% of what grandmasters who shot this with service rifles, in full kit, did it over a series of tests to see what "great" was. Everything is compared to "best". Each person and unit gets this, along with an AI summary I don't show here. And in many cases an evaluation by me or one of our other SMEs on specific issues we see w/ recommendations. You get better by measuring and REACTING to what you learn. These show, in a glance, a training plan.