Training Law Enforcement Officers to Perform Firing Exercises in Personal Body Armour: Ergonomic Determinants and Training Methodology

The article addresses the problem of preparing law enforcement officers to perform standardised firing exercises in personal body armour (PBA). It is shown that the current regulatory procedure for organising personnel training makes it mandatory to conduct live firing in PBA, yet expressly excludes qualification (control) firing in PBA. This produces a regulatory gap: at the departmental level there are neither approved qualification exercises nor criteria for their assessment, and the instructor is left to improvise. Based on an analysis of the biomechanical and ergonomic effects of body armour – restriction of the degrees of freedom of the shoulder girdle and hip joints, displacement of the holster and pouches, restriction of the field of view caused by the ballistic helmet, disruption of the dynamic stability of the "shooter–weapon" system, and increased energy expenditure – the conclusion is substantiated that the mechanical transfer of exercises performed without PBA is methodologically unsound. A three-stage methodology is proposed – ergonomic adaptation, technical stabilisation, and speed-and-tactical integration – each stage having its own objectives, means and assessment benchmarks. The authors describe a three-component assessment system (technical, temporal and ergonomic components) and a mechanism for embedding standardised PBA exercises into the educational process, drawing on the right of educational institutions to develop exercises that are not provided for by the departmental procedure. The proposed approach is intended for the vocational firearms training of police officers, for the preparation of instructors and for the design of departmental qualification standards and assessment scales. The limitations of the study are stated and a programme of empirical verification, including the design of a pedagogical experiment, is outlined.