Showing posts with label Ambush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ambush. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
More training videos
Now this is what I am talking about! This is the kind of training we all should be doing, along with other forms also. This is a really good example of some seriously effective training.
Monday, May 16, 2016
Ambushing
Ambushing is a vital tool in Guerilla warfare, and the primary method we will be using to engage our adversaries in a SHTF scenario. Hit and run tactics will be very important to master, so hopefully, you guys are training on these concepts. I have posted videos below about ambushing that would be good for you to go over. Watch the videos, see the differences, then take what you learn and add in the most useful aspects for your AO to your training.
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Gear for the American Patriot: The Tactical Patriot Store
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Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Tactical Training
Here are some more videos for you guys to check out. These are pretty good examples of how you could be performing training. I know it is hard to catch training like this on a video and still get an sense of what is actually going on, but check them out, there is some good stuff here. I am trying to get you guys thinking about how to improve your training, so this is an ongoing topic that I am adding to little by little.
Please watch these videos and think about how training like that could help you and your group, and or how you can incorporate some of the concepts and ideas into your training. These videos show some different patrolling, reaction to contact, and hasty attack. These are some of the basic concepts that we need to be working on and mastering as well as some of the more advanced things that I have been talking about.
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Gear for the American Patriot: The Tactical Patriot Store
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Please watch these videos and think about how training like that could help you and your group, and or how you can incorporate some of the concepts and ideas into your training. These videos show some different patrolling, reaction to contact, and hasty attack. These are some of the basic concepts that we need to be working on and mastering as well as some of the more advanced things that I have been talking about.
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Monday, April 25, 2016
Advanced training
Once you have gained a basic proficiency with the concepts of "Shoot, Move, and Communicate", then you are ready to move on to more advanced topics, and ideas. With that said, I recommend the following be added to your group/personal/family training plan:
Advanced camouflage techniques
Use of Micro Terrain features
Night fighting (proper use of night vision, yours, not the electronic type)
Silhouetting
Use of shadows
Crossing danger areas covertly
Hand to hand combat
Use of surprise
Recce
Obstacle crossing
Movement through gaps
Exploiting breakthroughs
When to pull back
Developing your senses
Hit and run tactics
Shell scrapes and fighting positions
Clandestine movement
Use of natural formations/plant life
I will have much more on this topic in future posts.
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Gear for the American Patriot: The Tactical Patriot Store
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Advanced camouflage techniques
Use of Micro Terrain features
Night fighting (proper use of night vision, yours, not the electronic type)
Silhouetting
Use of shadows
Crossing danger areas covertly
Hand to hand combat
Use of surprise
Recce
Obstacle crossing
Movement through gaps
Exploiting breakthroughs
When to pull back
Developing your senses
Hit and run tactics
Shell scrapes and fighting positions
Clandestine movement
Use of natural formations/plant life
I will have much more on this topic in future posts.
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Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Ghillie suits
Ghillie suits are a must have for the patriot that intends to stand up when needed. If you are part of a Militia, a patriot group, OK CPT, OK QRF, III%er, or any other form of resistance, then you will need to have one of these. A Ghillie offers much better concealment than regular clothing in most environments. This is a good article I found over on the Survival Blog that I thought would be very good to share with you guys.
Ghillie Up, by Molon Labe
From a young age, I’ve been fascinated with hunters and snipers alike who stalk the wilds with a bushy cloak that conceals their location, like a ghost who conforms to his terrain and disappears in plain view. And so since an early teen I’ve researched, constructed and eventually refined the art of personal camouflage by way of the ghillie suit. The truth is that nothing can make you truly invisible and that even the best camouflage can be compromised with movement. However, through constant research and development both for myself, friends and eventually building ghillie making into a side business, I’ve learned many helpful facts that can help you in deciding if you want to add a ghillie suit or similar variant to your Bugout Bag (BOB).
First, we must ask, “Why ghillie up at all?” What are the benefits and downsides, and how can they respectively be maximized and minimized? Back in the 19th Century, the Scottish hunting guides and game wardens found it helped them to stalk closer to their prey when they wore burlap bags around their head and shoulders, which disrupted their distinctly “human” shape. From that point forward, increasingly greater forms of concealment were adopted by many long range marksman and snipers, and their three dimensional outfits became known as “ghillie” suits in honor of these guides and wardens who were known as Gillies. The great thing about three dimensional (3D) camouflage is that it disrupts a person’s outline and can confuse the prey’s depth perception as well, lending to the misconception that some of the wearer’s body is further or closer than it actually is. But more than this, the fringes of the outfit will, or at least should, if constructed properly, sway with the breeze. These things all contribute to make the 3D outfit much more effective than any two dimensional piece of camouflage. As much as [Woodland pattern or Multicam pattern] battledress uniforms (BDUs) may blend in with the surrounding environment, they still has noticeable edges that stand out much more plainly than the edges of the ghillie suit, which from a distance seem to fade gradually from its fringes to the background.
What camouflage must do in order to be effective is to look like anything but a human, rifle or any other equipment that you bring into the wilderness. At best it will look exactly like the surrounding foliage, but at least it should look like something other than human or man-made.
One of the greatest benefits of the ghillie is that it will disrupt your silhouette, which is extremely important, both in broad daylight and especially at night. Ask yourself, how do you distinguish an animal at night from the rest of the landscape? Unless you flash a light on them and see two reflecting eyes, it’s most commonly by distinguishing a solid shape that does not resemble nature against the background. That, and of course, movement. And although a ghillie suit cannot hide your location when moving quickly–especially transverse to your target’s field of vision–it will save you from noticeably not swaying with the breeze when everything around you is. It also can play with your target’s depth perception and can, especially with shadows, make you to appear dispersed and in that sense, human and animal eyes will skip right over you without noticing anything, as you will simply blend into the landscape. All these things will greatly aid in keeping your presence hidden. But what are some downsides?
Traditionally, ghillies were never worn except when absolutely necessary because they can be very hot and extremely restrictive if not constructed properly. They can be heavy, because the classic material used is burlap or jute, which not only will add several pounds to your clothing but will soak up any moisture like a sponge and make you feel like lead when it rains. And if you are planning on discharging a weapon around it at all, you will want to treat it with flame retardant when using burlap or jute. Yes, this makes it even heavier. Yes, this may have to be redone after it comes in contact with moisture. But let’s not forget that a bundle of clothing that adds significant depth from the sole of your foot to the top of your head is hard to keep in a packable bundle that will squeeze into your bag with all your other “necessary” gear. Because the simple fact is that if you are traveling any distance through a forest at any speed except for a slow stalk, you won’t be wearing a traditional ghillie.
Still, if it greatly aids in your concealment, are there ways to mitigate or bypass some of these downsides? Absolutely. Rule number one is that if you are going to be using this for anything more than purely recreational use and don’t want to be itching and being roasted alive in a heavy, restrictive outfit, then don’t use burlap or jute at all. I say this because I’ve been told by a current U.S. Army sniper instructor that Army snipers haven’t used conventional full ghillie suits in over 30 years, because when the material sheds away (and it will) it will leave a trail behind that bespeaks only one thing: “Sniper”. This has led to the discovery and death of a few snipers downrange. Even if the enemy doesn’t see a sniper team, they’ll call in mortars, artillery, a tracking team with dogs or anything available to them to obliterate or search out any area that may have a sniper.
So the question is, if 3D camouflage is so good, but discovery by its trail of shed fibers so dangerous, then what is the solution? In 2007, the US Army developed a synthetic thread that has completely replaced burlap and jute. This new thread is fire retardant, waterproof, water repellent, rot proof, mildew resistant, non-allergenic, and is considerably stronger and lighter than burlap or jute. The other great thing about this synthetic thread is that you won’t need nearly as much of it to get the job done and does not trap nearly as much heat, which is a real bonus when you’re down prone in the summer sun for hours on end.
Regardless of what material you decide to use for your ghillie, it will need to be securely fastened to a wearable outfit. This is most often done by tying it to a form of netting that has been either glued or sewn onto the desired outfit. This is effective, but in my opinion is not efficient. In my area we have four distinct seasons with at least three distinct colors schemes, and if I matched any one of them I would stand out in the other two. Remember this is three dimensional camouflage; it either matches the surrounding colors or it doesn’t. There’s no two dimensional magic you can create to deceive the eye like Multicam or similar patterns. This means that I either have to have three different suits in my closet or I can create a method to attach the right color scheme to a single outfit, and with this one outfit, I can have all the bells and whistles to make it the most comfortable, rugged, cool, and functional as I can. This is the approach that I’ve taken.
Now, how to do this? What I’ve done for my personal ghillie suit is to use Shoe Goo to attach earth tone 550 military grade parachute cord (“paracord”) onto the back side of the jacket, pants, and the top of my boonie hat. This was done in a crisscross grid-like pattern with about four inches between intersections. Onto this I’ve tied more than a dozen ½-inch quick-release plastic buckles–the same type which you find on many survival bracelets. And then using fish net with the synthetic thread tied evenly to it, I’ve cut out the outline of my ghillie jacket, pants and hat. To this I’ve tied on corresponding buckles which clip into those tied onto the parachute cord grid pattern. Now I have an easy method to apply the “ghillie cover” to my ghillie base. When not wearing the ghillie cover I can stow it in my pack and merely wear the ghillie base.
BTW, the base of my ghillie suit is a set of Multicam pattern fatigues so that I can easily blend into most places during every season except winter. However, when the ghillie suit is large enough to allow warmer clothes under it–as mine is–you can also attach a synthetic thread covering with pure white thread. This, although less than perfect, is very effective when you consider that the Multicam base bleeds through in areas and creates a “break up” result. A very helpful feature especially when you consider that solid white does not blend into any snow land environment except the North Pole.
The Ghillie Poncho
But the other approach is to not have a full ghillie suit at all and instead use a simple ghillie poncho. A ghillie poncho is usually constructed using durable but ultra-light fishing net and can be thrown over your existing clothes, tactical gear, etc. This is very useful, if you are going to be traveling through two different environments such as a forest where dark green and brown are key and a very green or very tan field, you may want to pack both options, and with the advent of ghillie ponchos which weigh only 2 to 3 pounds and can squeeze into a compact space, this is now a viable option.
Now, there are two major kinds of ghillie suits, and the same principle applies to ponchos; the soldier’s ghillie and the sniper’s ghillie. The difference between these is simply that the soldier’s ghillie has full 360 degree coverage front and back, top and bottom. Whereas the sniper’s ghillie suit keeps the chest and front of the legs (and often arms) slicked out to better facilitate crawling low to the ground. Both are effective but one tends towards the sniper’s uses better than the other. Bow hunters have no need to be low crawling and will prefer to have the soldier’s ghillie.
Now when it comes to getting your own, there are a few different options. With some supplies and a little creative thinking, thread and needle, you can create your own and make it with as many added features as you care to have. Among these are creating vents in the back of the jacket, pants or hat for better ventilation, putting more rugged material such as 1,000 Denier Cordura fabric on the elbow and knee sections, “slicking out” the front of jacket and pants for low crawling, adding a hydration pack, adding pockets, add paracord thumb and boot loops which can keep the ghillie from snaking up on your arms and legs when low crawling or reverse-low crawling, putting in rain proof sections, or any other enhancement you can dream up that could aid you for your particular area and mission.
But if you opt out of do-it-yourself (DIY), or buying from a ghillie store you’ll find a four-piece ghillie (that is: jacket, pants, head cover and rifle wrap) off the shelf that comes from China, at nearly every sporting goods store. And if your purpose is bow hunting or paintball, you’ll be hard pressed to find a less expensive solution. But if your life may be on the line, you won’t want something quite so flimsy and easy to track. Trust me, I have one and the thread will tear out all too easily when you brush by a limb or bush. These, although made with the new synthetic thread, are sewn on in bunches and not hand tied. In my opinion, this is worse should you brush up against anything in the wild, as it will come right out with a tug and will not biodegrade.
Now what should one look for in a ghillie suit? Number one it that it has to conceal you. It should be of the right color [to match your local foliage] and be constructed to fit your purposes. Secondly, it should be rugged. These suits, depending on the type of material chosen, often have the uncanny ability to reach out and grab every twig and edge of a bush within five feet. (This in itself will aid to the natural look and help to conceal you.) It should also be functional to your purposes. Ghillie suits are most often used only when hiding in a static location or while slow stalking. This however means that for most of the distance that you may need to trek through the woods, you won’t want to be wearing one. In keeping with this principle, I always look for something adequate for the job that will easily be carried, which means: compact and light. This will be situational dependent, but often times you may not have the need or space to carry a full-blown ghillie suit, which is one reason ghillie ponchos have become more popular.
Finally, how should we look at ghillies? If you are someone who puts their life on the line for those you love and go down range, I believe you should look at ghillies as another piece of kit. Again, it is something situational dependent, but mandatory to have ready to take, should you be able to take advantage of it. Whether you are a sniper, solider, or just a prepper it is advantageous and often times critical to be concealed. Ghillies are perhaps one of the best tools to deceive the human eye into believing that it sees nothing more than an uninteresting clump of nature.
Whether you construct one yourself, pick one up from a shop or shell out the cash to get a custom design from an online store, realize each design has advantages and some disadvantages. However, I must say, if you decide to take the next step in the art of camouflage, then you should train with it as you do the rest of your kit. If you simply buy one and put it aside to use on The Day but never use it when you train, then it will be an unnecessary frustration when you finally do, and you won’t be able to maximize the benefits as you should.
https://survivalblog.com/ghillie-up-by-molon-labe/
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Equip yourself for the troubled times ahead: The Tactical Patriot Store
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Ghillie Up, by Molon Labe
From a young age, I’ve been fascinated with hunters and snipers alike who stalk the wilds with a bushy cloak that conceals their location, like a ghost who conforms to his terrain and disappears in plain view. And so since an early teen I’ve researched, constructed and eventually refined the art of personal camouflage by way of the ghillie suit. The truth is that nothing can make you truly invisible and that even the best camouflage can be compromised with movement. However, through constant research and development both for myself, friends and eventually building ghillie making into a side business, I’ve learned many helpful facts that can help you in deciding if you want to add a ghillie suit or similar variant to your Bugout Bag (BOB).
First, we must ask, “Why ghillie up at all?” What are the benefits and downsides, and how can they respectively be maximized and minimized? Back in the 19th Century, the Scottish hunting guides and game wardens found it helped them to stalk closer to their prey when they wore burlap bags around their head and shoulders, which disrupted their distinctly “human” shape. From that point forward, increasingly greater forms of concealment were adopted by many long range marksman and snipers, and their three dimensional outfits became known as “ghillie” suits in honor of these guides and wardens who were known as Gillies. The great thing about three dimensional (3D) camouflage is that it disrupts a person’s outline and can confuse the prey’s depth perception as well, lending to the misconception that some of the wearer’s body is further or closer than it actually is. But more than this, the fringes of the outfit will, or at least should, if constructed properly, sway with the breeze. These things all contribute to make the 3D outfit much more effective than any two dimensional piece of camouflage. As much as [Woodland pattern or Multicam pattern] battledress uniforms (BDUs) may blend in with the surrounding environment, they still has noticeable edges that stand out much more plainly than the edges of the ghillie suit, which from a distance seem to fade gradually from its fringes to the background.
What camouflage must do in order to be effective is to look like anything but a human, rifle or any other equipment that you bring into the wilderness. At best it will look exactly like the surrounding foliage, but at least it should look like something other than human or man-made.
One of the greatest benefits of the ghillie is that it will disrupt your silhouette, which is extremely important, both in broad daylight and especially at night. Ask yourself, how do you distinguish an animal at night from the rest of the landscape? Unless you flash a light on them and see two reflecting eyes, it’s most commonly by distinguishing a solid shape that does not resemble nature against the background. That, and of course, movement. And although a ghillie suit cannot hide your location when moving quickly–especially transverse to your target’s field of vision–it will save you from noticeably not swaying with the breeze when everything around you is. It also can play with your target’s depth perception and can, especially with shadows, make you to appear dispersed and in that sense, human and animal eyes will skip right over you without noticing anything, as you will simply blend into the landscape. All these things will greatly aid in keeping your presence hidden. But what are some downsides?
