"Gleanings From The 2014 Hand-to-Hand Study"

Among the gems of information in Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump was a link to an article by Justin White reviewing the military's 2014 study on the hand-to-hand combat. While I encourage you to read the whole article, a few take-aways that I found interesting:

• 19% of troops reported using hand-to-hand skills in at least one encounter.
• Of the foregoing, 73% used grappling techniques, 22% used a weapon (e.g., a butt-strike), with only 5.5% reporting using a hand strike or kick. I don't know if the percentage of grappling represents a preference for those techniques based on the military's shift to emphasizing grappling and ground techniques, over the traditional combatives training, or because the situation required grappling. I suspect the latter, but it would be interesting to see more data on this point, because it may be important on deciding what techniques to learn (or for a self-defense instructor to teach). I also found it interesting the large number of encounters that resulted in a firearm being used as a hand-to-hand weapon. This suggests that you really do want a rifle that can handle being used to deliver a butt-stroke, and again raises the issue of whether bayonets still serve a purpose.
• The study also showed that close-encounters often resulted in tussles over control of a weapon, demonstrating the importance of learning weapon retention techniques.

Anyway, read the whole thing.