Rifle Marksmanship with Three types of Combat Clothing

Abstract

Soldier performance on simple visual, auditory, and psychomotor tasks has been shown to be impaired by the bulkiness of combat clothing. Since rifle marksmanship is a complex task requiring the coordination of simple sensory and psychomotor skills, it was hypothesized that bulky combat clothing would also impair this task which is so critical to successful soldier performance and survival. Each of 30 male soldier volunteers, matched on rifle marksmanship ability, was assigned to one of three clothing conditions of increasing bulk: battle dress uniform, fighting load, or MOPP-IV chemical protective clothing. After four days of practice on the Weaponeer M16 rifle simulator, soldiers were assessed on marksmanship for pop-up targets (in both rifle supported and unsupported conditions) while dressed in the respective combat clothing. Results of a 3 × 2 (clothing × rifle support) analysis of variance showed that (a) regardless of clothing condition, marksmanship was significantly better when the rifle was supported than when it was not supported; and (b) rifle marksmanship was significantly poorer under the MOPP-IV chemical protective clothing condition than under either the fighting load condition or the battle dress uniform condition. The impairment while wearing MOPP-IV is likely due to the awkwardness in obtaining a rapid and proper sight alignment with the MOPP-IV gas mask.