Traditionally, ghillies were never worn except when absolutely necessary because they can be very hot and extremely restrictive if not constructed properly. They can be heavy, because the classic material used is burlap or jute, which not only will add several pounds to your clothing but will soak up any moisture like a sponge and make you feel like lead when it rains. And if you are planning on discharging a weapon around it at all, you will want to treat it with flame retardant when using burlap or jute. Yes, this makes it even heavier. Yes, this may have to be redone after it comes in contact with moisture. But let’s not forget that a bundle of clothing that adds significant depth from the sole of your foot to the top of your head is hard to keep in a packable bundle that will squeeze into your bag with all your other “necessary” gear. Because the simple fact is that if you are traveling any distance through a forest at any speed except for a slow stalk, you won’t be wearing a traditional ghillie.
Still, if it greatly aids in your concealment, are there ways to mitigate or bypass some of these downsides? Absolutely. Rule number one is that if you are going to be using this for anything more than purely recreational use and don’t want to be itching and being roasted alive in a heavy, restrictive outfit, then don’t use burlap or jute at all. I say this because I’ve been told by a current U.S. Army sniper instructor that Army snipers haven’t used conventional full ghillie suits in over 30 years, because when the material sheds away (and it will) it will leave a trail behind that bespeaks only one thing: “Sniper”. This has led to the discovery and death of a few snipers downrange. Even if the enemy doesn’t see a sniper team, they’ll call in mortars, artillery, a tracking team with dogs or anything available to them to obliterate or search out any area that may have a sniper.
So the question is, if 3D camouflage is so good, but discovery by its trail of shed fibers so dangerous, then what is the solution? In 2007, the US Army developed a synthetic thread that has completely replaced burlap and jute. This new thread is fire retardant, waterproof, water repellent, rot proof, mildew resistant, non-allergenic, and is considerably stronger and lighter than burlap or jute. The other great thing about this synthetic thread is that you won’t need nearly as much of it to get the job done and does not trap nearly as much heat, which is a real bonus when you’re down prone in the summer sun for hours on end.
Regardless of what material you decide to use for your ghillie, it will need to be securely fastened to a wearable outfit. This is most often done by tying it to a form of netting that has been either glued or sewn onto the desired outfit. This is effective, but in my opinion is not efficient. In my area we have four distinct seasons with at least three distinct colors schemes, and if I matched any one of them I would stand out in the other two. Remember this is three dimensional camouflage; it either matches the surrounding colors or it doesn’t. There’s no two dimensional magic you can create to deceive the eye like Multicam or similar patterns. This means that I either have to have three different suits in my closet or I can create a method to attach the right color scheme to a single outfit, and with this one outfit, I can have all the bells and whistles to make it the most comfortable, rugged, cool, and functional as I can. This is the approach that I’ve taken.
Now, how to do this? What I’ve done for my personal ghillie suit is to use Shoe Goo to attach earth tone 550 military grade parachute cord (“paracord”) onto the back side of the jacket, pants, and the top of my boonie hat. This was done in a crisscross grid-like pattern with about four inches between intersections. Onto this I’ve tied more than a dozen ½-inch quick-release plastic buckles–the same type which you find on many survival bracelets. And then using fish net with the synthetic thread tied evenly to it, I’ve cut out the outline of my ghillie jacket, pants and hat. To this I’ve tied on corresponding buckles which clip into those tied onto the parachute cord grid pattern. Now I have an easy method to apply the “ghillie cover” to my ghillie base. When not wearing the ghillie cover I can stow it in my pack and merely wear the ghillie base.
BTW, the base of my ghillie suit is a set of Multicam pattern fatigues so that I can easily blend into most places during every season except winter. However, when the ghillie suit is large enough to allow warmer clothes under it–as mine is–you can also attach a synthetic thread covering with pure white thread. This, although less than perfect, is very effective when you consider that the Multicam base bleeds through in areas and creates a “break up” result. A very helpful feature especially when you consider that solid white does not blend into any snow land environment except the North Pole.
The Ghillie Poncho
But the other approach is to not have a full ghillie suit at all and instead use a simple ghillie poncho. A ghillie poncho is usually constructed using durable but ultra-light fishing net and can be thrown over your existing clothes, tactical gear, etc. This is very useful, if you are going to be traveling through two different environments such as a forest where dark green and brown are key and a very green or very tan field, you may want to pack both options, and with the advent of ghillie ponchos which weigh only 2 to 3 pounds and can squeeze into a compact space, this is now a viable option.
Now, there are two major kinds of ghillie suits, and the same principle applies to ponchos; the soldier’s ghillie and the sniper’s ghillie. The difference between these is simply that the soldier’s ghillie has full 360 degree coverage front and back, top and bottom. Whereas the sniper’s ghillie suit keeps the chest and front of the legs (and often arms) slicked out to better facilitate crawling low to the ground. Both are effective but one tends towards the sniper’s uses better than the other. Bow hunters have no need to be low crawling and will prefer to have the soldier’s ghillie.
Now when it comes to getting your own, there are a few different options. With some supplies and a little creative thinking, thread and needle, you can create your own and make it with as many added features as you care to have. Among these are creating vents in the back of the jacket, pants or hat for better ventilation, putting more rugged material such as 1,000 Denier Cordura fabric on the elbow and knee sections, “slicking out” the front of jacket and pants for low crawling, adding a hydration pack, adding pockets, add paracord thumb and boot loops which can keep the ghillie from snaking up on your arms and legs when low crawling or reverse-low crawling, putting in rain proof sections, or any other enhancement you can dream up that could aid you for your particular area and mission.
But if you opt out of do-it-yourself (DIY), or buying from a ghillie store you’ll find a four-piece ghillie (that is: jacket, pants, head cover and rifle wrap) off the shelf that comes from China, at nearly every sporting goods store. And if your purpose is bow hunting or paintball, you’ll be hard pressed to find a less expensive solution. But if your life may be on the line, you won’t want something quite so flimsy and easy to track. Trust me, I have one and the thread will tear out all too easily when you brush by a limb or bush. These, although made with the new synthetic thread, are sewn on in bunches and not hand tied. In my opinion, this is worse should you brush up against anything in the wild, as it will come right out with a tug and will not biodegrade.
Now what should one look for in a ghillie suit? Number one it that it has to conceal you. It should be of the right color [to match your local foliage] and be constructed to fit your purposes. Secondly, it should be rugged. These suits, depending on the type of material chosen, often have the uncanny ability to reach out and grab every twig and edge of a bush within five feet. (This in itself will aid to the natural look and help to conceal you.) It should also be functional to your purposes. Ghillie suits are most often used only when hiding in a static location or while slow stalking. This however means that for most of the distance that you may need to trek through the woods, you won’t want to be wearing one. In keeping with this principle, I always look for something adequate for the job that will easily be carried, which means: compact and light. This will be situational dependent, but often times you may not have the need or space to carry a full-blown ghillie suit, which is one reason ghillie ponchos have become more popular.
Finally, how should we look at ghillies? If you are someone who puts their life on the line for those you love and go down range, I believe you should look at ghillies as another piece of kit. Again, it is something situational dependent, but mandatory to have ready to take, should you be able to take advantage of it. Whether you are a sniper, solider, or just a prepper it is advantageous and often times critical to be concealed. Ghillies are perhaps one of the best tools to deceive the human eye into believing that it sees nothing more than an uninteresting clump of nature.
Whether you construct one yourself, pick one up from a shop or shell out the cash to get a custom design from an online store, realize each design has advantages and some disadvantages. However, I must say, if you decide to take the next step in the art of camouflage, then you should train with it as you do the rest of your kit. If you simply buy one and put it aside to use on The Day but never use it when you train, then it will be an unnecessary frustration when you finally do, and you won’t be able to maximize the benefits as you should.
https://survivalblog.com/ghillie-up-by-molon-labe/
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Saturday, February 20, 2016
How to survive a roadblock ambush
Surviving an Expedient Ambush Roadblock While Traveling by Vehicle, by M.W.
In the days following a societal collapse, there will be some people who will be on the move from where the problems exist to where they hope safety lies. There can be many reasons why people are on the move, and an equal number of reasons why someone else may wish to stop your progress. Getting on the move and out of a hostile area as early as possible in the wake of a collapse is a significant key to one’s survival, as well has having buddies to cover you during your travel.
The sooner you get on the road, the less your chances of encountering problems. A few people will recognize the early signs of collapse and get moving out of town long before traffic becomes a problem. Others will recognize the issue within twenty-four hours after the event takes place, and will be on the leading edge of the traffic during the exodus. The majority will not realize the seriousness until it is too late. These people will get caught-up in the traffic jam that will rival the exodus of Houston during Hurricane Rita, where I-45 and I-10 were packed full of cars stopped on the highway for 100 miles. Many people ran out of gas on the side of the road and found themselves without food or water since they had only moved a few miles in four hours.
You may be a well prepared family, but for one reason or another are caught on your heals when a collapse occurs. This leads you to stay put longer than you would have liked, but you have no better tactical choices but to lay low at home or work for a few days before bugging out. You do not want to get caught in a highway traffic jam following a collapse. If you get stuck, you will have to leave most of what you packed into your vehicle(s) and move out on foot amongst the thousands of ill-prepared people on the roads doing things they would never have considered during normal times.
Those who are forced to wait out the initial exodus and are moving out of urban areas several days or weeks after the collapse will have a higher probability of coming in contact with an expedient ambush roadblock, both in the city and on rural roads outside of small towns. An expedient ambush roadblock is one set-up in haste with readily available materials and personnel. There will be plenty of desperate people who were caught unprepared for such an event; their lack of morals and innate nature to survive will drive them to take from others, with deadly force if necessary. It is your job to protect your family and yourself from these threats, especially when on the move.
While traveling in a vehicle on the roads, you may encounter various types of roadblocks or ambush points. Some may be fairly elaborate, while others may be quite simple. All are equally deadly. The primary tactic you will need to thread your way safely through one of these expedient ambush roadblocks is what I call R.O.C.S.: Recognition, Observation, Covering Fire, and Speed.
Recognition:
Recognizing that something you see ahead is a potential ambush site is the first key to success. An ambush site can appear as a traffic accident (as illustrated in Patriots), a fallen tree near or on the road, abandoned/broken down vehicles, anything blocking all or part of the road, detours, refugees, high ground on one or both sides of the road, bridges, and anything that looks like it does not belong on, or near, a road. These are the types of expedient ambush sites that someone may quickly create in the days following a societal collapse. It is up to whomever is leading, to recognize that a potential exists and to move into the observation phase.
Observation:
Once you recognize a likely ambush point (LAP), you have two choices: divert your course and completely avoid the circumstance, or observe and evaluate the site. You can either stop well short of the potential ambush point and observe through a scope or binoculars, or have a passenger continue to observe while on the move. Observation is a form of Intel. Look for signs of movement, or things that seem out of place. Reverse what you see and put yourself in the place of the ambusher. Where would you hide? How would you set it up? How many people would you need to pull off an ambush? What weapons would you use? What tactics would you employ? What is your end game?
At this point, you need to determine if what you see is worth the risk of approach or if you need to turn around and find a different route (if possible). Anyone traveling with you should also evaluate the situation and help with risk assessment. Once a decision is made to approach and pass the observed site, cover[ing fire] is needed.
Covering Fire:
This is a two or more person/vehicle job. This means that if it is just you, your wife and the kids, that you need to move out of town in two vehicles. Hopefully you have friends traveling with you to a new location who also have a vehicle and weapons. For [over watching] cover[ing fire] during the operation, the lead vehicle stops at a distance from the LAP that is within the range of the weapon being employed. For most weapon platforms a good distance is 100-300 yards. This ensures accurate shots and plenty of ballistic energy. The lead vehicle should place their vehicle at a 45-degree angle to the direction of travel and the weapon system should then be employed across the hood so that the engine block provides a [limited] ballistic shield for those person(s) providing cover[ing fire].
The trailing vehicles should move past the lead vehicle with Speed. Once beyond the LAP, those vehicles stop and provide cover for the other vehicle(s) yet to pass through the site. Again, the vehicles that have already passed the LAP should stop within range of the weapon(s) being employed and turn their vehicles 45-degrees to the road and take personal cover behind the engine, covering the passage of the trailing vehicles.
[JWR Adds: The concept of covering fire is actually better termed suppressive fire. The term “cover”, properly, only applies to barriers that provide ballistic protection to those behind them. So “covering fire” does not provide cover, nor concealment, only suppression!]
Speed:
Passing through the LAP with adequate speed, and setting up a covering position on the far side for the trailing vehicles as fast as possible is key to minimizing exposure for all concerned. You do not want to drive so fast that you could lose control of your vehicle if you suddenly had to swerve or take significant evasive action.
Having short-range communications for these types of situations is also a smart idea. This can be done with CB radios, or inexpensive GMRS/eXRS two-way radios. Radios will be especially helpful during nighttime operations of this type. When the lead vehicle can communicate to trailing vehicle(s) that there is a LAP ahead, this can start a desired chain reaction that can significantly increase the odds of surviving one of these situations. Communications can also be an aid when the lead vehicle passes an unseen ambush point and can radio a warning to following vehicles, which can immediately render covering fire and/or take evasive actions.
The following is a fictitious scenario using all of the aforementioned, with three families in three vehicles approaching a potential ambush site seen from one mile away. The cars are traveling 200 yards apart. (After the SHTF, when traveling by foot or vehicle, travel should always be conducted in tactical columns, where a specified distance is maintained between people or vehicles. Staying too close together and/or tailgating are unacceptable risks after SHTF, when traveling.)
Lead vehicle (vehicle 1): “LAP ahead, one mile”
Trailing vehicles stop in place, while vehicle 1 moves forward another 1/2-mile and evaluates the LAP. The lead vehicle stops and uses 10×50 binoculars to scan the area. No movement is noticed, but it looks like a large tree was dropped across one lane of the highway. The base is obviously recently cut, and there are no other dead trees nearby. The leaves still have a greenish tint and have not yet browned, but are wilted.
Lead vehicle radios the trailing vehicles: “No movement seen, there is a way past the LAP on the opposite shoulder and grass. Watch the tree line on the right side of the road. Lots of dense cover there. We will move ahead to 200 yards and set-up.”
The lead vehicle approaches slowly to within 200 yards while the trailing vehicles move to within ½ mile away. The lead vehicle stops in the road and turns to 45-degrees to the direction of travel and both occupants exit the drivers side and set up across the hood with their AR-10 rifles with ACOG scopes.
Lead vehicle radios the trailing vehicles: “Go!”
The first trailing vehicle (vehicle 2) gets up to speed and approaches the LAP while the lead vehicle continues to scan the LAP through their scopes, ready to fire upon any threat. The vehicle passes the LAP with no problems and goes 200 yards beyond and sets up an over watch position on the other side, careful to orient themselves so as not to fire upon the vehicles on the other side. They are covering with scoped AR-10s scanning the LAP.
Vehicle 2 radios: “We are through and set up. Go!”
While vehicles 1 and 2 maintain covering positions, the last vehicle (vehicle 3) gets up to speed and starts to pass the LAP. As they do so, gunfire erupts from the tree line (in this instance, the ambushers were caught unaware by the first vehicle and were alert when the next one came through.) Vehicles 1 and 2 open fire on the tree line, while the passenger in vehicle 3 opens fire while passing the ambush. Once beyond the ambush point, vehicle 3 sets up 220 yards on the other side of the ambush to the rear and right of vehicle 2, and provides covering fire along with vehicle 2.
Vehicle 3 radios: “We’re set. Covering. No fire from the trees. Go!”
Vehicle 1 remounts and charges through the ambush point with no gunfire coming from the tree line. They drive beyond the other two vehicles and all personnel remount their vehicles and resume their travels.
At this point, it would be wise to find a secure place to stop and evaluate your persons and vehicles. You don’t need to stop all jumbled together, especially if there is more than one person per vehicle and everyone has a radio. Each vehicle stops a couple hundred yards apart and while one person provides cover, the other goes over the vehicle and passengers, looking for trouble.
You would want to check the tires, engine soft points (hoses, belts, etc.) and look for leaks (anti-freeze, fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, etc.) Be sure to check each other carefully as adrenaline will be high and a person who has been shot or injured may not feel a wound at this point. Address any issues as quickly as possible and continue moving.
Other Considerations
Stopping to evaluate and/or cover a position may not be advisable in some circumstances. You do the best you can at evaluating while on the move, radioing your findings to your travel companions, and then pushing through. This is where speed comes in to play. The faster you can get through the LAP the better your chances of survival. Your passenger (if you have one) helps with navigation, assessing threats, and provides cover during the encounter.
Choosing weapons is always a difficult decision, especially if you are going to be defending your life with them. For situations such as the one presented above, the longer the effective range of the weapon, the further away you can stay from the LAP, increasing your chances of survival. You must also consider that just because you can easily shoot a M1A or even a .50 Barrett, your wife or teenager may not be able to adequately handle such a weapon in a life-or-death cover fire situation. [So a .223, 5.45×39, or 7.62x39mm rifle may be more apropos.]
Having a scope on your weapon will also increase your shot accuracy and your ability to observe the area for movement while your weapon system is employed. We all want to be accurate with open sights at long ranges, but if you are trying to hit the small exposed body part of a person behind cover at 250 meters, it is easier to find the body part to shoot at with a scope. People do not always present themselves as a nice squared-up silhouette like at a shooting range. When your target has taken cover, you may only get to see the top of a head, or part of an arm or leg. Putting a bullet in an extremity might not kill them, but it may take them out of the fight.
For night operations, having some form of night vision technology could become critical. These systems allow you to see through the darkness and into the darkest of shadows. Generation I systems are only adequate to about 50 meters and cost under $200. Generation I+ systems have a little more clarity and cost $300-500. Generation II and II+ systems can now be had for less than $1,000 new, and can be found cheaper from time to time in the used marketplace. These go up to $3,500 depending on features and manufacturer, and have a range from 100 to 200 meters with quite clear optics for the price. Generation III night vision has come down quite a bit and can be had for $3,500-$5,500. Personally, I cannot see enough difference between quality (with the exception of extended recognition range) of the Gen II and Gen III night vision to compel me to spend the extra $2,500+. There is also “Generation IV” night vision, which I know very little about. Prices seem to be in the $4,500-5,500 range. A Gen II, III, or IV night vision monocular could be a life saver, especially if you can get one that comes with an optional weapons mount.
https://survivalblog.com/surviving_an_expedient_ambush/
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Equip yourself for the troubled times ahead: The Tactical Patriot Store
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In the days following a societal collapse, there will be some people who will be on the move from where the problems exist to where they hope safety lies. There can be many reasons why people are on the move, and an equal number of reasons why someone else may wish to stop your progress. Getting on the move and out of a hostile area as early as possible in the wake of a collapse is a significant key to one’s survival, as well has having buddies to cover you during your travel.
The sooner you get on the road, the less your chances of encountering problems. A few people will recognize the early signs of collapse and get moving out of town long before traffic becomes a problem. Others will recognize the issue within twenty-four hours after the event takes place, and will be on the leading edge of the traffic during the exodus. The majority will not realize the seriousness until it is too late. These people will get caught-up in the traffic jam that will rival the exodus of Houston during Hurricane Rita, where I-45 and I-10 were packed full of cars stopped on the highway for 100 miles. Many people ran out of gas on the side of the road and found themselves without food or water since they had only moved a few miles in four hours.
You may be a well prepared family, but for one reason or another are caught on your heals when a collapse occurs. This leads you to stay put longer than you would have liked, but you have no better tactical choices but to lay low at home or work for a few days before bugging out. You do not want to get caught in a highway traffic jam following a collapse. If you get stuck, you will have to leave most of what you packed into your vehicle(s) and move out on foot amongst the thousands of ill-prepared people on the roads doing things they would never have considered during normal times.
Those who are forced to wait out the initial exodus and are moving out of urban areas several days or weeks after the collapse will have a higher probability of coming in contact with an expedient ambush roadblock, both in the city and on rural roads outside of small towns. An expedient ambush roadblock is one set-up in haste with readily available materials and personnel. There will be plenty of desperate people who were caught unprepared for such an event; their lack of morals and innate nature to survive will drive them to take from others, with deadly force if necessary. It is your job to protect your family and yourself from these threats, especially when on the move.
While traveling in a vehicle on the roads, you may encounter various types of roadblocks or ambush points. Some may be fairly elaborate, while others may be quite simple. All are equally deadly. The primary tactic you will need to thread your way safely through one of these expedient ambush roadblocks is what I call R.O.C.S.: Recognition, Observation, Covering Fire, and Speed.
Recognition:
Recognizing that something you see ahead is a potential ambush site is the first key to success. An ambush site can appear as a traffic accident (as illustrated in Patriots), a fallen tree near or on the road, abandoned/broken down vehicles, anything blocking all or part of the road, detours, refugees, high ground on one or both sides of the road, bridges, and anything that looks like it does not belong on, or near, a road. These are the types of expedient ambush sites that someone may quickly create in the days following a societal collapse. It is up to whomever is leading, to recognize that a potential exists and to move into the observation phase.
Observation:
Once you recognize a likely ambush point (LAP), you have two choices: divert your course and completely avoid the circumstance, or observe and evaluate the site. You can either stop well short of the potential ambush point and observe through a scope or binoculars, or have a passenger continue to observe while on the move. Observation is a form of Intel. Look for signs of movement, or things that seem out of place. Reverse what you see and put yourself in the place of the ambusher. Where would you hide? How would you set it up? How many people would you need to pull off an ambush? What weapons would you use? What tactics would you employ? What is your end game?
At this point, you need to determine if what you see is worth the risk of approach or if you need to turn around and find a different route (if possible). Anyone traveling with you should also evaluate the situation and help with risk assessment. Once a decision is made to approach and pass the observed site, cover[ing fire] is needed.
Covering Fire:
This is a two or more person/vehicle job. This means that if it is just you, your wife and the kids, that you need to move out of town in two vehicles. Hopefully you have friends traveling with you to a new location who also have a vehicle and weapons. For [over watching] cover[ing fire] during the operation, the lead vehicle stops at a distance from the LAP that is within the range of the weapon being employed. For most weapon platforms a good distance is 100-300 yards. This ensures accurate shots and plenty of ballistic energy. The lead vehicle should place their vehicle at a 45-degree angle to the direction of travel and the weapon system should then be employed across the hood so that the engine block provides a [limited] ballistic shield for those person(s) providing cover[ing fire].
The trailing vehicles should move past the lead vehicle with Speed. Once beyond the LAP, those vehicles stop and provide cover for the other vehicle(s) yet to pass through the site. Again, the vehicles that have already passed the LAP should stop within range of the weapon(s) being employed and turn their vehicles 45-degrees to the road and take personal cover behind the engine, covering the passage of the trailing vehicles.
[JWR Adds: The concept of covering fire is actually better termed suppressive fire. The term “cover”, properly, only applies to barriers that provide ballistic protection to those behind them. So “covering fire” does not provide cover, nor concealment, only suppression!]
Speed:
Passing through the LAP with adequate speed, and setting up a covering position on the far side for the trailing vehicles as fast as possible is key to minimizing exposure for all concerned. You do not want to drive so fast that you could lose control of your vehicle if you suddenly had to swerve or take significant evasive action.
Having short-range communications for these types of situations is also a smart idea. This can be done with CB radios, or inexpensive GMRS/eXRS two-way radios. Radios will be especially helpful during nighttime operations of this type. When the lead vehicle can communicate to trailing vehicle(s) that there is a LAP ahead, this can start a desired chain reaction that can significantly increase the odds of surviving one of these situations. Communications can also be an aid when the lead vehicle passes an unseen ambush point and can radio a warning to following vehicles, which can immediately render covering fire and/or take evasive actions.
The following is a fictitious scenario using all of the aforementioned, with three families in three vehicles approaching a potential ambush site seen from one mile away. The cars are traveling 200 yards apart. (After the SHTF, when traveling by foot or vehicle, travel should always be conducted in tactical columns, where a specified distance is maintained between people or vehicles. Staying too close together and/or tailgating are unacceptable risks after SHTF, when traveling.)
Lead vehicle (vehicle 1): “LAP ahead, one mile”
Trailing vehicles stop in place, while vehicle 1 moves forward another 1/2-mile and evaluates the LAP. The lead vehicle stops and uses 10×50 binoculars to scan the area. No movement is noticed, but it looks like a large tree was dropped across one lane of the highway. The base is obviously recently cut, and there are no other dead trees nearby. The leaves still have a greenish tint and have not yet browned, but are wilted.
Lead vehicle radios the trailing vehicles: “No movement seen, there is a way past the LAP on the opposite shoulder and grass. Watch the tree line on the right side of the road. Lots of dense cover there. We will move ahead to 200 yards and set-up.”
The lead vehicle approaches slowly to within 200 yards while the trailing vehicles move to within ½ mile away. The lead vehicle stops in the road and turns to 45-degrees to the direction of travel and both occupants exit the drivers side and set up across the hood with their AR-10 rifles with ACOG scopes.
Lead vehicle radios the trailing vehicles: “Go!”
The first trailing vehicle (vehicle 2) gets up to speed and approaches the LAP while the lead vehicle continues to scan the LAP through their scopes, ready to fire upon any threat. The vehicle passes the LAP with no problems and goes 200 yards beyond and sets up an over watch position on the other side, careful to orient themselves so as not to fire upon the vehicles on the other side. They are covering with scoped AR-10s scanning the LAP.
Vehicle 2 radios: “We are through and set up. Go!”
While vehicles 1 and 2 maintain covering positions, the last vehicle (vehicle 3) gets up to speed and starts to pass the LAP. As they do so, gunfire erupts from the tree line (in this instance, the ambushers were caught unaware by the first vehicle and were alert when the next one came through.) Vehicles 1 and 2 open fire on the tree line, while the passenger in vehicle 3 opens fire while passing the ambush. Once beyond the ambush point, vehicle 3 sets up 220 yards on the other side of the ambush to the rear and right of vehicle 2, and provides covering fire along with vehicle 2.
Vehicle 3 radios: “We’re set. Covering. No fire from the trees. Go!”
Vehicle 1 remounts and charges through the ambush point with no gunfire coming from the tree line. They drive beyond the other two vehicles and all personnel remount their vehicles and resume their travels.
At this point, it would be wise to find a secure place to stop and evaluate your persons and vehicles. You don’t need to stop all jumbled together, especially if there is more than one person per vehicle and everyone has a radio. Each vehicle stops a couple hundred yards apart and while one person provides cover, the other goes over the vehicle and passengers, looking for trouble.
You would want to check the tires, engine soft points (hoses, belts, etc.) and look for leaks (anti-freeze, fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, etc.) Be sure to check each other carefully as adrenaline will be high and a person who has been shot or injured may not feel a wound at this point. Address any issues as quickly as possible and continue moving.
Other Considerations
Stopping to evaluate and/or cover a position may not be advisable in some circumstances. You do the best you can at evaluating while on the move, radioing your findings to your travel companions, and then pushing through. This is where speed comes in to play. The faster you can get through the LAP the better your chances of survival. Your passenger (if you have one) helps with navigation, assessing threats, and provides cover during the encounter.
Choosing weapons is always a difficult decision, especially if you are going to be defending your life with them. For situations such as the one presented above, the longer the effective range of the weapon, the further away you can stay from the LAP, increasing your chances of survival. You must also consider that just because you can easily shoot a M1A or even a .50 Barrett, your wife or teenager may not be able to adequately handle such a weapon in a life-or-death cover fire situation. [So a .223, 5.45×39, or 7.62x39mm rifle may be more apropos.]
Having a scope on your weapon will also increase your shot accuracy and your ability to observe the area for movement while your weapon system is employed. We all want to be accurate with open sights at long ranges, but if you are trying to hit the small exposed body part of a person behind cover at 250 meters, it is easier to find the body part to shoot at with a scope. People do not always present themselves as a nice squared-up silhouette like at a shooting range. When your target has taken cover, you may only get to see the top of a head, or part of an arm or leg. Putting a bullet in an extremity might not kill them, but it may take them out of the fight.
For night operations, having some form of night vision technology could become critical. These systems allow you to see through the darkness and into the darkest of shadows. Generation I systems are only adequate to about 50 meters and cost under $200. Generation I+ systems have a little more clarity and cost $300-500. Generation II and II+ systems can now be had for less than $1,000 new, and can be found cheaper from time to time in the used marketplace. These go up to $3,500 depending on features and manufacturer, and have a range from 100 to 200 meters with quite clear optics for the price. Generation III night vision has come down quite a bit and can be had for $3,500-$5,500. Personally, I cannot see enough difference between quality (with the exception of extended recognition range) of the Gen II and Gen III night vision to compel me to spend the extra $2,500+. There is also “Generation IV” night vision, which I know very little about. Prices seem to be in the $4,500-5,500 range. A Gen II, III, or IV night vision monocular could be a life saver, especially if you can get one that comes with an optional weapons mount.
https://survivalblog.com/surviving_an_expedient_ambush/
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Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Counter Ambush Tactics
Counter Ambush Tactics thanks to The Bunker
Are you an accident just waiting to happen by blindly walking into an ambush, or do you take the tactical “high ground” to avoid such an event?
Rarely do the “bad guys” announce their intended attack upon you. Rather, they lie in wait to seize the element of surprise. They pounce when you are least aware. A burglar creeping through your house won’'t turn on the lights or make unnecessary noise to give you a chance to arm yourself. A mugger won'’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk and risk you taking a detour away from the “fatal funnel.” And, you won'’t find a person about to carjack you leaning up against your car as you approach. Although many violent attacks occur as a result of an ambush, does your training include counter-ambush tactics?
It should. Most martial arts training start with two opponents facing each other and giving the proper salutations. Western boxers come up to each other before a bout and knock gloves together as a sign of good sportsmanship before the first round. Asian based fighters sharply bow or bring their hands together in a Yin Yang fashion then slip into a combative stance. European Fencers salute one another with their naked blades, as do Filipino Kali practitioners. Although this practice is very colorful and rich in tradition it can negatively condition fighters who are in it for purely survival reasons. Subconsciously this practice sends a message to the fighter that there is a preparatory period just prior to combat. To many my statement may sound ludicrous, but ANYTHING we do in training can carry over into actual combat. Let me give you a startling example.
In law enforcement training many Defensive Tactics (hand-to-hand combat) programs use a hard plastic red colored handgun when practicing gun retention techniques, car stops or subject stops (police contact with a person or arrests). The “red guns” are used in place of real firearms to avoid a possible Negligent Discharge (ND). They are red so that at first glance everyone involved in the training knows that they are a training tool and not the real thing. Using real firearms is also a common practice, but it requires weapon safety checks, and marking the barrel with colored tape. The colored guns makes for an overall safer training environment. However, after repeated use of these colored replicas many officers became so conditioned to the red color that on occasion, actors who played the role of the contactee (the person being stopped by the police) pulled out a red wallet or other red object and suddenly found themselves being “shot.” Why? because, the officers associated the color red with a threat. It'’s for this very reason that many agencies paint their training guns black or silver, or buy products that are already colored similar to that of actual firearms.
Rituals in training, salutations before combative encounters, are very much like the conditioning of the red guns. Although innocent at first, they can lock a person into a potentially dangerous behavioral pattern. In this article we will examine training methods that will prepare you for sudden violent ambushes. Before the ambush Throughout my law enforcement career, and even today in my current duties, one of my biggest concerns is walking into an ambush. Just last year an officer in my department was killed in an ambush. A man armed with an AK47 assault rifle waited at a mini market frequented by police officers. When the officer drove up to get a cup of coffee the suspect came out of the store and sprayed the patrol car with bullets. The officer never had a chance to exit his vehicle. He was cut down before he knew what hit him. However, you don'’t have to be wearing a uniform to walk into the center of an ambush. If you'’re not paying attention you can end up walking into a store or a bank and find yourself right in the middle of a robbery as you are doing your errands; many people have.
Whenever you are going up to an ATM machine, inside a bank, airport, or other potential “targets” you should always observe the surroundings as you make your approach. For example, as you walk up to a liquor store you should scan the immediate area for suspicious vehicles. If somebody is in a vehicle nearby the exit with the engine running it could possible be a “getaway car”. Another telltale sign of a crime in progress, or about to occur, is someone “posted” on the inside who is nervously watching the door and parking lot. This person could be a “lookout” for the accomplices inside.
