Statistical Measures of Marksmanship
Abstract
Training in rifle marksmanship is required of all soldiers upon entrance into the U.S. Army. Subsequent demonstration of marksmanship proficiency on an annual basis is also required. This report describes objective statistical procedures to measure both rifle marksmanship accuracy, the proximity of an array of shots to the center of mass of a target, and marksmanship precision, the dispersion of an array of shots around their own center of impact, often referred to as "shot group tightness." The statistics presented here are intended for use in the field (with live fire) and in the laboratory (with marksmanship simulators). Although the statistics presented here were developed for use with the Weaponeer Model-70 Ml6 Marksmanship Trainer, they are generalizable to other marksmanship situations as well. The only requirement is that the target have a clearly described center of mass assigned the coordinates (0,0). Two accuracy measures are presented: (1) constant error, which is defined as the straight line distance between center of the shot group and the target's center of mass; and (2) shooting error, which is defined as the average of the straight line distances between each shot and the center of mass. Eight precision measures are presented. The primary measure of marksmanship precision is the mean radius, which refers to the average of the straight line distances between each shot and the center of the shot group. Secondary measures of marksmanship precision include: the horizontal range, the vertical range, the area of dispersion, the diagonal of dispersion, the standard deviation of the horizontal component, the standard deviation of the vertical component, and the radial standard deviation. The most useful statistics are shooting error, constant error, the shot group coordinates, and variable error (as indicated by the mean radius).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA387108
Entities
People
- Richard F. Johnson
Organizations
- United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine