An Alabama martial arts instructor alleges that U.S. Army personnel copied his published training materials on self-defense and gunfighting tactics into an instruction manual without giving him credit or compensation.
Johnny Lee Smith, who published his Vanguard Training Manuals through his company Triad Martial Arts, accused the Army of copyright infringement in a complaint filed Sept. 11 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Military Times reached out to Smith for an interview, but he did not respond in time for publication. The Army has also not yet responded in court.
According to the 28-page complaint, Smith opened Triad in 1996 after years of training across multiple disciplines and achieving a sixth-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Two years later, he established a formal program to teach law enforcement officers “ground-based or close-quarters self-defense tactics and techniques.” He went on to name it Self-Defense & Gunfighting Tactics, or SSGT.
Over the years, according to the complaint, Smith expanded his program and adapted it for a variety of fields, including the military, and to train instructors. Then, in 2018, he published and copyrighted the SSGT Vanguard Level One and SSGT Vanguard Level Two Instructor Program manuals.
“Mr. Smith personally created and developed the training system over more than two decades of research, development, and instruction, synthesizing principles drawn from his extensive background across multiple martial arts disciplines and adapting them for the operational realities faced by law enforcement officers,” the lawsuit says.
According to the complaint, Army personnel from the Military Police Academy in Fort Leonard attended Smith’s program when he offered it in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 7, 2020. At the time, the personnel attended the course at no charge because they were considering adopting the course.
The lawsuit adds that the personnel reported to a larger working group “that the SSGT Vanguard program was exactly what the Army needed for its Defensive Tactics program.” They would go on to attend several additional sessions from 2021 to 2023.
However, an unnamed witness told Smith that a member of the Army’s working party identified as “D.C. Reed” directed others in the group “to take the SSGT curriculum, rename the techniques, and rewrite them for inclusion in Army materials, stating that ‘Big Army can get away with that.’”
“The Army’s copying was undertaken not merely to reproduce Plaintiffs’ written expression but to appropriate the proprietary training system, methods, and techniques embodied in the Works so as to enable the Army to teach that system without authorization from or compensation to Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit says.
In 2024, the Army approved its own Defensive Tactics and instructor’s guide using Smith’s copyrighted content, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint adds that the Army’s materials “contained verbatim and near-verbatim language and descriptions of training techniques, as well as nearly identical depictions of those techniques, copied directly from the Works.”
The lawsuit also lists several instances in which it appears someone hastily transcribed Smith’s prose because the material was reproduced with “typographical errors and formatting anomalies.”
Before filing the lawsuit, the complaint says Smith submitted a claim for copyright infringement to a judge advocate’s office in 2025. Although the Army’s legal services initially found “sufficient information” to support a claim, it was ultimately denied in 2026.
For relief, Smith is asking the court for damages, along with court costs and attorneys’ fees.
Daniel Terrill is a contributor to Military Times. He’s been reporting on military issues, the gun industry, and the outdoors for nearly two decades. Although writing is his passion, he’s been a Marine, police officer, and, perhaps the most dangerous job of his career, a substitute teacher.