A few years ago, while off duty, my wife and I were about to enter a drug store for some eye infection medication. As we were about to enter through the double doors I noticed a young woman holding the electronic doors open by standing still in the sensor area. At first I thought she was just being polite and holding the doors open for us, but it soon was apparent that she was looking past us and nervously scanning the parking lot. I sensed that something was wrong and grabbed my wife'’s arm to pull her back. Just then two men jumped the store guardrails and were about to run right over the top of us. They had just committed a commercial burglary and were making their escape. Without thinking I pushed my wife aside, sidestepped, and purposely tripped the first suspect with a sweep. The case of beers that the suspect was clutching onto tumbled in front end over end of him on the sidewalk as he skidded to a stop on his palms. The second suspect in hot pursuit leaped over his fallen partner in crime like a clumsy hurdle runner, then turned around to “take care” of me. I pulled my concealed pistol from my pancake holster and ordered him to stop. The surprised attacker, dressed in gang attire, decided that dying for a few beers was not worth it, turned and fled, leaving his accomplices. In the commotion the other two scurried off. I wasn’'t about to stop them without a radio, vest, or back up. Plus, a violent encounter was not worth it for some stolen bottles, and my wife standing next to me. I decided to be a good witness instead. When approaching, or walking through a potential ambush area, always follow the first tactical rule – Stop, Look, Listen. In my example of the drug store incident, the moment I sensed something “unusual” or “out of place” I stopped, I looked, and I only had a split second to decide what I was going to do when the two men came running at me. Had I not been paying attention as I was walking to the entrance of the store the thieves would have plowed me and my wife over.
Whether you’'re in a military unit walking through hostile territory or you are walking through a dark city alley, you should stop, look and listen every few minutes, even if there is no apparent danger. If is quiet, move on. If you hear or see something, prepare yourself. Stop, Look, Listen exercises In the Australian military manual, Patrolling and Tracking, Section 5 No. 74 it reads, “Patrol leaders must try to anticipate where contact with the enemy (ambush) is probable. Action to be taken must be planned and rehearsed before the patrol moves out.” In a martial arts training environment you can do a simple exercise that will help you learn to “anticipate” contact with the “enemy.”
I call this exercise Walking the Gauntlet. It will develop alertness, mobility, and attack. Have several participants line up, spread out evenly, on each side of the room facing inward. Place a student (the trainee) in the middle of the two lines and have him or her walk down the center through the two lines. Prior to conducting the exercise the trainee faces the wall as the instructor selects a couple of attackers on each side of the line. Each trainee that will walk through the Gauntlet will receive a different configuration of attackers. The trainee is then told to turn around and walk through the midst of the participants. The trainee, unaware of who was selected for the attack, cautiously moves through the “crowd” until a noise or aggressive movement from one of the selected attackers catches his or her attention. The trainee quickly defends against the sudden attack. After the appropriate action has been taken against the attacker (be it knife defense training, hand-to-hand, etc.), the trainee returns to the place where the attacked had just occurred, and picks up where they left off to walk the rest of the Gauntlet.
I do this exercise often to prepare police officers for walking through agitated crowds, such as parties, labor strikes, bars, etc. Not everyone in a crowd is going to jump you, but you have to be prepared for those few who might. It makes for a very nervous trainee, but it helps them get use to possible ambushes. Attack the attacker In an ambush the ambusher has the tactical advantage. Whether it’s a military operation or a crook waiting to jump you, the ambusher will have done their homework prior to the attack; they will have studied the terrain in which you will pass, note the fields of fire and observation, cover, concealment, obstacles, and avenues of approach and withdrawal. Then, when you come walking into the “killing zone” the attack is launched. In the case of an attempted rape, robbery, or other criminal assault the ambush will be what we call a “near ambush.” In other words, the attack is right on top of you, as opposed to a “far ambush” such as a sniper attack. In a near assault the US military teaches its personnel to attack the enemy if caught in an ambush. By doing an immediate action drill, suddenly counterattacking the enemy even under concentrated close-range fire, moves you out of the killing zone, and prevents other ambushers from closing in on you.
Although each incident must be weighed separately, most criminals expect their victims to comply when faced with the threat of violence or with violence itself. Whenever you submit to a criminal you can never know the outcome. You are at the mercy of the criminal. Although fighting back can get you hurt, a sudden violent counterattack may catch the attacker off guard affording you the opportunity to move out of the “killing zone.” In any ambush the natural instinct is to take cover and save your skin. However, that’'s exactly what the enemy is hoping for and picks you off as you cower in a defensive position. For survival, sometimes you must go opposite your instincts and meet the danger head on.
As the famous Chinese guerilla fighter, Mao Tse-tung, once said, “In every apparent disadvantage, some advantage is to be found.” When I am training correctional personnel how to survive a jail or prison riot, I purposely put them at a disadvantage in order for them to find some advantage. I have an exercise where I simulate a worst-case scenario – a group of hostile inmates have blocked the escape route for the correction staff. The natural tendency is for officers to separate from one another and push directly to the exit or to huddle in a corner and fight defensively. However, these methods are almost always doomed to failure. The proper tactic is to stick together and follow a wall so the inmates cannot come up from behind. In order to have a chance of getting out they have to move together as a group and violently push through. To do the exercise I usually put five officers on one side of a room (fitted with protective gear) and seven “inmates” (also geared up) on the other side of the room blocking the exit. The goal of the exercise is to move as a team and get all five officers past the inmates and out the door. Students learn very quickly that if they do not push for the door and attack the inmates with what the Marines call “violence of action,” they never make it to safety. Of course this exercise can carry over into civilian applications, such as training your family to stick together and push through as a unit. Think like the crook Of course, to outsmart an ambusher you have to think like one. When you walk anywhere, especially high-risk areas, you should always ask yourself these questions:
1. Where would someone most likely be hiding?
2. Should an attack occur where are my avenues of escape?
3. What would the best tactics be – counterattack, submit, run?
A good exercise to run, in order to sharpen your reaction skills in sudden ambush situations, is an exercise I named Door number 1, 2 or 3. Stack cardboard boxes up vertically to create a few “walls” the attacker can hide behind, or hang a few sheets of black painters plastic from the ceiling to the floor. As the trainee makes their way from one end of the room to the other, the attacker lies in wait behind one of the walls. When the trainee comes within range, the attacker, or attackers (it’'s good to sometimes have multiple attackers) launch an attack; be it a hold-up, knife attack, a fist fight, or whatever other realistic simulation you can come up with.
The trainee will soon learn some valuable lessons in avoiding, or reducing the consequences of an ambush:
1. When turning corners, make wide turns to give more reaction time.
2. Use “noise discipline” (don'’t make noise) as you approach a hostile area, so the bad guy can’'t hear you coming.
3. Anticipate likely hiding areas that an attacker may take.
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Are you an accident just waiting to happen by blindly walking into an ambush, or do you take the tactical “high ground” to avoid such an event?
Rarely do the “bad guys” announce their intended attack upon you. Rather, they lie in wait to seize the element of surprise. They pounce when you are least aware. A burglar creeping through your house won’'t turn on the lights or make unnecessary noise to give you a chance to arm yourself. A mugger won'’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk and risk you taking a detour away from the “fatal funnel.” And, you won'’t find a person about to carjack you leaning up against your car as you approach. Although many violent attacks occur as a result of an ambush, does your training include counter-ambush tactics?
It should. Most martial arts training start with two opponents facing each other and giving the proper salutations. Western boxers come up to each other before a bout and knock gloves together as a sign of good sportsmanship before the first round. Asian based fighters sharply bow or bring their hands together in a Yin Yang fashion then slip into a combative stance. European Fencers salute one another with their naked blades, as do Filipino Kali practitioners. Although this practice is very colorful and rich in tradition it can negatively condition fighters who are in it for purely survival reasons. Subconsciously this practice sends a message to the fighter that there is a preparatory period just prior to combat. To many my statement may sound ludicrous, but ANYTHING we do in training can carry over into actual combat. Let me give you a startling example.
In law enforcement training many Defensive Tactics (hand-to-hand combat) programs use a hard plastic red colored handgun when practicing gun retention techniques, car stops or subject stops (police contact with a person or arrests). The “red guns” are used in place of real firearms to avoid a possible Negligent Discharge (ND). They are red so that at first glance everyone involved in the training knows that they are a training tool and not the real thing. Using real firearms is also a common practice, but it requires weapon safety checks, and marking the barrel with colored tape. The colored guns makes for an overall safer training environment. However, after repeated use of these colored replicas many officers became so conditioned to the red color that on occasion, actors who played the role of the contactee (the person being stopped by the police) pulled out a red wallet or other red object and suddenly found themselves being “shot.” Why? because, the officers associated the color red with a threat. It'’s for this very reason that many agencies paint their training guns black or silver, or buy products that are already colored similar to that of actual firearms.
Rituals in training, salutations before combative encounters, are very much like the conditioning of the red guns. Although innocent at first, they can lock a person into a potentially dangerous behavioral pattern. In this article we will examine training methods that will prepare you for sudden violent ambushes. Before the ambush Throughout my law enforcement career, and even today in my current duties, one of my biggest concerns is walking into an ambush. Just last year an officer in my department was killed in an ambush. A man armed with an AK47 assault rifle waited at a mini market frequented by police officers. When the officer drove up to get a cup of coffee the suspect came out of the store and sprayed the patrol car with bullets. The officer never had a chance to exit his vehicle. He was cut down before he knew what hit him. However, you don'’t have to be wearing a uniform to walk into the center of an ambush. If you'’re not paying attention you can end up walking into a store or a bank and find yourself right in the middle of a robbery as you are doing your errands; many people have.
Whenever you are going up to an ATM machine, inside a bank, airport, or other potential “targets” you should always observe the surroundings as you make your approach. For example, as you walk up to a liquor store you should scan the immediate area for suspicious vehicles. If somebody is in a vehicle nearby the exit with the engine running it could possible be a “getaway car”. Another telltale sign of a crime in progress, or about to occur, is someone “posted” on the inside who is nervously watching the door and parking lot. This person could be a “lookout” for the accomplices inside.
A few years ago, while off duty, my wife and I were about to enter a drug store for some eye infection medication. As we were about to enter through the double doors I noticed a young woman holding the electronic doors open by standing still in the sensor area. At first I thought she was just being polite and holding the doors open for us, but it soon was apparent that she was looking past us and nervously scanning the parking lot. I sensed that something was wrong and grabbed my wife'’s arm to pull her back. Just then two men jumped the store guardrails and were about to run right over the top of us. They had just committed a commercial burglary and were making their escape. Without thinking I pushed my wife aside, sidestepped, and purposely tripped the first suspect with a sweep. The case of beers that the suspect was clutching onto tumbled in front end over end of him on the sidewalk as he skidded to a stop on his palms. The second suspect in hot pursuit leaped over his fallen partner in crime like a clumsy hurdle runner, then turned around to “take care” of me. I pulled my concealed pistol from my pancake holster and ordered him to stop. The surprised attacker, dressed in gang attire, decided that dying for a few beers was not worth it, turned and fled, leaving his accomplices. In the commotion the other two scurried off. I wasn’'t about to stop them without a radio, vest, or back up. Plus, a violent encounter was not worth it for some stolen bottles, and my wife standing next to me. I decided to be a good witness instead. When approaching, or walking through a potential ambush area, always follow the first tactical rule – Stop, Look, Listen. In my example of the drug store incident, the moment I sensed something “unusual” or “out of place” I stopped, I looked, and I only had a split second to decide what I was going to do when the two men came running at me. Had I not been paying attention as I was walking to the entrance of the store the thieves would have plowed me and my wife over.
Whether you’'re in a military unit walking through hostile territory or you are walking through a dark city alley, you should stop, look and listen every few minutes, even if there is no apparent danger. If is quiet, move on. If you hear or see something, prepare yourself. Stop, Look, Listen exercises In the Australian military manual, Patrolling and Tracking, Section 5 No. 74 it reads, “Patrol leaders must try to anticipate where contact with the enemy (ambush) is probable. Action to be taken must be planned and rehearsed before the patrol moves out.” In a martial arts training environment you can do a simple exercise that will help you learn to “anticipate” contact with the “enemy.”
I call this exercise Walking the Gauntlet. It will develop alertness, mobility, and attack. Have several participants line up, spread out evenly, on each side of the room facing inward. Place a student (the trainee) in the middle of the two lines and have him or her walk down the center through the two lines. Prior to conducting the exercise the trainee faces the wall as the instructor selects a couple of attackers on each side of the line. Each trainee that will walk through the Gauntlet will receive a different configuration of attackers. The trainee is then told to turn around and walk through the midst of the participants. The trainee, unaware of who was selected for the attack, cautiously moves through the “crowd” until a noise or aggressive movement from one of the selected attackers catches his or her attention. The trainee quickly defends against the sudden attack. After the appropriate action has been taken against the attacker (be it knife defense training, hand-to-hand, etc.), the trainee returns to the place where the attacked had just occurred, and picks up where they left off to walk the rest of the Gauntlet.
I do this exercise often to prepare police officers for walking through agitated crowds, such as parties, labor strikes, bars, etc. Not everyone in a crowd is going to jump you, but you have to be prepared for those few who might. It makes for a very nervous trainee, but it helps them get use to possible ambushes. Attack the attacker In an ambush the ambusher has the tactical advantage. Whether it’s a military operation or a crook waiting to jump you, the ambusher will have done their homework prior to the attack; they will have studied the terrain in which you will pass, note the fields of fire and observation, cover, concealment, obstacles, and avenues of approach and withdrawal. Then, when you come walking into the “killing zone” the attack is launched. In the case of an attempted rape, robbery, or other criminal assault the ambush will be what we call a “near ambush.” In other words, the attack is right on top of you, as opposed to a “far ambush” such as a sniper attack. In a near assault the US military teaches its personnel to attack the enemy if caught in an ambush. By doing an immediate action drill, suddenly counterattacking the enemy even under concentrated close-range fire, moves you out of the killing zone, and prevents other ambushers from closing in on you.
Although each incident must be weighed separately, most criminals expect their victims to comply when faced with the threat of violence or with violence itself. Whenever you submit to a criminal you can never know the outcome. You are at the mercy of the criminal. Although fighting back can get you hurt, a sudden violent counterattack may catch the attacker off guard affording you the opportunity to move out of the “killing zone.” In any ambush the natural instinct is to take cover and save your skin. However, that’'s exactly what the enemy is hoping for and picks you off as you cower in a defensive position. For survival, sometimes you must go opposite your instincts and meet the danger head on.
As the famous Chinese guerilla fighter, Mao Tse-tung, once said, “In every apparent disadvantage, some advantage is to be found.” When I am training correctional personnel how to survive a jail or prison riot, I purposely put them at a disadvantage in order for them to find some advantage. I have an exercise where I simulate a worst-case scenario – a group of hostile inmates have blocked the escape route for the correction staff. The natural tendency is for officers to separate from one another and push directly to the exit or to huddle in a corner and fight defensively. However, these methods are almost always doomed to failure. The proper tactic is to stick together and follow a wall so the inmates cannot come up from behind. In order to have a chance of getting out they have to move together as a group and violently push through. To do the exercise I usually put five officers on one side of a room (fitted with protective gear) and seven “inmates” (also geared up) on the other side of the room blocking the exit. The goal of the exercise is to move as a team and get all five officers past the inmates and out the door. Students learn very quickly that if they do not push for the door and attack the inmates with what the Marines call “violence of action,” they never make it to safety. Of course this exercise can carry over into civilian applications, such as training your family to stick together and push through as a unit. Think like the crook Of course, to outsmart an ambusher you have to think like one. When you walk anywhere, especially high-risk areas, you should always ask yourself these questions:
1. Where would someone most likely be hiding?
2. Should an attack occur where are my avenues of escape?
3. What would the best tactics be – counterattack, submit, run?
A good exercise to run, in order to sharpen your reaction skills in sudden ambush situations, is an exercise I named Door number 1, 2 or 3. Stack cardboard boxes up vertically to create a few “walls” the attacker can hide behind, or hang a few sheets of black painters plastic from the ceiling to the floor. As the trainee makes their way from one end of the room to the other, the attacker lies in wait behind one of the walls. When the trainee comes within range, the attacker, or attackers (it’'s good to sometimes have multiple attackers) launch an attack; be it a hold-up, knife attack, a fist fight, or whatever other realistic simulation you can come up with.
The trainee will soon learn some valuable lessons in avoiding, or reducing the consequences of an ambush:
1. When turning corners, make wide turns to give more reaction time.
2. Use “noise discipline” (don'’t make noise) as you approach a hostile area, so the bad guy can’'t hear you coming.
3. Anticipate likely hiding areas that an attacker may take.
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Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Why You Need Tactical Training
Here is another great one from John Mosby at the Mountain Guerrilla blog. I cannot stress this topic enough, the need is great for each and every one of us to get the best training we can, and to do so continually. Without training no amount of cool gear will make you better. Just do it! Go out and get yourself, your family, or your group some really good quality tactical training.
Why You Need Tactical Training
“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.” General George S. Patton
Many people in the world today, and most especially in the United States of America, suffer from a delusion. Brainwashed by the intellectual conceit of the modern nation-state, they accept a romanticized image of the guerrilla fighter created by poet, painter, and photographer, that encompasses either the dashing cavalier of the 18th and 19th century, or the high-tech “superman” of the modern “Tier One” Special Operations operator. This image of what could accurately be called, from a historical perspective, the “modern” guerrilla, is one who is shaped–directly or indirectly–by the organized, state-sponsored military that has armed, equipped, trained, and/or fought him. This image, while obviously valid on some levels, is a far cry from what is often erroneously labeled the “Fourth Generation Warfare” guerrilla, but could more correctly be labeled the “classical” or “tribal” guerrilla. This type of local fighter has existed far longer than civilized society or the “conventional” military concept that civilization endorses as “regular.”
What we refer to as “unconventional” or “irregular” warfare is far older than so-called “conventional warfare, despite the intellectual conceit of western military hubris. The currently fashionable idea that 4GW is somehow new or novel is a product of a belief system created by the formal military educational system that views anything that does not correlate to the established nation-state endorse view of “proper” warfare as being “unconventional” or even “irrelevant.” The average prepared citizen, whether he served an enlistment in the military or not, can be forgiven for the understandable practice of deferring to his more professionally educated fellow citizens in uniform, and should not feel bad for this misunderstanding, as even–perhaps especially–professionally educated military officers and NCOs, including many within the Special Forces community, also suffer from this institutional conceit.
In order to understand the fallacies and shortcomings of this hubris, and hopefully move past it, we need to understand the foundations of the 4GW view, and look past it to see why what is “new” is actually very, very, very old. In brief, 4GW theory holds that warfare has evolved through four basic intellectual generations:
The era of massed formations, most clearly evidenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The era of massed firepower, characterized by the Napoleonic-era formations with musket and bayonet, but also by the WWI concept of trenches, tanks, and machine guns.
The era of maneuver warfare, characterized by smaller, more mobile elements of uniformed, regular forces leveraging mobility and more efficient weapons, to destroy the enemy’s ability and/or will to fight.
The “post-modern” fourth generation of non-state actors using networks in the political, social, military, and economic spheres, to convince a more powerful nation-state enemy that their strategic goals cannot be achieved without paying an unbearably expensive cost.
(I recognize of course, that different theorists offer different arbitrary divisions between the different generations.–JM)
Well regarded military theorist John Robb (and I’m a big fan, so don’t think I’m being disrespectful to the guy) defines 4GW as a method of warfare that uses three basic tools to inflict what he terms a “moral victory” over an enemy. These include:
Undermining enemy strengths. This can be as simple as using primitive TTPs to undermine the enemy’s ability to leverage technological advantages to their benefit. Using couriers for communications, in order to avoid electronic signals intercept eavesdropping would be an effective example of this.
Exploiting enemy weaknesses, such as the use of IEDs to target risk-averse American military forces who confine their travels to heavily armored vehicles, along established roadways, in order to avoid the inherent risks of gunfights, would be one example. Blending in with the local civilian populace, in order to reduce the ability to effectively leverage the lack of cultural awareness training of most American troops, by reducing their ability to determine friend vs. foe, is another, when you consider the (rightful) American prejudice against killing non-combatants.
Using asymmetric operations.
Robb cites several very valid reasons for the returning prevalence of what is mistakenly labeled 4GW methods of warfare:
The loss of the organized nation-state monopoly on political violence.
The rise in cultural, ethnic, and religious conflict as a result of weakening nation-state influence on populations.
Globalization of industry and communications making the tools and methods of the guerrilla more readily available to non-state actors.
Finally, Robb describes some of the tools that characterize this “new” way of warfare:
Rear area operations that target the civil society of the enemy, rather than his armed forces.
The use of terror as a psychological weapon.
Ad hoc improvisation, to use the enemy’s strength against himself.
The problem with this idea that “4GW” is somehow novel is that it is fundamentally flawed, as soon as we shed the biases of our institutional conceit, and look back through history without the filter of modern, nation-state arrogance. Even many of the “differences” between 4GW and “traditional” guerrilla conflict that Robb cites are really just differences between the “tribal” guerrilla of antiquity and the modern nation-state influenced guerrilla.
While the “4GW” guerrilla has access to global media/internet dissemination of TTPs, the fundamental tactics of the guerrilla, including ambushes, raids, sabotage, and assassination, have been used since antiquity. Sure, the “post-modern” guerrillas has access to explosives and automatic weapons, night vision technology, and satellite communications, but those are force multipliers, not force creators. Without a fundamental understanding of the underlying tactical concepts of small-unit warfare, which have been common to all societies, prior to the development of the modern nation-state, they amount to nothing of substance. Multiplying anything by zero still results in a net gain of zero.
The prevalence of guerrilla warfare, as the influence of the organized nation-state wanes, is certainly nothing new. While it seems so to people who cannot grasp a world without the security of the organized nation-state, guerrilla warfare is not new. The nation-state concept and even the formal military of the ancient empires are really historically young. The use of guerrilla warfare TTPs, in the absence of nation-state influence is older than civilization itself.
The idea that survival is only viable for small groups means conflicts are fought by small-unit elements is likewise neither new nor novel. Whether this granularity results from a need to avoid decisive engagement by numerically or technologically superior enemy forces, or because subsistence living realities mean that you are limited in tribal manpower is irrelevant. The fact is, the use of small groups of fighters to influence the actions of an enemy goes back to antiquity.
Likewise, the vulnerability of open societies and economies to attack by “irregular” forces is novel only if you ignore history even as obvious as the Roman empire.
Technological advances may make it easier for the non-state actor to leverage the weaknesses of the enemy, such as the aforementioned use of IEDs, but the guerrilla throughout history has used whatever technology was available to do the exact same thing. It’s the technology available that has changed, not the fundamental principle of leveraging those weaknesses. Technology has always been changing.
What we, as modern, “civilized” people see as 4GW would more accurately be described as “first generation warfare,” or 1GW. It is far older than any other form of human conflict, and in fact never really ceased to exist, other than in the collective imagination of people too arrogant to see that the nation-state concept was experimental at best, from the beginning. Guerrilla warfare is, in fact, older than civilization itself.
Long before the advent of agriculture and the resulting formation of farming societies that provided the ability to produce quantities of excess food per laborer that are required to support a standing army of trained, professional warriors, tribes of hunter-gatherers existed in close proximity to one another. These tribes competed with one another for access to limited resources like game animals and fresh water, no differently than modern man competes for limited resources like raw petroleum: with violence.
Throughout the vast majority of our species’ spectacularly bloody existence on this little blue sphere we call home, both before and since the rise of civilization, most conflicts have not been resolved by well-equipped, nattily-dressed parade ground puppets of conventional military forces. On the contrary, for most of humanity’s existence, wars, rivalries, and grudges have been settled by small bands of haphazardly armed, ill-disciplined, and poorly trained or even untrained friends and neighbors banding together to protect their own turf, or to expand their control over finite resources by invading their neighbor’s turn and killing or enslaving the competition. Our modern use of “conventional” and “unconventional” labels for conflict is a reversal of the historical precedent. From the historical perspective, guerrilla warfare is far more “conventional” than formal armies are.
Like the modern interpretation of the guerrilla, the classical tribal guerrilla used hit-and-run, asymmetric methods, choosing the survival advantage of fleeing before a stronger enemy, unless the fight could be clearly leveraged into his own favor. While many psychologists and revisionist historians have adopted the feel-good, New Age humanist view that animal species, including mankind, possess a natural aversion to intra-species killing, at least in the case of humankind, the archaeological and historical record demonstrates that they are wrong. Using the idea that inter-tribal battles were largely “ceremonial” affairs that actually resulted in little bloodshed or killing are patently absurd. The important factor that these pseudo-scientist “experts” overlook, or else pointedly ignore in the interest of a preconceived political position, is that “battles” are not the guerrilla’s fight. Instead, like his modern equivalent, the tribal guerrilla was more inclined to use the raid in the quiet, dark of the night, to kill his enemies in their bed, by burning the damned lodges down around him, followed by quickly fleeing before the victim’s friends and family could mount an effective counterattack. Only a sucker sticks around for a “fair fight.”
That is the “way” of the classical guerrilla, just like it is the way of the “4GW” guerrilla. The idea of constraints being placed on the behavior of the guerrilla, or that he must fight according to the accepted rules of “conventional” military thought is also a cultural conceit without historical or archaeological relevance. “Mercy” in tribal guerrilla wars is seldom given or expected. Just like a modern US soldier, captured by so-called 4GW Al Qaeda fighters can expect to be sodomized, beheaded, or both, before being killed, a captured tribesman, through history, could look forward to being burned, castrated, beheaded, sodomized, or sold into slavery, if in fact, he wasn’t simply eaten. His women could expect to be raped and then killed, or sold into slavery. Even children would be either killed outright, or enslaved. Villages would be razed, crops destroyed, and livestock stolen. While we may naively expect the “modern” guerrilla to be constrained in his behavior by cultural background or training, or the demands of his nation-state sponsors, the use of this type of terror by the classical guerrilla sheds further light on the fact that the use of terror by “4GW” terrorist is in fact, not new at all.
Guerrilla warfare, whether referred to for what it is, or given some cute new label to make it more marketable, is neither pretty nor romantic. The tribal guerrilla wasn’t interested in playing by opponent’s rules, if in fact, his opponent had any rules to play by. For the guerrilla, classical or modern, warfare is not an extension of politics. Warfare is simply survival.
In his 1996 book illustrating the advantages of modern civilization and the nation-state that resulted, “War Before Civilization,” archeology professor Lawrence Keely points out that the evidence indicates that tribal societies engaged in inter-tribal “guerrilla” conflict suffer an average of 0.5% loss of their total population per year in directly conflict-related deaths. For the current US population, that would be the equivalent of 1.5 million deaths per year–more than all combat deaths in American military history, from 1775 until today (just under 850,000 according to the sources I checked).
The absolute truth is, fighting as a guerrilla, whether modern or classical/tribal, pretty much sucks. You don’t get to go home and sleep in your soft bed, wrapped up around momma every night. Perhaps not for any nights for months or years at a time. You may never get to go home, since it may very well end up burned down by rivals who want your territory for themselves. You may not be around to protect your wife and children. Even if you are around, sniper fire can come out of the blue, at the least expected time and place. Kidnappings, rapes, and destruction of property are the norms in guerrilla conflicts. If you think, because this is “Amurrika!” that things will somehow be different, you’re fucking deluded, and missing the point of the entire preparedness conversation. People you love are going to die. Your wife may die. Your children may die. Whether you pick up a gun, or don’t pick up a gun, you will probably die.
Life as a guerrilla, regardless of the overall impact of the conflict, will suck. It will not be comfortable. Many people in the liberty and preparedness movement cite the fact that some Taliban-aligned Pashtun tribal fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan were discovered to be fighting against US/Coalition forces clad in “man-jammies” and sandals, equipped with little more than a wool blanket and a single spare Kalashnikov magazine. The apparent lesson “learned” by these aspiring American guerrillas is that this guerrilla shit must be easy. Unfortunately for these folks, their ignorance is demonstrated by the fact that they’ve overlooked two critical facts:
The equipment load-out of those Pashtun fighters was discovered during battle damage assessment (BDA) studies. In other words, they were dead…Guess that load-out maybe wasn’t so ideal after all? (A gross oversimplification, I know, but it’s valid enough to make the point worth paying attention to)
A Pashtun tribal fighter from the mountains of Afghanistan is considerably tougher, physically and mentally, than you and I put together. Arguing otherwise isn’t even as benign as ignorance. It’s sheer stupidity and bravado. When you grow up sleeping on a blanket or two thrown on a packed dirt floor, in a mud hut with no window or door coverings except maybe a blanket or old hide tacked up, subsisting on rice, beans, and a handful of half-cooked, spoiled meat, while running up and down mountains all day, and fighting from the time you’re old enough to pick up a Kalasknikov rifle, and never advance to sleeping in a protected environment like a real house, with a soft mattress under you, then maybe you can convincingly argue otherwise. In the meantime, sleeping on a soft bed, in a warm house, with your biggest fear being whether the cable bill can be paid this month does not make you guerrilla warfare tough.
When I was a young Ranger private, one of my mentors was a very skilled martial artist and a pioneer in what would become MMA. Knowing of my profound interest in all things combatives related, he once told me, “Ranger Mosby, a lot of guys come to the Regiment because they think they’re going to learn some high-speed karate shit. They get disappointed when they don’t, because we simply don’t have the time in the training calendar for that silliness. When we do have time, we focus on stuff they think is too simple to be effective. What those idiots don’t recognize is, interpersonal violence is interpersonal violence. Regardless of the scale of the battlefield, the fundamentals of victory remain the same. I don’t care if it’s a brawl behind the bar, two rifle squads slugging it out in the jungle, or the armies of Good and Evil battling it out on the plains of Meggido, in the end, it all boils down to speed, surprise, and violence of action! The concepts you learn here, whether as a rifleman, a SAW gunner, or on a machine gun team, will do more for your “martial arts” knowledge than all the shoulder throws you will ever do in the dojo.”
Being the highly motivated young Airborne Ranger that I was, and hungry for any knowledge that could glean from my wiser, slightly older, but vastly more experienced mentors, I remembered those words. In fact, I went back to my room in the barracks, almost immediately (I think it was after he allowed me to recover from the front leaning rest position for asking some sort of dumb-ass question about combatives…), and copied them into my ever-present journal. It wasn’t however, until I was considerably further along in my military career, while serving as a junior SF weapons sergeant, that I really began to understand what he meant. It wasn’t simply a matter of being faster, sneakier, and meaner than the other guy, although those certainly help. It wasn’t just about being more fit and stronger than the enemy, although that damned sure helped too. The truth was, the same tactics, techniques, and procedures that helped us successfully prosecute a small-scale fight against the Taliban in a tight canyon in Afghanistan, were the same TTPs that would allow me to prosecute a fight anywhere, against anyone.
Whether you expect your fight to come in the bush, crawling around on your belly, eating bugs and drinking water from a stagnant, muddy pool, or you expect your fight to come in a large urban area, in fast moving sports cars, with pistols and stolen MP5s, or you expect your fight to come in your living room, against an up-armored FEMA or DHS entry team (in which case, you’re a dumbass for being there when they arrive), the same fundamental concepts apply, if you actually hope to win and survive.
You need training, regardless of what you think. If you’ve served in a combat arms unit, in combat, you probably possess the fundamental skills to survive the initial bursts of violence as well as anyone, providing you the ability to learn as you go about how to modify the TTPs you already know, for surviving without the benefits of air support, indirect fire support, and a long support train behind you. If you’ve never worn a uniform though, or even if you have, if you’ve never performed in a profession that required you to mentally and physically prepare to look another human being in the face, while shoving eight inches of steel into their flesh, and dealing with the psychology of that, while still being able to provide leadership to others, you have no idea what you don’t know.
What you don’t know is, you need tactical training. Being an effective fighter does not come naturally to anyone, I don’t care what anyone tells you. The fact that you can out shoot all the guys in your local pistol club, or all of the local cops who bother to come to the range doesn’t mean shit. The fact that you’ve won every fist fight you’ve ever been in at the local watering hole doesn’t mean shit. Being a big fish in a little pond is not the same thing as being a big fish in the ocean. The sharks aren’t going to fight you on your terms, regardless of your fantasies.
While a Special Forces soldier should doctrinally be a subject-matter expert on guerrilla warfare, I don’t know many of us who are so bold or naive as to presume that we have all the answers. I certainly don’t. Whether looking at SF UW doctrine, or “traditional” light infantry doctrine at the team, squad, and platoon level, the doctrine, as it stands, may not fit a future conflict strictly. The doctrine may not even necessarily be how things actually get done today (it certainly hasn’t been for most of the GWOT in the SF community. Only recently has the SF community collectively returned to its UW roots after spending the better part of a decade focused on direct-action, door-kicking HVT missions better suited for the Ranger Regiment and SMUs). What the doctrine does, whether SF UW, or Light Infantry, is provide a frame of reference to begin to gain an understanding of the nature of the beast we’re dealing with. It is a reflection of the combat arms community’s collective self-image of how we hope to prosecute these types of operations, or at least how the authors of the appropriate manuals hope we fight.
