James Burton

Ash Hess is a skilled competitive shooter and the individual who rewrote the Army’s Marksmanship Manual. He is also involved with sales at one of the world’s greatest firearms manufacturers, Knight’s Armament. We wanted to chat with Ash about how we can improve not only our shooting skill but the rifles we build. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Ash about these topics, as well as his recent “A Day in the Arena” semi-auto precision rifle shoot. For more on that event, click here…but for more on how you can both better yourself and your next build, read on. Ash’s full background, via Primary & Secondary, where he is a frequent and valued contributor: I am a competitive shooter and Gov Sales Specialist at Knight's Armament Company. I am also a Retired US Army Senior NCO. My last assignments included serving as the Senior Writer for Small Arms in the Weapons and Gunnery Branch and the US Army Infantry School Marksmanship Program developer at the Maneuver Center of Excellence Fort Benning, Georgia. Army Schools include US Army Master Marksmanship Trainer Course, Rifle Marksmanship Instructor Course, Urban Combat Leaders Course, Air Assault, Rappelmaster, Senior Leaders Course, Army Basic Instructor course, High Angle Marksmanship Course, and Unit Armorer course...Four combat tours totaling fifty-two months overseas. Q: Ash, can we start with a bit on your background and how that led you to write the Army Marksmanship Manual? Ash Hess: I did 22 years in the Army. I joined the Army around 1996. Then right after September 11th, I went to school and I went from an Engineer to a Calvary Scout. What that did was, that put me in a different position. Prior, I was always on defense and I didn’t worry about shooting. Unless you’re in a job that does a lot of offensive work, you don’t worry about shooting. So, I went to Korea and then Iraq…where we did the invasion of Iraq. That was the first time I ever started pointing guns at people and actually shooting people. We were in Sadr City, and if you do any Google search on Sadr City, you’ll find out it was a pretty interesting place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8gU157pOjg NBC story on Sadr City... "We Couldn't Shoot Very Well" There, we found out quickly that we couldn’t shoot very well. And that realization started me on a path. I started paying a lot more attention to shooting. At first that just meant applying Army stuff and trying to shoot better. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know at that time was that it was woefully inadequate. Fast forward to about 2005, I was able to go to one of our division schools for shooting…it was a month-long course called the Mountain Leaders Advanced Rifle Marksmanship Course. (MLARM). I went to that and it was good. It was better that what I had been getting, but it still wasn't amazing. Q: Can you talk about what was lacking in your opinion? Ash Hess: Well, they were just doing weird things. They had us grouping and zeroing from the prone unsupported. It’s a harder position to shoot from. But their mentality was if you could shoot good unsupported, that you'd be able to shoot supported. Image from the Army Marksmanship Manual There is validity to that…the problem is if I don't have a zero on the gun, and I don't have that most stable position to zero, then everything I am doing is going to be messed up. Q: So, after that month long course, what was next? Were you able to put any of the things you had learned into practice? Ash Hess: From there, I went on to do a deployment as a Squad Designated Marksman. I carried around a M16A4 with an ACOG on it. While I was doing that, there was no training for Squad Designated Marksman. It was just a name that popped up in the Army. There were no books on it or any real information to speak of. A U.S. Army Soldier fires an M16A4 rifle during the Squad Designated Marksman Course instructed by the New Jersey Army National Guard’s 254th Regiment on Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., July 20, 2017. Photo by Master Sgt. Matt Hecht So, during that deployment, trying to do the shooting that I was doing in this made-up role, I ended up talking a lot to the sniper section. That’s where I found a little bit of a problem with Army marksmanship, as well as the entire Squad Designated Marksman concept. Q: You’ve talked about Project Appleseed as something that helped you. Can you talk about that briefly? Ash Hess: After that deployment and another deployment, I started shooting a lot more in between those deployments. I started to get a lot better. And yes, I got into Project Appleseed. I was actually pretty big into that for a while…just trying to shoot better. Shooters at Project Appleseed What I really didn't know I was chasing, until much later, was I was chasing better techniques to teach. And it was at Appleseed that I started getting some ideas. That program, for a basic shooter, is really one of