Tactical strobe..Does it work?????

[Sgt. LED]

:wave: Immune.

I bet most folks are so don't strobe people. You want to strobe a search plane or a traffic accident fine.

 

[Justin Case]

Justin I know some of these officers involved and believe me when I say their level of training was impressive with many years of experience as well. You say getting suprised has nothing to do with fine motor skill and in fact it has everything to do with it......fact is most all people lose fine motor skill under real stress.

I believe you are confusing loss of fine motor coordination with degradation in decision-making ability when under extreme stress. You described officers forgetting how to take their pistols off safe. "Forgetting" is not a fine motor coordination problem. That is a brain-scrambled problem, i.e., decision-making. Look up the difference between Fitts's Law and Hick's Law. You appear to be talking about Hick's Law when talking about complicated equipment.

So I do believe it works for certain things however my life is much too important for me to ever include it against an attacker unless I simply have no other weapons.

Each weapon has its regime of applicability. I carry a lot of weapons. Can't use them except when warranted. Can't use any lethal force in a non-lethal force situation, for example. Can't cut them for the same reason. Etc etc. The light as distraction tool IMO best fits at a very low level of force, perhaps used in combination with verbal commands, probably most frequently used "weapon" and probably the most useful for non-LEOs. In theory, one also could use it as a non-LEO in combination with OC, but coordinating both simultaneously is probably overly complicated. I think the disconnect is that many are coming from a non-LEO viewpoint, including myself, where immediate disengagement is the goal, not arrest. Thus, I am unconcerned with pursuing people, subduing people, going toward the threat instead of away from it, etc. I don't have any command presence to depend upon either when using verbal commands, unlike a LEO (at least when dealing with semi-rational people). So enhancing the disengagement effectiveness of things like verbal commands and body language is a good thing (of course, within the constraints of ease of use, etc etc).

I have been inside a room during a practice drill where the instructors had placed strobing lights throughout the structure. Yes it was weird and it made the search interesting however it did nothing to hinder our objective.

When used for search, I don't think you need a dedicated 10-15 Hz strobe. Manual strobing at 4-5 Hz generally works well and doesn't produce distraction for the user. It doesn't distract the opponent either, but that's not the goal. What it does is mask the light pattern of the search, making it harder to figure out where the searcher is looking and where he is. I don't think I ever said that a strobe was useful for entry. I doubt that a flashlight strobe would be useful for that purpose.

 

[Solscud007]

I think a true tactical strobe is difficult to use. I have seen it cause slight disorientation. a lot of bobbing and weaving to change position of the body. Throwing the light above my head etc. makes it difficult to pinpoint where I am. but that could be done with a normal tactical light. See SF institute and their light techniques.

The strobe has to fit the target in the face. kinda like how ridiculously bright lights, in the face, can be slightly disorienting. Obviously you dont want to jsut stand still and blast a person coming at you in the face. That probably WONT stop them. but if you move and blast them in the face, they will have a harder time finding you to attack.

In airsoft, I know it is just a game but there are some merits to it, the usual mentality of kids playing is to squeeze and pray. Even though these kids have full automatic weapons, they were unable to tag me when I used the strobe and moved my body around, like crouching. even seasoned players have told me that on the recieving end of the Gladius, they have a hard time aiming.

 

[alpg88]

in ww2 rotating mirror sets on searchlights were used by british to dissorient german bomber pilots, and it worked, most of the time.

 

[Jaywalk3r]

You say getting suprised has nothing to do with fine motor skill and in fact it has everything to do with it......fact is most all people lose fine motor skill under real stress. When I say real stress I mean life and death situations and believe me I have been in plenty. Each situation I have been involved in usually started with a suprise also.

Training is great and it works to an extent however one can train for 20 years and never have a critical incident. When something does happen the training can keep them alive however if they have over complicated equipment it makes it harder to stay alive due to motor skill loss.

Again, I'm not a LEO, but I've been in my share of life or death situations. Speaking for myself, in such situations, time seems to slow down and I become acutely aware of everything going on around me.

OTOH, I recognize that some people, when faced with such situations, simply freak out and either freeze up or take correct actions in an incorrect order, despite high levels of training for the exact scenario. Of those, the lucky ones live, despite their mistakes, and the rest are injured or die.