When considering the future application of this doctrine, whether in training or real-world applications, it is crucial to recognize two critical factors in regards to the doctrine, and choose to either apply the lessons that the doctrine teaches, or modify them to your perceived image of what is going to happen:
At some level, despite the best efforts otherwise, a trainer’s own intellectual conceits, as a product of a 20th century upbringing in a largely Judeo-Christian culture, as well as subsequent professional military education and experience, will necessarily influence the conclusions that we reach, regarding the effectiveness and applicability of doctrinal considerations.
A good trainer, with intellectual honesty, will recognize the existence of these prejudices and conceits, and strive heartily to overcome them.
There is a very sad condition that exists in people everywhere, that is especially apparent in the gun and preparedness communities, for men to delude themselves into believing that they know more than they do. There's even an “official” name for it, developed by a head-shrinking psychiatrist somewhere. It’s called “competency bias.” We all (and yes, I’m including myself in that “we all.”)want to believe that we’re naturally competent at anything we might ever want to do, and we tend to conveniently ignore or dismiss any evidence that would disprove our delusions.
Unfortunately for both ourselves and our families, in the long term, we often get away with this in trivial matters. “Oh, I’m a good carpenter!” says the accountant who’s never swung a hammer for wages in his life, and the last thing he built was a birdhouse in Cub Scouts. His delusions won’t harm anyone, as long as he limits himself to building birdhouses. When he decides that he knows how to build a human house though, and absolutely refuses to even consider the help or advice of professionals, while he might get lucky, the house is likely to fall down around him. Even in a best case scenario, and he does manage to build it solid enough to not fall down in his lifetime, the roof and seams leak, the windows and doors sag and stick, and the whole building settles, because birdhouses don’t have foundations to worry about.
“Hell, I’m a great driver!” says every man everywhere, who refuses to take a defensive driving or high-performance driving class, despite repeated fender benders and traffic tickets. That even works out well for him, until he’s staring into the eyes of a 600lb elk, in the middle of a two-lane blacktop, as he comes around a blind corner at 75MPH, at 0300. He either ends up with an elk in his lap, or the family minivan, along with the whole family, ends up on its roof, in the bottom of a ravine, unseen by passers-by on the road above the next day.
“I know how to shoot! I’m better than any soldier at shooting! I shot my elk last year at 1500 yards, with my .30-06, holding two inches over his back!” says the hillbilly (actual statement, made to my face in a hunting camp!) Never mind the fact that the hillbilly obviously lacks an understanding of even the most elementary ballistics, and has absolutely no range estimation abilities whatsoever, while being too cheap to invest in a decent laser range finder.
“I’ve read all the field manuals and I’m an expert in infantry tactics. It doesn’t matter that I can’t actually execute them because I’m forty pounds overweight though, because I’m going to be a 4GW ninja master, so I don’t need that stuff anyway!” says the 5’8″ 230 lb computer programmer turned militia commander, who really couldn’t even tell you what range his rifle is zeroed at, because he doesn’t understand that an 8″ group, at 100 yards, from the prone supported position, is not something you admit to, let along use as a standard for marksmanship, at even the most elementary levels of shooting.
Competency bias, in mundane matters, is humorous. In life-and-death situations though, it results in the wrong people dying, because egos and pride are too important to some important. The comfort of sitting on the computer, blathering on blogs and forums about your prowess as a 4GW guerrilla commando ninja expert, and master of post-modern urban warfare, is far easier, and more comfortable than crawling around in the woods, sprinting from position to position, getting sweaty, tired, and bug-bitten while actually learning to be a novice guerrilla commando ninja expert. Sipping a Coke and whiskey, while typing about your incredible physical prowess in crawling up storm drains, and leaping rooftop-to-rooftop, three stories up, like a “Tier One” commando, is less miserable than being hungry, thirsty, dirty, smelling like you haven’t bathed in a month, and physically and mentally exhausted to the point of tears, from realistic, effective training. Who cares that it might actually keep you alive in a fight? That shit is hard work!
Do you actually know how to develop and set up a multi-layered, in-depth security program, utilizing LP/OPs and roving security patrols correctly? Do you know how to plan and perform those security patrols? Do you know what to look for when planning a security patrol? Do you know how to hit a realistic, partially-obscured target, at 200 meters, with your rifle? When you’ve been moving under the weight of your fighting and sustainment loads for the last week, and have just sprinted three hundred yards?
You need tactical training. You know, in your heart of hearts and soul of souls, that you need training. You just have to turn your ego down and listen to your brain for a change.
Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you how to shoot, move, and communicate effectively. If you’re twenty pounds overweight, with a bodyfat percentage higher than 15%, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you are not capable of moving tactically, correctly. If you cannot shoot a 2MOA group, from the prone, under field conditions, with your choice of fighting rifle, while rested, you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you cannot perform a speed reload, or immediate action, with your choice of fighting rifle, while in full gear, winded from running sprints or individual movement techniques, and blinded by the sweat running into your eyes, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you’ve never performed a live-fire hasty assault or break contact battle drill, with multiple small teams moving over the battle space, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to communicate effectively.
Realistic, effective tactical training, in today’s environment, is about more than shoot-move-communicate though. It will teach you leadership skills, under field conditions. It’s about mission-planning and troop-leading procedures, even in four-man cells. It’s about preparing yourself and others for future survival.
Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you, better than anyone can ever tell you, exactly how dismally out-of-shape you actually are. Good training is a suckfest and a gut-check. It will require you to reach down the front of your pants to grab your nuts, and confirm that you really do have the intestinal fortitude to man the fuck up and do the right thing, by getting yourself in shape, so you can do what you need to do, instead of just talking about it.
Realistic, effective tactical training will open your eyes to the importance of your spouse not only being accepting of your preparedness plans and actions, but of her being an active, willing participant. You’ll begin to understand that your partner really is your partner, and that you are not the only one in your family who needs to be trained. Your wife and even your kids of weapons-handling age, should be trained.
Realistic, effective tactical training, planned and executed by someone who knows what they are doing, will teach you how to think about security, not just for your family, but for your home and your community, against a broader range of threats, in ways that are cost-effective, as well as simply effective. Planning just for home defense, or just for your personal or family retreat security is not enough. That’s the equivalent of saying, “I’ve got a gun in my nightstand, so I can leave the doors and windows unlocked, with bundles of cash sitting out on tables, even though I live in South Central Los Angeles. I mean, fuck, I own a gun!” That works great…right up until a crew of bad guys are coming through your front door with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades, while you’re sitting on the couch with the wife and kids, watching “The X Factor” and your gun is still in the nightstand. You need to learn to plan for security, at home and retreat, in a holistic manner, and good tactical training will give you the tools to do that.
If you believe a fight is coming, whether you think it will be against the security forces of a tyrannical regime, or whether you think it will be against outlaw bands of cannibalistic San Franciscans, it doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read. If doesn’t matter how many times you’ve earned the Appleseed “Rifleman” patch. It doesn’t matter how many “Advanced Urban Combat” courses you’ve attended. Until you get quality training in the application of those skills in small-unit tactics, you’re just a lonely dude with a gun. Realistic, effective tactical training is a force multiplier you can’t live without, because you won’t live without it. If you don’t want to, or can’t, get to training with one of the guys in this collective “preparedness/liberty” community who are teaching, that’s okay. Go talk to your old high school buddy who just ETS’d after multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and convince him to help you develop some training plans. You need the training.
Regardless of the existence of educational and cultural biases, based on the established military orthodoxy of the organized, formal nation-state military, the reality is, small-unit tactics are small-unit tactics. The same underlying principles have worked since the time of antiquity, to leverage available technology (bows and arrows versus massed formations to precision rifle fire versus small-unit formations; burning a lodge down around the enemy’s family with torches and animal fat versus using a thermite charge to accomplish the same thing; sabotage of enemy food supplies via poisoning livestock or water sources versus blowing a rail line to interdict mass transport of supplies) against an enemy. While the current doctrine, SF or infantry, may not be perfect, it really is the best idea that the collective experience of fighters and historians can come up with for what will work to prosecute the fight. As the man said, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get the training and you can begin to develop a frame of reference for what works and what doesn’t, so you can make intelligent, informed decisions about how to modify what is already known to work, versus what you think might work in the future.
Now, when it comes to training, be like Nike and “Just Do It.”
John Mosby
Mountain Guerilla
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Why You Need Tactical Training
“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.” General George S. Patton
Many people in the world today, and most especially in the United States of America, suffer from a delusion. Brainwashed by the intellectual conceit of the modern nation-state, they accept a romanticized image of the guerrilla fighter created by poet, painter, and photographer, that encompasses either the dashing cavalier of the 18th and 19th century, or the high-tech “superman” of the modern “Tier One” Special Operations operator. This image of what could accurately be called, from a historical perspective, the “modern” guerrilla, is one who is shaped–directly or indirectly–by the organized, state-sponsored military that has armed, equipped, trained, and/or fought him. This image, while obviously valid on some levels, is a far cry from what is often erroneously labeled the “Fourth Generation Warfare” guerrilla, but could more correctly be labeled the “classical” or “tribal” guerrilla. This type of local fighter has existed far longer than civilized society or the “conventional” military concept that civilization endorses as “regular.”
What we refer to as “unconventional” or “irregular” warfare is far older than so-called “conventional warfare, despite the intellectual conceit of western military hubris. The currently fashionable idea that 4GW is somehow new or novel is a product of a belief system created by the formal military educational system that views anything that does not correlate to the established nation-state endorse view of “proper” warfare as being “unconventional” or even “irrelevant.” The average prepared citizen, whether he served an enlistment in the military or not, can be forgiven for the understandable practice of deferring to his more professionally educated fellow citizens in uniform, and should not feel bad for this misunderstanding, as even–perhaps especially–professionally educated military officers and NCOs, including many within the Special Forces community, also suffer from this institutional conceit.
In order to understand the fallacies and shortcomings of this hubris, and hopefully move past it, we need to understand the foundations of the 4GW view, and look past it to see why what is “new” is actually very, very, very old. In brief, 4GW theory holds that warfare has evolved through four basic intellectual generations:
The era of massed formations, most clearly evidenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The era of massed firepower, characterized by the Napoleonic-era formations with musket and bayonet, but also by the WWI concept of trenches, tanks, and machine guns.
The era of maneuver warfare, characterized by smaller, more mobile elements of uniformed, regular forces leveraging mobility and more efficient weapons, to destroy the enemy’s ability and/or will to fight.
The “post-modern” fourth generation of non-state actors using networks in the political, social, military, and economic spheres, to convince a more powerful nation-state enemy that their strategic goals cannot be achieved without paying an unbearably expensive cost.
(I recognize of course, that different theorists offer different arbitrary divisions between the different generations.–JM)
Well regarded military theorist John Robb (and I’m a big fan, so don’t think I’m being disrespectful to the guy) defines 4GW as a method of warfare that uses three basic tools to inflict what he terms a “moral victory” over an enemy. These include:
Undermining enemy strengths. This can be as simple as using primitive TTPs to undermine the enemy’s ability to leverage technological advantages to their benefit. Using couriers for communications, in order to avoid electronic signals intercept eavesdropping would be an effective example of this.
Exploiting enemy weaknesses, such as the use of IEDs to target risk-averse American military forces who confine their travels to heavily armored vehicles, along established roadways, in order to avoid the inherent risks of gunfights, would be one example. Blending in with the local civilian populace, in order to reduce the ability to effectively leverage the lack of cultural awareness training of most American troops, by reducing their ability to determine friend vs. foe, is another, when you consider the (rightful) American prejudice against killing non-combatants.
Using asymmetric operations.
Robb cites several very valid reasons for the returning prevalence of what is mistakenly labeled 4GW methods of warfare:
The loss of the organized nation-state monopoly on political violence.
The rise in cultural, ethnic, and religious conflict as a result of weakening nation-state influence on populations.
Globalization of industry and communications making the tools and methods of the guerrilla more readily available to non-state actors.
Finally, Robb describes some of the tools that characterize this “new” way of warfare:
Rear area operations that target the civil society of the enemy, rather than his armed forces.
The use of terror as a psychological weapon.
Ad hoc improvisation, to use the enemy’s strength against himself.
The problem with this idea that “4GW” is somehow novel is that it is fundamentally flawed, as soon as we shed the biases of our institutional conceit, and look back through history without the filter of modern, nation-state arrogance. Even many of the “differences” between 4GW and “traditional” guerrilla conflict that Robb cites are really just differences between the “tribal” guerrilla of antiquity and the modern nation-state influenced guerrilla.
While the “4GW” guerrilla has access to global media/internet dissemination of TTPs, the fundamental tactics of the guerrilla, including ambushes, raids, sabotage, and assassination, have been used since antiquity. Sure, the “post-modern” guerrillas has access to explosives and automatic weapons, night vision technology, and satellite communications, but those are force multipliers, not force creators. Without a fundamental understanding of the underlying tactical concepts of small-unit warfare, which have been common to all societies, prior to the development of the modern nation-state, they amount to nothing of substance. Multiplying anything by zero still results in a net gain of zero.
The prevalence of guerrilla warfare, as the influence of the organized nation-state wanes, is certainly nothing new. While it seems so to people who cannot grasp a world without the security of the organized nation-state, guerrilla warfare is not new. The nation-state concept and even the formal military of the ancient empires are really historically young. The use of guerrilla warfare TTPs, in the absence of nation-state influence is older than civilization itself.
The idea that survival is only viable for small groups means conflicts are fought by small-unit elements is likewise neither new nor novel. Whether this granularity results from a need to avoid decisive engagement by numerically or technologically superior enemy forces, or because subsistence living realities mean that you are limited in tribal manpower is irrelevant. The fact is, the use of small groups of fighters to influence the actions of an enemy goes back to antiquity.
Likewise, the vulnerability of open societies and economies to attack by “irregular” forces is novel only if you ignore history even as obvious as the Roman empire.
Technological advances may make it easier for the non-state actor to leverage the weaknesses of the enemy, such as the aforementioned use of IEDs, but the guerrilla throughout history has used whatever technology was available to do the exact same thing. It’s the technology available that has changed, not the fundamental principle of leveraging those weaknesses. Technology has always been changing.
What we, as modern, “civilized” people see as 4GW would more accurately be described as “first generation warfare,” or 1GW. It is far older than any other form of human conflict, and in fact never really ceased to exist, other than in the collective imagination of people too arrogant to see that the nation-state concept was experimental at best, from the beginning. Guerrilla warfare is, in fact, older than civilization itself.
Long before the advent of agriculture and the resulting formation of farming societies that provided the ability to produce quantities of excess food per laborer that are required to support a standing army of trained, professional warriors, tribes of hunter-gatherers existed in close proximity to one another. These tribes competed with one another for access to limited resources like game animals and fresh water, no differently than modern man competes for limited resources like raw petroleum: with violence.
Throughout the vast majority of our species’ spectacularly bloody existence on this little blue sphere we call home, both before and since the rise of civilization, most conflicts have not been resolved by well-equipped, nattily-dressed parade ground puppets of conventional military forces. On the contrary, for most of humanity’s existence, wars, rivalries, and grudges have been settled by small bands of haphazardly armed, ill-disciplined, and poorly trained or even untrained friends and neighbors banding together to protect their own turf, or to expand their control over finite resources by invading their neighbor’s turn and killing or enslaving the competition. Our modern use of “conventional” and “unconventional” labels for conflict is a reversal of the historical precedent. From the historical perspective, guerrilla warfare is far more “conventional” than formal armies are.
Like the modern interpretation of the guerrilla, the classical tribal guerrilla used hit-and-run, asymmetric methods, choosing the survival advantage of fleeing before a stronger enemy, unless the fight could be clearly leveraged into his own favor. While many psychologists and revisionist historians have adopted the feel-good, New Age humanist view that animal species, including mankind, possess a natural aversion to intra-species killing, at least in the case of humankind, the archaeological and historical record demonstrates that they are wrong. Using the idea that inter-tribal battles were largely “ceremonial” affairs that actually resulted in little bloodshed or killing are patently absurd. The important factor that these pseudo-scientist “experts” overlook, or else pointedly ignore in the interest of a preconceived political position, is that “battles” are not the guerrilla’s fight. Instead, like his modern equivalent, the tribal guerrilla was more inclined to use the raid in the quiet, dark of the night, to kill his enemies in their bed, by burning the damned lodges down around him, followed by quickly fleeing before the victim’s friends and family could mount an effective counterattack. Only a sucker sticks around for a “fair fight.”
