What is a Sim Gun? Simuntion? Ultimate Training Munitions?
What is a sim gun? Simunition? Ultimate Training Munitions?
There isn’t a ton of information on the internet about “sim guns”, so I will take a minute to explain. I’ll use the umbrella term “sim gun” to describe the type of firearm conversions most commonly manufactured by Simunition and Ultimate Training Munitions (UTM).
We use these guns in our training, specifically in our More Than Just A Gun Seminar, and believe that they are an extremely valuable asset.
What are they?
A sim gun is a real firearm that’s been converted to be safely used as a training tool, while maintaining all the same characteristics as your real handgun. They are usually used to fire a non-lethal marking projectile.
UTM, or ultimate training munitions, are the conversions we use at The Defense Lab. They come as a full slide with a barrel and recoil spring, which replaces the real slide, and drops right onto the original frame of the handgun. For example, ours use a Glock 17 frame.
There have been safety features implemented to make it impossible to chamber and fire a live 9mm round through the conversion.
What makes them so realistic?
Since you’re using the frame from your real firearm, it retains all the same features and manipulations as your real gun does. From the way you load the magazine to the feel of the trigger, it even fits right into your carry holster.
This also means that anything that would make your real firearm malfunction will also cause this to malfunction, and clearing the malfunctions look the same on the sim guns as they do a real firearm. This is a very important feature for training close-range gun fighting and combatives.
For example, if someone is on top of you and has ahold of the slide of the gun and you pull the trigger, the round in the chamber will go off, but then the slide won't be able to reciprocate - meaning the spent casing will fail to eject out of the chamber, and the gun will be inoperable until that malfunction is cleared.
This makes for extremely realistic training for those who carry a firearm.
The Ammo
The round that we shoot out of these guns is what UTM calls their Man Marker Round. It’s a non-lethal marking projectile that fires at about 330 fps and leaves a small waxy compound on your skin or clothing so you can see where you were hit. This round produces a small pain penalty when hit, which increases stress and adrenaline to those participating in the scenario.
Ultimate Training Munitions makes a few variations of ammo to use in their conversions including the Man Marker Round, Non-Marking Round, Silent Blank Round (cycles the gun with no projectile or noise), and Battlefield Blank round (loud noise, no projectile). The Man-Marking Round is what makes these conversions unique to other firearm training tools, and is what you see most commonly used in training.
Conclusion
Overall, I think that the sim gun, or the UTM gun, is an invaluable training tool if you carry a firearm. It allows you to take scenario-based training to the next level, whether working at a distance or working in extremely close quarters. The sim gun bridges that gap between live fire at a target on the range, and empty-handed training with a partner on a mat.
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