Rotary Wing Riflery: Helicopter Interdiction Tactics with Maxim Defense

Photos by Kevin DiOssi and Steven Kuo

The helicopter is flying low, its blades cutting through the Carolina air at 60 knots. I’m upright and facing outboard, feet on the skids, a safety strap clipped to my back. The terrain looks so different from up here, the once-hidden textures of the land revealed from this vantage. I see the targets as we turn, floating circles placed in a pond and some beach balls for good measure. The Maxim Defense SDX RFLX rifle, so light in my hands when I was on the ground, now feels more like a rudder fighting water as I lift the muzzle, the atmosphere gaining density with velocity.

“Hold 10 feet right. Hold 10 feet right,” a voice crackles into my headset, a reminder of the reverse-hold I need to use because we’re moving so fast, and I’m shooting at something that isn’t. With that fresh in my head, I look through the EOTech, estimate the offset, and squeeze off the first .300 Blackout round of this run. The projectile splashes into the water just short of the circle — dang. There was still a small window of opportunity, so I quickly adjusted and sent two more — both good hits inside.

The voice in my headset is back again. “Good — now you get to see what 90 knots feels like.”

Shooting on a static, flat range may be simple, but that doesn’t always mean it’s always easy. Even when there’s only one unmoving shooting position and one unmoving target, it can be quite a difficult proposition to ensure that your shots go where you want them. 

Every time you pull a trigger, there are a ton of variables that get a vote in determining exactly where the bullet is going to hit. As the distance between the shooter and target increases, those variables gain greater weight; wobble and wind and gravity and air density always have an effect, it’s just that those effects don’t count enough to matter if you’re only shooting 3 feet versus 3,000. 

Everything you add on top is an additional complication. The basic things are, well, basic — but they become progressively harder with complexity. When you have a target moving laterally at a constant speed, trivial math is required to determine lead — how much you have to aim in front of the object to hit it. It sort of runs into the projectile as it moves along. But if movement isn’t lateral, or you are also moving, it’s more difficult. (And you aren’t exactly going to pull out a slide rule in the middle of combat, either.) 

It’s the same thing with angles, where the shooter and target are at different heights. At the extremes, some of the solutions end up being quite counterintuitive.  

Aircraft have all of these, and more, so hitting anything on either end can be hard as hell. There’s a reason why biplanes began using machineguns and bombs early on, and why many anti-aircraft guns rely on the concept of exploding shells and filling the air with flak. “There’s more air than meat” is a very old mantra. 

Helicopters are a special case because they’re less a streaking arrow and more akin to a swinging mouse cursor in the sky; needless to say, you might think it’s a wonder that anything gets hit at all.

And yet, trigger pulling is but part of the tale. If your plan is to just shoot targets or plow down hogs, you only need aerial marksmanship instruction. But if the situation is one where it’s a person downrange who also gets a say, and maybe also brings their own rifle into play? Now we’re talking about something else entirely. 

This is what Airborne Use of Force and Helicopter Interdiction Tactics are all about. This is typically a closed law enforcement course taught by Paladin Resource Group, but Maxim Defense has been considering opening it up for select small groups — and earlier this year at CANCON we got to go on a little test run of that concept.

Our instructor was Mike Peck, a man with a long list of credentials, several which combine to make him uniquely qualified; among other accomplishments, he’s a veteran of the famed 160th “Night Stalkers” Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a certified law enforcement officer, and a trained sniper. Peck can teach both the people pulling triggers in the back of the bird as well as the folks up front working the stick.

COP CHOPPERS

Law enforcement has been using aircraft for operations almost since the invention of aviation. The NYPD was the first to use helicopters back in 1948, and, today, hundreds of American agencies have rotary wing craft patrolling the sky. 

If the idea of police officers adding lethal force from aircraft into the mix gives you pause, you aren’t alone — but it’s already been in play for longer than you think. A course like Airborne Use of Force better ensures public safety and reduces accidents by providing mission-oriented training. 

U.S. Special Forces have been performing operations like these with helicopters for decades. And though the missions of law enforcement and SF are quite different, some of the skill sets transfer over. 

While helicopters are always a good eye in the sky, when armed they can be used for interdictions of high-threat vehicles or vessels, elevated sniper threats, and barricaded subjects. It can also be used for better aerial security during high-profile movements as well as a number of other special missions. 

TEAM SPORT 

The first rule is safety. Keep the bird in the air. Keep your people and equipment from getting any unneeded holes. Keep the rounds where they need to be. 

AUF and HIT courses are not just for shooters, but the aircrew and pilots, too. Peck constantly stressed the need for coordination and communication. Aviators and operators can use different technical jargon, and in order to best work together they need to use a common language. 

Shooters are used to controlling as much of their environments as they can, but when riding in the back of a bird there’s very little that they can control except their trigger finger. The one running the stick up front is who keeps the crew safe and is also the one who aligns the shooter with the target. 