That is the “way” of the classical guerrilla, just like it is the way of the “4GW” guerrilla. The idea of constraints being placed on the behavior of the guerrilla, or that he must fight according to the accepted rules of “conventional” military thought is also a cultural conceit without historical or archaeological relevance. “Mercy” in tribal guerrilla wars is seldom given or expected. Just like a modern US soldier, captured by so-called 4GW Al Qaeda fighters can expect to be sodomized, beheaded, or both, before being killed, a captured tribesman, through history, could look forward to being burned, castrated, beheaded, sodomized, or sold into slavery, if in fact, he wasn’t simply eaten. His women could expect to be raped and then killed, or sold into slavery. Even children would be either killed outright, or enslaved. Villages would be razed, crops destroyed, and livestock stolen. While we may naively expect the “modern” guerrilla to be constrained in his behavior by cultural background or training, or the demands of his nation-state sponsors, the use of this type of terror by the classical guerrilla sheds further light on the fact that the use of terror by “4GW” terrorist is in fact, not new at all.
Guerrilla warfare, whether referred to for what it is, or given some cute new label to make it more marketable, is neither pretty nor romantic. The tribal guerrilla wasn’t interested in playing by opponent’s rules, if in fact, his opponent had any rules to play by. For the guerrilla, classical or modern, warfare is not an extension of politics. Warfare is simply survival.
In his 1996 book illustrating the advantages of modern civilization and the nation-state that resulted, “War Before Civilization,” archeology professor Lawrence Keely points out that the evidence indicates that tribal societies engaged in inter-tribal “guerrilla” conflict suffer an average of 0.5% loss of their total population per year in directly conflict-related deaths. For the current US population, that would be the equivalent of 1.5 million deaths per year–more than all combat deaths in American military history, from 1775 until today (just under 850,000 according to the sources I checked).
The absolute truth is, fighting as a guerrilla, whether modern or classical/tribal, pretty much sucks. You don’t get to go home and sleep in your soft bed, wrapped up around momma every night. Perhaps not for any nights for months or years at a time. You may never get to go home, since it may very well end up burned down by rivals who want your territory for themselves. You may not be around to protect your wife and children. Even if you are around, sniper fire can come out of the blue, at the least expected time and place. Kidnappings, rapes, and destruction of property are the norms in guerrilla conflicts. If you think, because this is “Amurrika!” that things will somehow be different, you’re fucking deluded, and missing the point of the entire preparedness conversation. People you love are going to die. Your wife may die. Your children may die. Whether you pick up a gun, or don’t pick up a gun, you will probably die.
Life as a guerrilla, regardless of the overall impact of the conflict, will suck. It will not be comfortable. Many people in the liberty and preparedness movement cite the fact that some Taliban-aligned Pashtun tribal fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan were discovered to be fighting against US/Coalition forces clad in “man-jammies” and sandals, equipped with little more than a wool blanket and a single spare Kalashnikov magazine. The apparent lesson “learned” by these aspiring American guerrillas is that this guerrilla shit must be easy. Unfortunately for these folks, their ignorance is demonstrated by the fact that they’ve overlooked two critical facts:
The equipment load-out of those Pashtun fighters was discovered during battle damage assessment (BDA) studies. In other words, they were dead…Guess that load-out maybe wasn’t so ideal after all? (A gross oversimplification, I know, but it’s valid enough to make the point worth paying attention to)
A Pashtun tribal fighter from the mountains of Afghanistan is considerably tougher, physically and mentally, than you and I put together. Arguing otherwise isn’t even as benign as ignorance. It’s sheer stupidity and bravado. When you grow up sleeping on a blanket or two thrown on a packed dirt floor, in a mud hut with no window or door coverings except maybe a blanket or old hide tacked up, subsisting on rice, beans, and a handful of half-cooked, spoiled meat, while running up and down mountains all day, and fighting from the time you’re old enough to pick up a Kalasknikov rifle, and never advance to sleeping in a protected environment like a real house, with a soft mattress under you, then maybe you can convincingly argue otherwise. In the meantime, sleeping on a soft bed, in a warm house, with your biggest fear being whether the cable bill can be paid this month does not make you guerrilla warfare tough.
When I was a young Ranger private, one of my mentors was a very skilled martial artist and a pioneer in what would become MMA. Knowing of my profound interest in all things combatives related, he once told me, “Ranger Mosby, a lot of guys come to the Regiment because they think they’re going to learn some high-speed karate shit. They get disappointed when they don’t, because we simply don’t have the time in the training calendar for that silliness. When we do have time, we focus on stuff they think is too simple to be effective. What those idiots don’t recognize is, interpersonal violence is interpersonal violence. Regardless of the scale of the battlefield, the fundamentals of victory remain the same. I don’t care if it’s a brawl behind the bar, two rifle squads slugging it out in the jungle, or the armies of Good and Evil battling it out on the plains of Meggido, in the end, it all boils down to speed, surprise, and violence of action! The concepts you learn here, whether as a rifleman, a SAW gunner, or on a machine gun team, will do more for your “martial arts” knowledge than all the shoulder throws you will ever do in the dojo.”
Being the highly motivated young Airborne Ranger that I was, and hungry for any knowledge that could glean from my wiser, slightly older, but vastly more experienced mentors, I remembered those words. In fact, I went back to my room in the barracks, almost immediately (I think it was after he allowed me to recover from the front leaning rest position for asking some sort of dumb-ass question about combatives…), and copied them into my ever-present journal. It wasn’t however, until I was considerably further along in my military career, while serving as a junior SF weapons sergeant, that I really began to understand what he meant. It wasn’t simply a matter of being faster, sneakier, and meaner than the other guy, although those certainly help. It wasn’t just about being more fit and stronger than the enemy, although that damned sure helped too. The truth was, the same tactics, techniques, and procedures that helped us successfully prosecute a small-scale fight against the Taliban in a tight canyon in Afghanistan, were the same TTPs that would allow me to prosecute a fight anywhere, against anyone.
Whether you expect your fight to come in the bush, crawling around on your belly, eating bugs and drinking water from a stagnant, muddy pool, or you expect your fight to come in a large urban area, in fast moving sports cars, with pistols and stolen MP5s, or you expect your fight to come in your living room, against an up-armored FEMA or DHS entry team (in which case, you’re a dumbass for being there when they arrive), the same fundamental concepts apply, if you actually hope to win and survive.
You need training, regardless of what you think. If you’ve served in a combat arms unit, in combat, you probably possess the fundamental skills to survive the initial bursts of violence as well as anyone, providing you the ability to learn as you go about how to modify the TTPs you already know, for surviving without the benefits of air support, indirect fire support, and a long support train behind you. If you’ve never worn a uniform though, or even if you have, if you’ve never performed in a profession that required you to mentally and physically prepare to look another human being in the face, while shoving eight inches of steel into their flesh, and dealing with the psychology of that, while still being able to provide leadership to others, you have no idea what you don’t know.
What you don’t know is, you need tactical training. Being an effective fighter does not come naturally to anyone, I don’t care what anyone tells you. The fact that you can out shoot all the guys in your local pistol club, or all of the local cops who bother to come to the range doesn’t mean shit. The fact that you’ve won every fist fight you’ve ever been in at the local watering hole doesn’t mean shit. Being a big fish in a little pond is not the same thing as being a big fish in the ocean. The sharks aren’t going to fight you on your terms, regardless of your fantasies.
While a Special Forces soldier should doctrinally be a subject-matter expert on guerrilla warfare, I don’t know many of us who are so bold or naive as to presume that we have all the answers. I certainly don’t. Whether looking at SF UW doctrine, or “traditional” light infantry doctrine at the team, squad, and platoon level, the doctrine, as it stands, may not fit a future conflict strictly. The doctrine may not even necessarily be how things actually get done today (it certainly hasn’t been for most of the GWOT in the SF community. Only recently has the SF community collectively returned to its UW roots after spending the better part of a decade focused on direct-action, door-kicking HVT missions better suited for the Ranger Regiment and SMUs). What the doctrine does, whether SF UW, or Light Infantry, is provide a frame of reference to begin to gain an understanding of the nature of the beast we’re dealing with. It is a reflection of the combat arms community’s collective self-image of how we hope to prosecute these types of operations, or at least how the authors of the appropriate manuals hope we fight.
When considering the future application of this doctrine, whether in training or real-world applications, it is crucial to recognize two critical factors in regards to the doctrine, and choose to either apply the lessons that the doctrine teaches, or modify them to your perceived image of what is going to happen:
At some level, despite the best efforts otherwise, a trainer’s own intellectual conceits, as a product of a 20th century upbringing in a largely Judeo-Christian culture, as well as subsequent professional military education and experience, will necessarily influence the conclusions that we reach, regarding the effectiveness and applicability of doctrinal considerations.
A good trainer, with intellectual honesty, will recognize the existence of these prejudices and conceits, and strive heartily to overcome them.
There is a very sad condition that exists in people everywhere, that is especially apparent in the gun and preparedness communities, for men to delude themselves into believing that they know more than they do. There's even an “official” name for it, developed by a head-shrinking psychiatrist somewhere. It’s called “competency bias.” We all (and yes, I’m including myself in that “we all.”)want to believe that we’re naturally competent at anything we might ever want to do, and we tend to conveniently ignore or dismiss any evidence that would disprove our delusions.
Unfortunately for both ourselves and our families, in the long term, we often get away with this in trivial matters. “Oh, I’m a good carpenter!” says the accountant who’s never swung a hammer for wages in his life, and the last thing he built was a birdhouse in Cub Scouts. His delusions won’t harm anyone, as long as he limits himself to building birdhouses. When he decides that he knows how to build a human house though, and absolutely refuses to even consider the help or advice of professionals, while he might get lucky, the house is likely to fall down around him. Even in a best case scenario, and he does manage to build it solid enough to not fall down in his lifetime, the roof and seams leak, the windows and doors sag and stick, and the whole building settles, because birdhouses don’t have foundations to worry about.
“Hell, I’m a great driver!” says every man everywhere, who refuses to take a defensive driving or high-performance driving class, despite repeated fender benders and traffic tickets. That even works out well for him, until he’s staring into the eyes of a 600lb elk, in the middle of a two-lane blacktop, as he comes around a blind corner at 75MPH, at 0300. He either ends up with an elk in his lap, or the family minivan, along with the whole family, ends up on its roof, in the bottom of a ravine, unseen by passers-by on the road above the next day.
“I know how to shoot! I’m better than any soldier at shooting! I shot my elk last year at 1500 yards, with my .30-06, holding two inches over his back!” says the hillbilly (actual statement, made to my face in a hunting camp!) Never mind the fact that the hillbilly obviously lacks an understanding of even the most elementary ballistics, and has absolutely no range estimation abilities whatsoever, while being too cheap to invest in a decent laser range finder.
“I’ve read all the field manuals and I’m an expert in infantry tactics. It doesn’t matter that I can’t actually execute them because I’m forty pounds overweight though, because I’m going to be a 4GW ninja master, so I don’t need that stuff anyway!” says the 5’8″ 230 lb computer programmer turned militia commander, who really couldn’t even tell you what range his rifle is zeroed at, because he doesn’t understand that an 8″ group, at 100 yards, from the prone supported position, is not something you admit to, let along use as a standard for marksmanship, at even the most elementary levels of shooting.
Competency bias, in mundane matters, is humorous. In life-and-death situations though, it results in the wrong people dying, because egos and pride are too important to some important. The comfort of sitting on the computer, blathering on blogs and forums about your prowess as a 4GW guerrilla commando ninja expert, and master of post-modern urban warfare, is far easier, and more comfortable than crawling around in the woods, sprinting from position to position, getting sweaty, tired, and bug-bitten while actually learning to be a novice guerrilla commando ninja expert. Sipping a Coke and whiskey, while typing about your incredible physical prowess in crawling up storm drains, and leaping rooftop-to-rooftop, three stories up, like a “Tier One” commando, is less miserable than being hungry, thirsty, dirty, smelling like you haven’t bathed in a month, and physically and mentally exhausted to the point of tears, from realistic, effective training. Who cares that it might actually keep you alive in a fight? That shit is hard work!
Do you actually know how to develop and set up a multi-layered, in-depth security program, utilizing LP/OPs and roving security patrols correctly? Do you know how to plan and perform those security patrols? Do you know what to look for when planning a security patrol? Do you know how to hit a realistic, partially-obscured target, at 200 meters, with your rifle? When you’ve been moving under the weight of your fighting and sustainment loads for the last week, and have just sprinted three hundred yards?
You need tactical training. You know, in your heart of hearts and soul of souls, that you need training. You just have to turn your ego down and listen to your brain for a change.
Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you how to shoot, move, and communicate effectively. If you’re twenty pounds overweight, with a bodyfat percentage higher than 15%, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you are not capable of moving tactically, correctly. If you cannot shoot a 2MOA group, from the prone, under field conditions, with your choice of fighting rifle, while rested, you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you cannot perform a speed reload, or immediate action, with your choice of fighting rifle, while in full gear, winded from running sprints or individual movement techniques, and blinded by the sweat running into your eyes, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you’ve never performed a live-fire hasty assault or break contact battle drill, with multiple small teams moving over the battle space, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to communicate effectively.
Realistic, effective tactical training, in today’s environment, is about more than shoot-move-communicate though. It will teach you leadership skills, under field conditions. It’s about mission-planning and troop-leading procedures, even in four-man cells. It’s about preparing yourself and others for future survival.
Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you, better than anyone can ever tell you, exactly how dismally out-of-shape you actually are. Good training is a suckfest and a gut-check. It will require you to reach down the front of your pants to grab your nuts, and confirm that you really do have the intestinal fortitude to man the fuck up and do the right thing, by getting yourself in shape, so you can do what you need to do, instead of just talking about it.
Realistic, effective tactical training will open your eyes to the importance of your spouse not only being accepting of your preparedness plans and actions, but of her being an active, willing participant. You’ll begin to understand that your partner really is your partner, and that you are not the only one in your family who needs to be trained. Your wife and even your kids of weapons-handling age, should be trained.
Realistic, effective tactical training, planned and executed by someone who knows what they are doing, will teach you how to think about security, not just for your family, but for your home and your community, against a broader range of threats, in ways that are cost-effective, as well as simply effective. Planning just for home defense, or just for your personal or family retreat security is not enough. That’s the equivalent of saying, “I’ve got a gun in my nightstand, so I can leave the doors and windows unlocked, with bundles of cash sitting out on tables, even though I live in South Central Los Angeles. I mean, fuck, I own a gun!” That works great…right up until a crew of bad guys are coming through your front door with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades, while you’re sitting on the couch with the wife and kids, watching “The X Factor” and your gun is still in the nightstand. You need to learn to plan for security, at home and retreat, in a holistic manner, and good tactical training will give you the tools to do that.
If you believe a fight is coming, whether you think it will be against the security forces of a tyrannical regime, or whether you think it will be against outlaw bands of cannibalistic San Franciscans, it doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read. If doesn’t matter how many times you’ve earned the Appleseed “Rifleman” patch. It doesn’t matter how many “Advanced Urban Combat” courses you’ve attended. Until you get quality training in the application of those skills in small-unit tactics, you’re just a lonely dude with a gun. Realistic, effective tactical training is a force multiplier you can’t live without, because you won’t live without it. If you don’t want to, or can’t, get to training with one of the guys in this collective “preparedness/liberty” community who are teaching, that’s okay. Go talk to your old high school buddy who just ETS’d after multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and convince him to help you develop some training plans. You need the training.
Regardless of the existence of educational and cultural biases, based on the established military orthodoxy of the organized, formal nation-state military, the reality is, small-unit tactics are small-unit tactics. The same underlying principles have worked since the time of antiquity, to leverage available technology (bows and arrows versus massed formations to precision rifle fire versus small-unit formations; burning a lodge down around the enemy’s family with torches and animal fat versus using a thermite charge to accomplish the same thing; sabotage of enemy food supplies via poisoning livestock or water sources versus blowing a rail line to interdict mass transport of supplies) against an enemy. While the current doctrine, SF or infantry, may not be perfect, it really is the best idea that the collective experience of fighters and historians can come up with for what will work to prosecute the fight. As the man said, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get the training and you can begin to develop a frame of reference for what works and what doesn’t, so you can make intelligent, informed decisions about how to modify what is already known to work, versus what you think might work in the future.
