About kinetic fighting (kef) group

Kinetic Fighting Pty Ltd (KEF Group) is a world leader in teaching and enhancing operational skills for use in combat, law enforcement, security and related fields. KEF's elite team is comprised of former Australian Special Forces operators and police. Together, they have developed highly-advanced and customised skills-enhancement courses for the Australian Defence Force, police and other government agencies.

As leaders in the market, KEF is committed to using the group's vast knowledge and experience to help people enhance their skills, improve their preparedness to deal with violence, risk and crisis situations. In doing so, enabling clients and their personnel to reduce, rationalise and control fear. The result? Confident people with capabilities to match.

Kinetic Fighting began to take shape in 2006 when founder and CEO Paul Cale re-enlisted in the Australian Army. He was tasked with providing subject-matter expertise for Army’s Unarmed Combat Cell, but a critical shortage of Commando sergeants saw him posted on to the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, known as 4RAR Commando. 4RAR would later become the 2nd Commando Regiment. There, Paul was asked by Special Operations Commanders to rewrite the Australian Special Forces manual on Close-Quarter Fighting (CQF). He executed that brief in between — and during —five combat tours to Afghanistan and Iraq, which directly informed the program’s development.

As a Sergeant in the 2nd Commando Regiment, in 2011 Paul established the Integrated Combat Centre within the ‘2 CDO’ headquarters at Holsworthy Barracks, Sydney. This became the base for developing and delivering CQF training for SF units.

Creating a ‘train the trainer’ system for the CQF instructors of the Special Forces Training Centre (SFTC, now Special Operations Command/SOCOMD), Paul delivered his revamped program, which included the beginnings of Extreme Close Shooting (ECS). After requests from other government agencies, KEF has since redeveloped and enhanced ECS to also suit law-enforcement needs.

Before he left the Army in 2013 to establish KEF, Paul was invited by the US Military to teach his CQF system to several units of the American Special Operations Forces (SOF). Today, US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) are among those still using the Kinetic Fighting method within their official training package.

As a Commando sergeant, Paul also instructed the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams (DEA FAST). There are five of these elite tactical units, with one permanently on rotation in Afghanistan. They were sent to Holsworthy specifically to work with their Afghanistan partner force, the 2nd Commando Regiment. Paul worked with them as he did various other foreign special forces and law-enforcement units, which visit 2 CDO to attend symposiums and gain exposure to the Aussie Special Forces’ world-renowned methodology.

Visit https://kineticfighting.com.au/ to learn more.

Paul Cale currently oversees the delivery of the Army Combatives Program (ACP) and Individual Combat Behaviours (ICB) training for the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Regardless of who his client is, Paul is driven by the company mantra, ‘excellence over everything’.

“We pride ourselves on uncompromising standards of training and quality of content,” says the former Commando Sergeant.

Paul has been involved with the Australian Army for 30 years, either as a soldier or a preferred contractor, as he is today. For most of that time he was a member of the Special Forces (SF), serving in the 1st Commando Regiment and 4RAR Commando before he became a founding member of the 2nd Commando Regiment (2CDO) in 2009.

As a Commando, he was deployed five times on combat tours to Afghanistan and Iraq, and at home served as a team leader in the Tactical Assault Group, Australia’s elite anti-terror unit comprised of Commandos (TAG-East) and SAS operators (TAG-West). Paul’s personal hand-to-hand combat experiences in theatres of war, and those of his fellow Commandos, have guided his development of the Kinetic Fighting system. This evolution began when, as a sergeant with 2 CDO, Paul redeveloped the Close Quarter Fighting (CQF) course for Special Forces, and co-founded the 2 CDO Integrated Combat Centre (ICC). Paul later created the Infantry Integrated Combat (IIC) course being used by the entire Australian Infantry Corps, and is now the Army’s subject-matter expert in delivering the Army Combatives Program. ACP Level 1 is compulsory training for all Australian soldiers.

In 2017, Paul was appointed Head Coach of the Australian Defence Force Martial Arts Association (ADFMAA) and continues his work enabling soldiers to develop their unarmed combat skills. Paul had previously co-founded the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Combat Centre, working as a coach and specialist consultant to the AIS. For several years he worked with Olympic combat sports teams and their embedded sports scientists, and also led the implementation of Special Forces selection methodology in several other sports including cycling and water polo.

Paul has been involved in combat sports and martial arts since the early 1980s and holds black-belt ranks in eight different systems. These include Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), Kudo Daido Juku, Kyokushin karate and three aikido styles (Yoshinkan, Tomiki and Gyokushin Ryu), as well as the Olympic combat sports of judo and taekwondo. Paul was the first Australian to earn a Kudo black-belt and was the first branch chief of the International Kudo Federation Australia (IKFA). Now, in partnership with several other high-ranking budo instructors, Paul runs an independent martial arts training and assessment body, Jissen Budo International, which has branches around Australia and the world. In 2019, Paul was awarded his 7th Degree rank by Hanshi Bryson Keenan (8th Degree Black-belt, Goju-ryu karate), one of his first instructors and also a former soldier who contributed to previous Army combatives programs.

As KEF Group’s CEO, Paul draws on his experience and that of his specialist staff to ensure Kinetic Fighting maintains its position as a world leader in close-combat and personal protection training. T1 Combatives is under the leadership and guidance of KEF group and Paul Cale, the man himself, making sure that the standards of our training is directly from the source and of the highest level.