“I like to put a pilot in the back, get them on a gun for some runs,” Peck told me. “It gives them a better understanding of what it’s actually like, and then they start to fly more with them in mind.” 

BASIC AERIAL SHOOTING CONCEPTS

There are aviation shooting courses out there that will have you calculating the exact impact of a round at a given moment, based on the air temperature and the angle of the engagement and a million other factors — but they aren’t practical unless you’re a sentient gimbal/ballistic calculator combination. In other words: nonsense. 

Exactly how much leading distance to give a target can take some time to get a feel for. And unlike when shooting hogs, police aren’t supposed to just “send P for plenty” downrange. 

But speed is also relative. If a car is racing at 85 mph and a helicopter is running alongside at the same pace, it’s essentially like the car isn’t moving at all. However, you still have wind and atmospherics and other factors to deal with — but it’s far easier.

The angle of engagement definitely matters, and this is something that can be practiced. Because gravity pulls down on the round the same regardless of the angle fired, the horizontal distance matters more than true muzzle-to-target measurement. You may find yourself having to aim a little lower than on flat land (which usually translates to having to hold over the target less). 

GUNS

The number-one rule when it comes to flying is to keep the bird in the air. You never do anything to compromise the safety of the helicopter, and that includes how you hold your rifle. Muzzle awareness is key. Over the years there have been a lot of discussions and arguments about muzzle-up versus muzzle-down rifle carriage, but sometimes it’s quite simple: muzzle-down in a helicopter, muzzle-up on a boat. 

When you shoot, your brass comes out of the ejection port, hits the deflector, and can go God-knows-where. A brass catcher is necessary, lest a hot case fly down the shirt of a pilot or other crew member or get wedged under a pedal or important control. 

The base rifle should be semiautomatic. Bolt guns may make for exceptional precision rifles, but sometimes first shots don’t hit, and in aviation operations your window of opportunity may be very small. 

On a similar note, this is a red-dot mission so leave the magnified optics on the ground. When you zoom in your view, you also magnify your wobble and make everything harder to hit.

The guns need to be strapped in, either to you or to the helicopter itself. It’s no good if a duty weapon gets dropped to the ground in the middle of a pursuit.

The caliber is also important. While 5.56mm works just fine at war and with boar, when it comes to Helicopter Interdiction, you’re going to want a 7.62 NATO or .300BLK rifle paired with the proper ammunition.

AMMUNITION

When cops shoot out of choppers, the main goal is to stop or otherwise disable vehicles so officers on the ground can make an effective arrest. While you can use normal ammunition to do this, it’s actually not your best choice. 

Several years ago, Maxim Defense began developing a new form of frangible ammunition, a kind that didn’t have the downsides of the traditional stuff. 

The Maxim Defense ammo does what the others don’t: You can use it on steel plates from only a meter away, it doesn’t break apart in the high pressure environment of suppressors, it works well in crew-served weapons — and a 133-grain .300BLK hits so hard it will readily deform a wheel rim, ensuring a moving vehicle won’t be moving well much longer. 

“Anything you can stop with a Hulk Smash, you can stop with one of these,” Peck told us. 

This is not to say that frangible ammo is some kind of less-lethal round like a rubber bullet — it isn’t — but it does greatly reduce the risk of collateral damage. Police officers need to be accountable for every round they put out of a gun, and Maxim frangible rounds mean fewer unnecessary injuries while still being able to complete the mission. Win/win. 

HIGH FLYING 

After being briefed up, harnessed up, and strapped in, the runs began. Each run got progressively faster, and therefore more difficult. Having targets set in the water meant you could see splash and understand where to hold and compensate — in a gray urban jungle it would have been a different story. In many ways it’s like skeet or trap shooting, you can get a sort of feel for the motion of things. 

Once we got to 90 knots (over 100 mph) it was more about what it felt like rather than actually attempting anything. The rush of air presses hard against every exposed inch. I shouldered the rifle, the wind tries to wrestle it free from my grasp and my arms would be sore for days after. If you’re hitting something at this speed you want a Dillon Aero or some rocket pods.

LOOSE ROUNDS

The entire Airborne Use of Force and Helicopter Interdiction Tactics course is a four-day affair, with a heavy focus on communication, coordination, and safety. But I just had to ask Mike Peck, because I’ve seen enough cops shoot to know that not every cop can shoot, to include some SWAT officers. “I can honestly say that at the end of the four days, I’ve never had anyone not be able to make an engine block shot”

To be sure, agencies are going to be choosey about who they send to something like this. But what about you? Helicopters, in general, are just fun as hell, and there’s always something special about a well-built rifle. So putting them together is essentially a recipe for a guaranteed good time — whether you hit the engine block or not. If you ever get the opportunity, take it.

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