People don't all handle stress the same way. For some people, complicated decision trees are easily and quickly navigated in high stress situations. For others, an extremely simple process (1-2 steps) that has been drilled thousands of times proves to be too complicated under stress. Unfortunately, most times it is virtually impossible to determine how one will react to a time critical life or death situation until actually faced with one.

 

[Robocop]

Justin I tell ya I know nothing of Hicks law nor Fitts law however degredation of decision making under stress sounds to me to be the same thing as loss of fine motor skills. Who cares what it is called the end result of bad decisions or loss of motor skills is the same result and it is usually bad.

My point is if at any time a strobe is in effect it can add a level of confusion to the officers they do not need. To me forgetting to work the safety on your weapon is indeed a decision problem however it could also be considered a loss of motor skill problem.

Motor skill, lack of training or simply bad decision making the less an officer has going on in a bad situation the better they will be. I believe this thread has strayed to an area of confusion and honestly the debate is not between how we define motor skill function but more so of does strobe work. Lets keep this related to what we feel strobe does work for and why in order to not stray into other topics we both could probably talk about all night.


To the poster I believe it works very well to get attention and has many uses for both police, military, and civilian use. On a huge scale with very bright lights I feel it could be used to assist in confusing a large crowd while a perimeter is set in place. I believe it would also work for civilian use in order to gain an additional second or two if escape was the only objective. I do know it works very well on a busy street directing traffic or simply to be seen by other moving traffic.

I honestly do not feel it would help at all if used in the search of a location where contact was going to be made and especially if weapons were most likely involved. I fully believe in this situation an officer should have a simple one level light and make use of a forward clicky switch which I feel all patrol lights should have anyway. Personally I do much better with that method however again maybe others with experience can give you a different perspective.

 

[Jaywalk3r]

Motor skill, lack of training or simply bad decision making the less an officer has going on in a bad situation the better they will be.

"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience."

-Albert Einstein, Oxford, 10 June 1933
​

Or, as it is often paraphrased, Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

My point is, in high stress situations, over-simplification can be (and has been) as fatal as over-complication.

If a strobe can be more effective in a particular situation, then it should absolutely be incorporated into training and used in real world situations. If that addition is too much for a particular officer to handle in a high stress situation, quite frankly, that person has no business working as a law enforcement officer. That may sound harsh, but an inability to think clearly and act appropriately in high stress situations puts lives at risk unnecessarily.

 

[Search]

If a strobe can be more effective in a particular situation, then it should absolutely be incorporated into training and used in real world situations. If that addition is too much for a particular officer to handle in a high stress situation, quite frankly, that person has no business working as a law enforcement officer. That may sound harsh, but an inability to think clearly and act appropriately in high stress situations puts lives at risk unnecessarily.

The addition is too much.

Unless that officer will never clear a building in low light, which I would not count on, he cannot use a light that has a strobe.

Why? There are no lights in existence that has a strobe feature that is access by anything but cycling the tailcap.

Flash, move, flash, move flash, move, strobe, oh sh*t.

The officer would have to carry two lights, a duty light and a tactical light.

Robocop is 100% right in everything he has said and my training backs that up entirely.

High stress means you need a light that is going to do the same thing every time you turn it on and not go into funky flashing modes as that would hinder EVERYONES vision in low light. Throw in enough ambient light and the strobe loses it's effect more and more as more ambient light is introduced.

Strobe isn't a bad idea, but it has no place in Law Enforcement. It's useful, but would be difficult to implement into currently used tactics.

To sum it up, when an officer enters a high stress situation, he needs his equipment to do one thing. Strobing a flashlight is really unnecessary and would require the use of a separate light to do certain jobs.

I do believe people would be killed trying to strobe subjects when they needed to be focused on other things.

 

[Zatoichi]

Why? There are no lights in existence that has a strobe feature that is access by anything but cycling the tailcap.

The Jetbeam III M does. With the head loosened you have momentary or constant strobe.

 

[Robocop]

For an officer to reach strobe function on any light I know of they will first have to cycle the switch. My opinion on this has always been the same and I have stated so in many threads....and this opinion is a main duty light should always be a simple one click on one click off. (forward clicky)

This is due to many factors with one being ease of use, less margin for tailcap or switch failure, simple reliability and I am sure there are others.

