Airsoft is cool and good exercise and can be a great training aid. But, it does one thing that can be lethal; it conditions a person to not be tactical and disregard IMT and cover and proper weapon use. Why? Because airsoft BBs don’t hurt you. Yeah sure, they might hurt your eyeball, but they don’t do anything to make to make you do the right thing and stop wtf you're doing.
Now, if you really want to train and do it right, you need to use Simunitions or UTM. Those will make you stop and think because they hurt like fuck, especially if you get shot in the face, dick, or nutsack.
They cost more so airsoft is cost effective but with UTM or Sims, you don’t need to spray and pray. They will leave bruises too.
UTM used to be really bad. They have a plastic cross tip on the ammo, but they used to be aluminum. They had to reduce the power too because the projo would go through lips and ears and chip teeth or leave that little aluminum cross embedded in your skin if dudes didn’t have their face masks and ear pro. You were supposed to maintain like a 15m minimum distance for engagement but in cqb you’ll be 5 feet away blasting dude in the face. You have to wear goggles too, glasses don’t cut it if you get hit in the eye from the side. We’ve had dudes not protect their junk and end up with their cocknbalz black and blue and tore up because they take a double tap to the nuts.
It teaches you to use cover, concealment, proper target engagement and maintain SA.
Airsoft will teach you to get schwacked