the best and cheapest programs that you can go to. I’ve been to many, more advanced courses where people there couldn’t even zero their rifle, let alone shoot a group. Those folks should have started at somewhere like an Appleseed course instead. If you go to a Kyle Defoor course and you can’t even zero your rifle….well, that’s slowing down everybody in the class. So, I really highly recommend doing Appleseed first. You can learn the basics and then grow from there. Q: So, you were growing as shooter…how soon after do you end up being asked to rewrite the Army Marksmanship Manual? Ash Hess: Well, as time went on, I actually ended up running the Mountain Leaders Advanced Rifle Marksmanship Course. We changed the name from MLARM to “Rifle Marksmanship Instructor Course”. There, we fired 2 million rounds in a three year period teaching about 2,000 students. Image from the Army Marksmanship Manual It was after that I went to Fort Benning and rewrote the entire Army Marksmanship Manual. I had screamed loud enough and got in the ears of the right folks that the existing Army book was messed up. In the Army, once you get identified you’re complaining about something, you usually are given the duty to fix it, so that’s how I ended up doing that. Q: How do you start to tackle a project like that? Ash Hess: We gathered up about 150 leaders from across the Army…and there was a core of about 10-15 guys that were teaching marksmanship in some capacity for their unit, and not just being a regular NCO. We gathered those guys together and we kind of crowdsourced the book. I was the “good idea fairy.” I would type some stuff up and throw it in front of them. They would tell me if I was off base or if I was on the right track. So, it really was a collaborative effort across the Army, and it ended up being published in 2016. And in the end, it helped get me noticed and helped me get my current position at Knight’s Armament. Ash Hess (left) at Gun Gallery...look a for an article about Gun Gallery in the weeks ahead. Q: You’ve got a great article at Primary & Secondary about baseline standards you believe that shooters should be able to meet. Can you explain those and how you arrived at the baseline you did? Ash Hess: I was on a range with Kyle Defoor around 2009, and I was doing Appleseed at the time. We started talking about what shooters needed to be able to do. He started talking about 4 MOA…which happens to be the Appleseed standard of what they are trying to get you to do. Kyle Defoor with a low powered variable optic-equipped carbine. Photo via BCM. Don't miss our recent interview with Kyle on red dots vs. LPVO. The Rifleman's Quarter-Mile So, if you are able to do that, you can engage a man size target, in theory…without ballistics…you can shoot well enough to engage a man sized target out to 500 yards. That’s what Appleseed talks about…the “rifleman’s quarter-mile.” It’s a two-day clinic and during that time, they talk about how marksmanship won the revolutionary war. There was no tactics, no colonial army…there was a bunch of farmers who were able to outshoot the British enough to get them to break contact. Project Appleseed So, at Appleseed, they're getting you to shoot in different positions with the goal of getting you to that 4 MOA standard…They have a very streamlined way to teach it and will teach anyone who shows up with a rifle and any type of sights, whatever they happen to have. They get them from shooting all over the place to shooting at 4 MOA. So, you go and get taught all the things that you need to do to shoot well. Q: You’ve lived with the AR for a long time…what’s the biggest change you’ve seen with the rifle? Ash Hess: When I first came in, it was an M16A2 with no rails. Then we started to get lasers and lights and that sort of stuff. Night vision was also starting to get big. So, as we got more toys, we were doing weird things to mount them. Then we started getting into red-dots and rails…But as you add more stuff, it begins to change how the gun handles. But, they started adding rails to everything. Rails even started getting added to butt-stocks. The best chunk of rail we got was the flat-top. Having a flat top on the receiver was cool because you could put your optic straight on there and you didn't have iron sights in the way, but it just got crazy with people adding more and more and more stuff on there. It’s still crazy, in fact…People are still trying to add more stuff on the guns than we have space for. There’s just not enough space and it just makes the gun handle like shit. It starts changing zero, it starts doing all sorts of weird things that guys don’t know how to account for, so it’s just been crazy on that front. Q: There’s certainly a tendency with many new builders to add a lot to the rifle, items that they may not have an actual use for. What’s your advice for these folks? Ash Hess: The rifle you build should have a mission or a job. There should be an intended use for...