Long Beach, CA’s SWAT unit charged to victory at AARDVARK’s AARTAC2015 Tactical Team Competition, beating out 24 other Tactical Teams. LBPD’s run was an impressive 5 minutes and 40 seconds. It is not the first time that Long Beach SWAT has won the AARDVARK competition, however, this run was exceptionally fast especially when you consider that the team had one minute of penalties added to their 4 minute and 40 second run time. In a strong 2 nd Place, with a run time of 6 minutes and 14 seconds, was San Bernardino, CA PD’s SWAT Team also a repeat visitor to AARDVARK’s podium. In 3rd place, and new to the AARTAC podium was the Glendale, CA PD SWAT Team who not only were the first team to run, but were also one of only two teams to run the course with no penalties. Glendale’s time was a very fast 6 minutes 40 seconds.
The AARTAC2015 course included 10 extremely challenging obstacles, three separate courses of fire (Sniper, Carbine, and Handgun), as well as a torturous mix of “shoot” and “don’t shoot” targets.
Asked about this year’s course, Aardvark’s CEO Jon Becker, said “This year’s course was the most difficult course we have ever run. We based the 2015 course on a multiple suspect active shooter problem at a school library, and to say the least we intentionally made it really hard. We are very proud of all the teams who competed this year. This year’s competitors were some of the finest teams we have ever had!”
In addition to the Tactical Team Competition, AARTAC2015 also provided a wide variety of no cost training opportunities for the teams that attended. These included:
1) Team Safariland’s Rob Leatham taught a handgun course which taught speed shooting, target acquisition, trigger control, and shooting on the move;
2) The California Association of Tactical Officers (CATO) hosted a Tactical Carbine Course instructed by R.K. Miller;
3) Defense Technology® held an Impact Munitions Instructor Course;
4) BROCO provided a Thermal Breaching Course; and AARTAC2015 1st Place Winner Long Beach PD
5) The Hawthorne PD SWAT Team taught a Tactical Medicine Course, which featured live action role players with injury simulators, simunition, and scenarios. Hawthorne SWAT even provided each student with a free ATHENA Individual First Aid Kit.
The event also featured a Vendor Expo with 26 exhibitors, including Safariland, Robotex, TASER, Pelican, Blackhawk, Broco, and Streamlight, AARTAC2015 was attended by approximately 250 Tactical Operators from 45 State, Local, Federal, and Military Agencies.
About AARDVARK – Founded in 1987, AARDVARK is a Distributor and Integrator of specialized products designed to Protect Tactical Operators. Located in La Verne, CA, AARDVARK’s clients include thousands of Local, State, Federal and Military special tactics and special operations units worldwide.
