Mobs vs you in your vehicle

This topic is very timely seeing what has been happening lately many places in our nation. We need to be prepared to deal with this threat. I think the best way to get around this issue is to avoid the situations, and areas where things like this happen.

1) Avoidance is key. Many protests and riots are either predictable or planned in advance. Stay away from the riots if you want to avoid being victimized! When you see masses of people blocking the roadways, STOP. Don’t go any farther. Do whatever necessary to change directions and get out of the area. If you are alert, you should be able to see these masses of people far enough in advance that you can act before being surrounded. It goes without saying that if you are texting, talking on the phone, or watching a DVD while driving, you may not be paying enough attention to save yourself. Don’t get distracted by electronic devices when driving.

2) You can’t just run people over if they are in the road. The safest thing to do in a situation like this is to keep moving, bumping people out of the way with your car. Unfortunately, that isn’t legal. It’s considered vehicular assault. Even if people are illegally blocking the road, you will likely go to jail if you run them down absent a legitimate threat to your life. See why awareness is so important? Getting away from the kill zone both keeps you safe and out of jail.

3) The situation changes, however, once the rioters attack you or your vehicle. With your vehicle surrounded in a manner that you can’t escape and your attackers being trying to burn your car, flip it over, or drag you out, it is reasonable to assume that you will suffer serious injury or death. That’s when you can start striking people with your car. Don’t get out and shoot. You will quickly be overwhelmed and your gun will be taken from you. Instead, accelerate steadily and forcefully, driving away from the surrounding rioters. Steady movement is the key. Hitting folks too hard can disable your vehicle. As John suggests, use your vehicle to push people out of the way rather than striking them.

4) Doors locked and seat belt OFF. It should go without saying that your doors should be locked when driving. If your doors don’t automatically lock, get in the habit of locking them manually as soon as you get inside. You don’t want the crowd to be able to easily open your door and drag you out.
You may not have enough time to do it, but cracking your windows and turning off your ventilation system would also be a good idea when driving in areas where crowds may gather. Windows that are down approximately 1/2″ are actually harder to break than windows that are tightly closed. You want to turn off the ventilation system so you don’t get overcome by any smoke or tear gas that is in the air where you are driving.

Your seat belt should be off. Seat belts will reduce your ability to draw a firearm. They will also prohibit you from making a speedy escape should your vehicle be set on fire or overturned. In general, it’s safer to stay inside the car in a crowd. If Molotov cocktails hit your car, drive quickly away. The wind will likely extinguish the burning liquid before you are hurt. If the car is disabled, and under fire attack, get out. It’s best to take your chances on foot than be trapped inside and burned alive.

5) Tear gas grenades may or may not work. Many people have asked me about the utility of carrying a couple of pepper spray grenades in the car with you for the purpose of keeping large gangs away from your vehicle. I carry a couple in my car, but I would be hesitant to recommend the tactic. In order to deploy the grenades, you’ll have to get out of the car or lower the windows. Both of those actions dramatically increase your risk. The crowd may be wearing gas masks or the like as well. I think the grenades would work better if you were on foot than they would if you are attacked in a vehicle.

6) Carry your gun on your person, not in the car. Some folks like using holsters that mount under the dash or on the steering column for just this type of criminal act. I think it’s a bad idea. If you have to bail out of the car quickly, you may not have a chance to grab the gun. Do you want to abandon a firearm and leave it in the hands of the rioters? I would hope not. Carry your gun on your person. Don’t leave it in your console, glove compartment or special “counter carjacker” holster on the steering wheel.

7) Beware of other forms of roadblocks. The roadblocks designed to make you stop, may not take the form of people. The rioters will steal cars and then purposely abandon them in the middle of roadways. It causes you to stop and also prevents police/fire vehicles from getting to the scene. It’s a common occurrence around the world. Even more notorious are homemade caltrops. A bunch of those strewn across the roadway would cause all kinds of havoc.

Take a look at the tactics used by rioters and protesters around the world. Commit to avoiding areas where such protests are occurring. If you do get caught up in the mob violence, consider some of the tips above to make it out safely.

Original article

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A how-to guide for counterinsurgency

A guest post from Roland Bartetzko, a former soldier in the German army and Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), offers key observations about counterinsurgency from the insurgent’s point of view.

Many books and manuals have been written about counterinsurgency strategies. But looking at the current situations in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, it seems that either nobody has read any of these writings, or the given advice is wrong or not applicable.

It is often said that to understand counterinsurgency, one first has to know insurgent’s point of view. Having been a guerrilla fighter myself and having interviewed a number of insurgents from the war in Syria and Iraq for a study on radical Islam, there are several aspects of counterinsurgency that seem to be misunderstood – not only by the public, but by militaries as well. Here are some key points to consider.

Air strikes damage assessment

When it comes to fighting an insurgency, air strikes don’t work the same way they do against a conventional army. Although it is indeed impressive to watch the big explosions on our TV screens, when the dust is settled surprisingly many insurgents come out of the rubble alive. “The bigger their bombs the deeper our caves” says the guerrilla.

If the purpose of these air raids was to cause panic or to lower the morale of the enemy, it seldom works. You can’t “shock and awe” someone who is not afraid to die, but on the contrary desires to do so on the battlefield. Never underestimate the resilience of your opponent: As late as of March 2016, after having been on the receiving end of a massive air campaign, the Islamic State in Iraq was still capable of launching armored assaults against Kurdish positions.

Tactics vs strategy

Unconventional wars are often won by tactics rather than strategy. The insurgent’s only strategy is to win the war. In order to successfully combat guerrillas, a military force has to have very capable and flexible infantry squad and platoon commanders. This is the infantry’s war, not that of the generals. Still, NATO’s militaries are very inflexible and it takes them forever to plan and to execute even a small size operation. To change this more autonomy must be given to smaller units.