Now, when it comes to training, be like Nike and “Just Do It.”
John Mosby
Mountain Guerilla
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
Tactical Use of Terrain/Ground
By: Max Velocity
I am going to concentrate on the offense. Mainly because I have covered defense, types of terrain and the principles of defense in detail in 'Contact' and although I have covered offense, there is more detail that can be gone into about use of ground in the assault, rather than just the mechanics of an assault. I have also covered use of terrain for navigation and movement, which is itself a separate topic. So for now, I will hone in on offense and use as a vehicle for the discussion either hasty or deliberate attacks (or raids) to go through a terrain analysis process.
Straight up I am going to launch into one of the old faithful U.S. Army mnemonics. These are all well and good as an aide memoir but must be understood rather than trotted out as a standard answer (METT-TC anyone?) A standard approach that you may find useful is to use the mnemonic OCOKA:
O – Observation and Fields of Fire
C – Cover and Concealment
O - Obstacles
K – Key Terrain
A – Avenues of Approach
If you are attacking, you will need to consider these from the point of view of the enemy position you are attacking i.e. what are the enemy's observation and fields of fire from their position....? How will I apply that to a covered approach?
OK, after my foray into standard U.S. Army doctrine, moving swiftly on:
When considering terrain, or as I prefer to say, ground, you must consider it in conjunction with the enemy. Thus you do not think about ground as its own thing, but as enemy/ground (enemy & ground). You will then relate that to your position. It is a spacial relation and application of fire problem that is up to you to solve. The position of the enemy on the ground, related to the position of friendly forces and how the lay of the land falls between the two will inform your decision making.
I have put in a chapter on the 'Combat Estimate' in 'Contact': this is a planning tool that also acts as a 'mental trainer' for real situation when you don't have time to actually conduct a written estimate. It follows the process of going though factors such as enemy/ground and making decisions that will lead to potential 'courses of action' and finally a plan. Such a tool can be used in slower time when planning a deliberate attack/raid or off the cuff if engaged in a reaction to contact and hasty attack.
(I do cover MDMP, mainly as an explanation of what it is, and then I largely steer clear of it. My advice: once you get a basic understanding, stay largely away from set military doctrine i.e. trotting out the old faithful key words and mnemonics, it will bog you down. Free your mind!)
Dead Ground: this is a positional concept that applies to ground that cannot be seen from a position i.e. it is not covered by observation or direct fire from the enemy position. In a macro sense, I can't see the valley behind the ridge, so that is 'dead ground' to me. This dead ground concept is really important and goes to cover and concealment. You must try to develop a 'soldier’s eye for the ground' which basically means that when you view terrain, it’s not pretty, it's a relationship of slopes and angles that will either provide cover or it will not. In the micro sense, you can apply the concept of dead ground as related to the enemy position and your position. A simple angled slope may therefore provide you cover, and thus be dead ground from the enemy perspective. Even if it is only useful if you are in a low crawl, it may be the difference between life and death.
Cover & Concealment: Cover will protect you from enemy fire and observation (i.e. in a ditch) while concealment will only protect you from enemy observation, (i.e. behind a bush) and if the enemy fires through the concealment they may well hit you. Clearly cover is preferable to concealment but you may have to use a mixture of both.
Smoke: you can use smoke as a form of concealment. The enemy can fire through it. It may also be used as a form of deception. You can buy very effective smoke grenades for the air soft market. If you have the reach it is always better to smoke off the enemy position, rather than your position. With a handheld smoke grenade you are limited in range. Remember also that smoke can interfere with your accurate suppression fire. With a civilian smoke grenade, the smoke generation is not instant and thus you will have to wait for the smoke to 'build' before you can use its concealment; smoke also has to be thrown to take account of wind direction. You could perhaps use the smoke grenade to conceal the movement of your flanking assault element, while not screening off your fire support element.
Smoke can therefore be used to help when natural cover and concealment is lacking, perhaps when you have to move off 'the X', which is the enemy killing area, or to conceal movement across an area of open ground. Remember though, it is a double edged weapon - once you pop smoke, you will indicate what you are doing - thus consider it also as a form of deception, and have someone pop it on the right flank, for example, when you went left.
Thermal Smoke: used as a form of concealment from aerial thermal surveillance, or ground thermal surveillance. Burning suitable materials, such as oil drums, tires, brush, grassland or whatever, can create a thermal smokescreen that will drift across the area of operations, wind dependent, to screen off your operation and even your approach to an attack. This will work against visual and thermal observation. You may even just burn the enemy out of their positions.
Darkness: like smoke, darkness can be used as a form of concealment. However, consider the night vision capabilities of the enemy balanced against your own before making decisions on night attacks. You may also employ judicious use of white light, such as parachute illumination flares, either the handheld rocket type or fired from mortars if you have it. But also remember that darkness may have other advantages, such as surprise and the enemy having perhaps let their guard down/asleep, depending who they are. As usual, balance the factors and make a decision. If using white light, you can employ it as you wish, lighting up and then going dark to cover movement etc. The murky light and moving shadows will always add to the confusion and terror of a night attack.
Key Terrain: this is ground or position that provides a marked advantage to whichever side holds it. For example, if the enemy is defending a small farm complex, and there is a little knoll behind it, perhaps upon which they have an observation post (OP) then taking this key terrain (the knoll) may afford you a distinct advantage in assaulting the enemy complex. Not only because you destroy their OP/fire support position/sharpshooter hide, but you may also be able to position your own fire support elements there to support your assault onto the complex. Conversely, if the enemy continues to hold the knoll, they can not only observe and call fire onto your assault elements as they maneuver onto the farm complex, but they can also disrupt your attack from the knoll itself, with support fire. A preliminary surprise attack on the knoll would allow you to position a support by fire element there and consequently assault onto the farm complex.
There is a difference between a deliberate attack/raid and a hasty attack. The main difference is that with a deliberate attack you retain the initiative because you plan it, move to the enemy position and initiate the attack from a position and at a time of your own choosing. So long as you can approach the enemy position undetected you will have a choice of where to position your fire support element and where to move your assault elements, where to concentrate force to achieve the break-in and your sequence of assault. Remember that 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' and there will always be a need to maintain flexibility and adapt to changing circumstance. That is why it is best to adopt a 'mission command' mindset where it is the achievement of a mission/task and the 'reason why' behind it that is important, rather than just simply doing exactly as you were told in orders.
A brief explanation on mission command (also covered in 'Contact'): although missions/tasks should be given in the form of a task(s) followed by a unifying purpose (reason why) this is not to let your guys go and do whatever they want to do on the objective. There needs to be a plan and a sequence, and that will be tied in with control measures to allow best utilization of support by fire, sequencing, and to prevent fratricide. So stick to the plan as much as possible and improvise in accordance with the 'reason why' if things start to go wrong.
For example, 2nd squad was supposed to echelon (i.e. move in sequence) through 1st Squad to move on and assault objective 2. However, an unseen/unknown mutually supporting enemy position has opened fire. 2nd Squad has taken casualties and is now totally involved in a firefight tying to suppress this new enemy position, which is to a flank. The platoon leader now makes a decision out of the original plan to move a machine gun team from the fire support element out to a flank to a position where it can suppress this new enemy position. While he is engaged with giving orders for that, 3rd squad did not wait for orders. They were in reserve (part of the assault cycle) and took the opportunity to push through 1st squad, past 2nd squad, and seize 2nd squads initial objective, thus getting the plan back on track but with different elements doing the planned tasks. Now that we are at this point, and the new enemy position is being successfully suppressed, the platoon leader can now view the assault on this new position as an unplanned hasty attack and give quick battle orders (QBOs) for a squad to assault, now that the enemy are suppressed.
With a deliberate attack, you are looking for various key positions. These should be found in your recce of the enemy position, before you give orders and conduct the mission. You need an ORP (objective rally point) which is where you will patrol to before dispersing to the various assault positions. This should be on a covered approach to the enemy position. Your fire support position will be covered and allow a sufficient range for your weapon systems to engage and suppress the enemy. Don't be too close; if you have the range and accuracy - use it. If you can get an elevated position overlooking the enemy objective, with decent fields of fire not obscured by too much vegetation, then you are getting a good fire support location. Your weapon systems, and also the ground, will decide ranges. If you have tripod mounted machine guns, you could be pushing back out to as far as maybe 800 meters, but balance this against the ability to accurately observe and 'fire in' the assaulting elements. For standard small arms, given suitable ground, you may be 100 meters away in fire support; you don't ideally want to be more than 300 meters away.
Your fire support element will need to be able to switch fire ahead of the assaulting elements and engage depth and mutually supporting positions as the assault elements work through the enemy position. Because of this, and because of ballistics, you ideally want to have an angle of 90 degrees between your fire support and your assaulting elements. So your assaulting elements will come in from either the left or the right of the fire support elements, which will be firing across their front and then switching away from them onto enemy depth as the assault progresses. Don't have an angle beyond 90 degrees where your assault elements are heading towards your fire support. If the angle is less than 90 degrees then your assault elements will obscure the enemy position sooner as they advance. Real life is never ideal.
So when planning for your deliberate attack you need to have a covered approach for the assault elements to move to a forming up position (FUP) which is where they will shake out into assault formation before crossing the line of departure (LD) into the assault. They will approach, assault and fight through the enemy positions in sequence and each element will be controlled by a limit of exploitation (LOE). This applies to any type of objective, such as trenches, bunkers, buildings, small complexes, compounds or a camp attack. The difference is the specifics of the assault techniques (don't get me started on 'CQB'!)
Once you spatially assess the enemy position you will be able to position your locations for the approaches, FUP, LD, fire support etc. and sequence how your elements will assault onto and through the enemy objective. Remember that although you will have a fire support element, each assault element will be providing its own integral fire support and fire and movement as it moves through the objective, and each assault element will be supporting the others as they cycle through the various enemy positions.
When considering the assault, think about distances that your guys will have to cross from the LD to the first objective, how the objectives (buildings/trenches etc) lay related to each other, how you will move from one to another and where will you position integral fire support elements. Are you able to assault downhill, or will it have to be uphill? If you come from a certain direction, are there any good options for fire support locations? Once you understand the spatial relations of ballistics, how an element covers another element and the characteristics of obscuring and unsafe fire support, you will be able to spatially plan such an assault.
The best use of ground comes into this when you are looking for covered approaches to move between one location and another and to close distances and open ground that you have to cross. Any movement in the open risks enemy fire. Of course, when in contact there is never movement without supporting fire. The more open the ground is the more supporting fire you will need to be able to survive across that open area. The more cover you can utilize the less fire you will need. Moving on a football field is totally reliant on the effectiveness of your accurate suppression fire. Movement in a ditch can be done if your suppression fire is not totally effective.
How does this apply to a hasty attack? A hasty attack will usually take place after a surprise contact when your element has been 'advancing to contact'. It may also take place when you are hit on a patrol. Depending on your patrol orders/SOPs you will either conduct immediate action break contact drills or you will be in an offensive mission mode. Even if you are in an offensive mode you will still go through immediate action contact/battle drills to take cover and return fire, locate the enemy and begin to suppress. The difference here between a deliberate and hasty attack is that with the latter the enemy has the initiative and has opened fire on you at a point of their choosing. You are therefore in their killing area (the X) and you must seize back the initiative and prosecute an assault with speed, aggression and surprise.
(I am not going to bog down in the difference in U.S. Army doctrine between 'near' and 'far' ambush. In simple terms, a near ambush is within grenade range (30 yards) and the suggested reaction for a near ambush is a standard immediate action drill for the closest team to assault onto the enemy. The far ambush should be taken care of as I describe below. I disagree in general terms about this immediate reaction to a near ambush simply determined based on distance. If the team leader under contact decides to assault immediately, then so be it and he must be supported as much as possible. However 30 yards is a long way under fire and still depends a lot on the ground. The contacted team may well be pinned down with casualties. If possible always try and bring an element, the rear team, to a flank to either assault or at least support by fire).
This means that after initial contact and everyone having done their individual react to contact drills, the squad leader for the element that comes under contact will most likely maneuver his element off the immediate X into a better position to begin to win the firefight with the enemy. This will be done by basic fire and movement, either forwards, to the flank, or rearward, into better position of cover and concealment. This could be a single squad/element or it could be one element of a larger force, such as a platoon. The squad leader that came under contact, if part of a larger force, will make a decision, based on his assessment of enemy location and strength, to either put in a hasty squad attack or defer to the platoon leader if the enemy is too strong. If he hands it over to the platoon leader, he may well become the fire support squad, or the platoon leader may move elements around into better positions, supporting each by fire to do so. It's another spatial/mechanical action.
If you are a squad leader who has come under fire and moved off the X or at least into better cover, and you are contemplating a hasty attack, you will hand over the control of the firefight to your second in command and conduct a quick combat estimate. This is where you are looking at the spatial combination of enemy/ground. as it relates to the enemy position, your position and the ground in between. It is vital at this point to observe as best as you can and identify enemy positions, numbers and firepower.
You are looking for:
- A fire support location. In a hasty attack that is often simply leaving a team in support where you are right now. If you have to put a team into a better location, then that will be conducted by fire and movement in a series of preliminary moves to get them where you need them.
- A covered approach to a flank. Concealed if not covered.
- A forming up position (FUP) & line of departure (LD).
- A sequence of assault onto the enemy objective. For a squad, you are only really going to be assaulting with one team and thus onto a single enemy fighting position/trench/bunker.
When assessing the ground, it is helpful to divide it into left, center and right. Center is not usually a good idea unless very close to the enemy. Best to go either left or right flanking. So you are effectively looking for a left or right flanking approach. Decide on the best one depending on your assessment of the various factors. Once you decide, go with it. There may be a couple of options to a flank, such as far left and near left. Decide on the best one as it relates to the spatial problem.
As you plan to take your assault team left or right flanking, you will also need to consider the need for further suppression of the enemy as you get closer, using one of your buddy pairs in the assault team to either be a 'point of fire' to provide closer suppression on the enemy as you approach from the flank, or to be a point of fire as outward looking flank protection, facing out to cover any depth or mutually supporting enemy positions. Remember flank protection as you move through that covered route - you may run into another enemy position, which was holding its fire in anticipation of your move or simply out of sector for your initial contact location, and in that case you may want to reconsider the odds. It may already be too late and you are committed to following the fight through to its conclusion. 'Finish the fight!'
If you are assaulting enemy in the open you will usually simply fight through in a skirmish line by fire and movement in buddy teams. If you are assaulting a fighting position such as a trench or bunker, then you may use the point of fire method to drop off one buddy pair as intimate fire support and assault with a buddy pair.
If you have to use a point of fire to screen off a depth position that you came across in the assault, then once you have taken care of the initial position, continue to suppress the depth. Then, bring in the team that you used as fire support and have them assault the depth. That is one way to skin the cat.
When you have cleared the enemy position, you will need to have your fire support team join you. Potentially you will be send them through to destroy that depth position your point of fire was suppressing, but assuming you are not they will rejoin you on the enemy objective. The way to do this has changed - it used to be that they would follow the route you took, all the way to the flank, on the basis that you just came up there and so it should be clear of booby traps and further enemy etc. Modern thinking says they can just take the shortest route. Make your own mind up what is best for you.
Obstacles are something that you must consider when planning your flanking approach - are there any and how do they affect that approach? Wire, concertina wire, walls, fences, buildings, ditches, creeks, rivers etc are all things that may make you decide against one route and for another. Punji pits - can you even identify/see them before you are on them? Maybe even other booby traps such as mines and IEDs.
Once on the enemy position, you also need to consider the ground where you are at as you conduct your reorganization post-assault. Are you best where you are or do you need to move to a better defended or covered position? Is there a danger of counter-attack or even indirect fire? If so, get into a defended covered position and even start digging. Often it is best to get off and away from the objective as soon as possible to avoid retaliation.
Another thing related to the direction of your assault and the lay of the land is what options are you giving the enemy? Will you trap them and force them to fight or do you give them a route to withdraw on? What do you intend - kill, capture, just seize the ground, or destroy them all? This also applies to a raid or deliberate attack where you may leave the enemy 'open door' opportunities to escape or you may deliberately place cut-off groups along egress routes to kill/capture any escaping enemy. If you do put such groups out, just like cut-off groups in an ambush you must use terrain to screen them from your direct fire as you conduct the assault, as they will likely be positioned 'downrange ' from your assault.
Live hard, die free.
MV
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