This example was demonstrated very clearly just a few months back with a rookie officer I was training. Remember earlier on in this I told of all officers I know who have had multi mode duty lights have always eventually abandoned their use...well this was one who did.

I was involved in a vehicle pursuit where the suspect struck several other cars and eventually was forced to stop. My recruit and I exited our vehicle and began to approach. I had the drivers side well illuminated while my partner took the passenger. I do not know how it happened however his light quickly switched to fast strobe. He began clicking the switch and in that brief second he was fumbling with his light the passenger jumped from the car catching him by suprise. Now you must understand there were people screaming, the horn on the car was stuck wide open, smoke everywhere and all kinds of movement inside the suspects car.

The good part is the passenger quickly went to the ground at gunpoint choosing not to fight...the bad part is that if he would have had a weapon it could have went bad quickly. Later that night while preparing my evaluation of the days actions I asked what happened. The recruit said he activated his light and it did not look bright enough so he activated the switch again however it went to strobe when he wanted high mode. He said he was only distracted for a split second by the strobe and did not see the passengers actions.....this split second of distraction will cost you your life.

I think his light was already on high mode and the ambient light made him think his light was on low. Whatever the cause his light had a strobe feature and it was activated at a bad time. This would never be an issue with a simple one stage duty light regardless of the environment. Two days later the recruit had a shiny new duty light.....with a single effective level of light.

If you want to carry a strobe light fine however I would do so in a duty bag as a spare for when it could be useful. If it is a feature of your main light it may simply get in the way as again anytime you add a variable to your equipment it raises the odds of a failure, or simple confusion, or even a bad decision under stress. If it is not there in the first place you never have to worry about it.

To the poster of this thread I suggest you try both and really decide if you want to use it at all. I would suggest maybe having a smaller back up light with strobe if you feel you want it while you keep your main light bright and simple. Use your main light for everything so you will develope a habit to naturally go to that if you are under stress.....good luck.

And Zatoichi in reply to your post below I do realize there are many ways to modify a light in order to achieve a result. This may be good for a camping light or something to use around the house however no officer I know uses a light with the head loosened to obtain a result.

Anytime you modify your equipment be it loosening the head or using foil to make better contact, soldering a resistor for two levels or any other changes you are asking for failure. Simple, effective, and reliable is the way to go.

 

[Zatoichi]

And Zatoichi in reply to your post below I do realize there are many ways to modify a light in order to achieve a result. This may be good for a camping light or something to use around the house however no officer I know uses a light with the head loosened to obtain a result.

It's not a modification, it's a 2 mode light with one being user programmable. Tighten the head for full power, loosen for user defined mode. I'm not suggesting it's good for LEO's, just that such a light exists. I do think it's a great UI, as you get to select which mode you want before switching it on, like with the TK10 and TK11.

 

[Jaywalk3r]

The addition is too much.

Unless that officer will never clear a building in low light, which I would not count on, he cannot use a light that has a strobe.

If the addition is too much, police work is the wrong occupation.

The officer would have to carry two lights, a duty light and a tactical light.

There is no excuse for an officer carrying only a single light. Two is one; one is none. All equipment can fail.

High stress means you need a light that is going to do the same thing every time you turn it on and not go into funky flashing modes as that would hinder EVERYONES vision in low light.

Thank you, but I know exactly what high stress means. I am also painfully aware that oversimplification can get people killed. One size fits all solutions rarely actually fit all scenarios.

Throw in enough ambient light and the strobe loses it's effect more and more as more ambient light is introduced.

No one has advocated using strobe when it isn't the best mode for the task. What I said is that it should be utilized when it is the best mode for the task.

To sum it up, when an officer enters a high stress situation, he needs his equipment to do one thing.

More accurately, when anyone enters a high stress situation, they need their equipment to work predictably, as they expect it to. Equipment that does only one thing is great if one performs the same task every single time, but when that isn't the case, equipment should be as adaptable as the person using it.

I do believe people would be killed trying to strobe subjects when they needed to be focused on other things.

I know from experience that people can die when things are oversimplified.

* * * * *

For an officer to reach strobe function on any light I know of they will first have to cycle the switch. My opinion on this has always been the same and I have stated so in many threads....and this opinion is a main duty light should always be a simple one click on one click off. (forward clicky)

I don't disagree with that. That doesn't mean that it would not behoove an officer to carry another light that has an effective strobe mode.

This example was demonstrated very clearly just a few months back with a rookie officer I was training. …

It sounds like the primary lesson to be taken from the experience is to know your equipment as though it is is an extension of yourself.

He said he was only distracted for a split second by the strobe and did not see the passengers actions.....this split second of distraction will cost you your life.

Yes, distractions can be fatal. Lacking proper equipment for the task at hand can be just as fatal. Oversimplified procedures are a poor substitute for the ability to think clearly and act quickly and competently under pressure.

 

[Justin Case]

Justin I tell ya I know nothing of Hicks law nor Fitts law however degredation of decision making under stress sounds to me to be the same thing as loss of fine motor skills. Who cares what it is called the end result of bad decisions or loss of motor skills is the same result and it is usually bad.

It does matter because the solutions differ. Decision making is mental. Motor skills are neuromuscular. Of course the end result may be the same, but the fix is not. And if you don't know how to fix the problem, then you have a problem.

Let's say that you place yourself in a situation where you have to make a split second, deadly force decision because you left cover. Sadly, you pop the opponent when you shouldn't have. What's the solution? A loss of fine motor skill problem might say, switch to firearms that have a safety dongle and require all users to carry with the safety on (e.g., Glocks are too dangerous even for cops). A degradation of decisionmaking problem might say, use better tactics and maintain distance and cover to maximize your reaction time.

 

[Justin Case]

For an officer to reach strobe function on any light I know of they will first have to cycle the switch. My opinion on this has always been the same and I have stated so in many threads....and this opinion is a main duty light should always be a simple one click on one click off. (forward clicky)

Serial mode access (sequential button presses) for multimode lights suck. I've said that many times in other posts. But there are other UIs with dedicated strobes that don't require main tailcap button cycling to access strobe. For example, the OpticsHQ reverse multifunction tailcap has a side button. If you press the main button (the standard big tailcap button), you get high mode. If you keep pressing the big button and then also press the side button, you get strobe. Release the side button and you are immediately back in high. The Gladius uses a selector ring to switch modes. In both cases, strobe is a secondary function.

And of course, you can stick with a simple single mode light and create your own strobe function via rapid, repeated button presses or by wobbling the bezel. That's what I do.

 

[Justin Case]

The addition is too much.

Unless that officer will never clear a building in low light, which I would not count on, he cannot use a light that has a strobe.

Why? There are no lights in existence that has a strobe feature that is access by anything but cycling the tailcap.

This is simply incorrect. There are plenty of lights in existence that have a strobe function accessed via means other than cyclic tailcap presses.

Gladius -- selector ring
Eagletac -- selector ring
Fenix P3D -- bezel twists
Olight M30 Triton -- side button
OpticsHQ tailcap -- side button

 

[Jaywalk3r]

You described officers forgetting how to take their pistols off safe. "Forgetting" is not a fine motor coordination problem. That is a brain-scrambled problem, i.e., decision-making. Look up the difference between Fitts's Law and Hick's Law. You appear to be talking about Hick's Law when talking about complicated equipment.

A very astute observation.

 

[RyanA]

This is simply incorrect. There are plenty of lights in existence that have a strobe function accessed via means other than cyclic tailcap presses.

Gladius -- selector ring
Eagletac -- selector ring
Fenix P3D -- bezel twists
Fenix TK40 -- side button
OpticsHQ tailcap -- side button

I think the wiseled series of lights also had a dedicated button.

 

[defloyd77]

The 4Sevens Tactical Quark is another light that you can have it so loosening or tightening the head will go to strobe.

 

[Justin Case]

Actually, it's the Olight M30 Triton with the side button, not the Fenix TK40. The TK40 has a very complicated button press UI that is slightly mitigated by a last mode memory feature.

 

[Cataract]

I think the only actual advantage of a strobe in a tactical situation is that it will take much longer for the eyes to get used to it (I compared both in the mirror for about a minute). It takes a while for a strobe to actually disorient... Other than that, I think the real usefulness is for distress calls, as a flashing light attracts the attention more than just a light and will last longer.