In an unconventional conflict, the participants have to learn to apply unconventional methods. “Out of the box” thinking is not enough. The soldier or law enforcement officer also has to learn to act against his or her intuition.

This includes ignoring enemy activity because of a religious holiday, or condoning drug trade and other illicit activities in order to make deals with local warlords. This type of behavior comes naturally to the insurgents, but might be hard to accept for a Western professional career soldier. The aim is not to make the world a better place, but to win the war. Instead, counterinsurgency should tackle the political roots of the problem: What is driving locals into the arms of the insurgents?

Allies or political lackeys?

It is appalling to see how the United States and European treat their allies. This observation is especially true for the Afghan National Army, but extends even to smaller NATO partners that were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Although it is widely acknowledged that winning the sympathies of the local population is a key element to a successful counterinsurgency strategy, this will be difficult to achieve when the local military is not fully respected.

For the Iraqi Army, the problem is more that of training and recruitment. Both armies in Iraq and Afghanistan appoint high grade officers with the aim of trying to “respect the ethnic/religious diversity” of the country. This thinking has turned out to be disastrous.

This issue is not only about morale support and training; If you’re relying on local allies to bear the brunt of the fighting, they should receive the best equipment that is available. This has been especially true in regards to the Afghan forces. The Afghan National Army (ANA) Main Battle Tanks (MBT), Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), and most helicopters are Soviet made. Even their Special Forces (SF), although having somehow better material, can’t compare with Western SF.


Instead the ANA is expected to do the job with obsolete Soviet era arms. There is a military principle that commands that the units that go to battle always get the best equipment. This should always apply to NATO’s local allies.

Inside intelligence

Waging an unconventional war requires a different type of intelligence from the one when fighting against a conventional enemy. Guerrilla operations and movements cannot be easily spotted. Often the insurgents are well camouflaged or operate in disguise. Therefore human intelligence is an absolute necessity. It won’t be enough to just listen to the enemy’s radio communication or rely on aerial or satellite images in order to learn their intentions. Inside sources within the organization are needed. And the best air force with the most advanced technical capabilities is ineffective if there is no intelligence on targets available.

Currently most information that the coalition possess about ISIS originates from deserters, who repented joining the organization, and their testimony is often biased; this leads many people to underestimate the military capabilities of ISIS. Most “repenters” played only minor roles in the Islamic State organization and therefore the intelligence they provide is of little value.

Be patient

Time is the most underrated factor in unconventional warfare. Western politicians often expect positive results immediately. A guerrilla is not in a hurry. They are in for the long haul and can keep their head down and wait for better days.

There is often a gap between the moment a counterinsurgency measure is taken, and the time its effects are seen. For example, one might shut down the enemy’s supply lines, but it will still take weeks or months until this measure diminishes the enemy’s capability to wage war.

On the other hand less insurgent activity is not always the result of a successful counterinsurgency strategy. There are plenty of unrelated reasons why the guerrilla have stopped fighting, some of them as trivial as a wedding or the need of additional manpower to bring in the crops. In other instances, political crises in neighboring countries, fluctuations in international small arms trade, and regional conditions could revitalize a dormant insurgent force. The counterinsurgency forces might retreat from this “pacified’ region only to find out later that the enemy is still there.

Patience is demanded. Often the right military decision is made, but it shows no immediate effect. Western military planners often consider themselves as surgeons; their operations are described as “surgical cuts”. However, the war against insurgents asks for oncologists treating cancer patients.

The lower the intensity of an unconventional war is, the more the war “slows down”. At the lowest end, individuals and isolated cells that have pledged their alliance to a radical organization are conducting terrorist attacks in the United States and Western Europe. Years can pass before such persons finally begin to act. Planning and preparing those attacks can take months. The countermeasures to prevent those acts are usually the most time consuming. Don’t expect quick results in fighting urban terrorism.

A serious and thorough reform of the local counterinsurgency forces should include setting up an intelligence network which produces actionable intelligence from reliable sources, but also a need to introduce “soft’ measures like de-radicalization programs that will inevitably take time, personnel and money. Momentary battlefield “successes” and wishful thinking will make it more difficult to allocate the proper resources to do that. However, without making these changes, all victories against radical Islamic groups will turn out to be only temporary and meaningless.

Roland Bartetzko served in the German Army, the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) during the Bosnian War and with the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) during the 1999 Kosovo War. Last year he published a study about radical Islam in Kosovo. Bartetzko has a university degree in law and is currently working for a law firm in Pristina, Kosovo.

Original Article

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AR-15 Zero

Zeroing our rifles is a very important topic, it is something we all need to know how to do, and why we do it that way. Here is a great article with some very good points about this topic, please read and add to your training plans.

If you had to rely on one zero, what would it be?

For a long time, the mantra has been that the 50 / 200 yard zero (which are not truly the same mind you) is the most useful zero for the AR15 platform as the flat trajectory allows near point of aim / point of impact to nearly 200 yards. It’s vanilla advice, and vanilla pretty much suits anyone, but each would individual would benefit from exploring the benefits of the different zero’s as it relates to his or her rifle.

Many of you might have heard of the maximum point blank range method of zeroing. It encompasses a single zero where the projectile is set to a zero that keeps it afloat in a defined vertical zone / arch to match the largest diameter of a target that you want to shoot. As an example, if the vital zone I want to shoot is six inches in diameter, I would zero the bullet path to arch 3 inches high and when it drops 3 inches below my line of site… that is the end of my maximum point blank range.

Hunters have used this method for a while, but we have to tighten it up a bit for use in a defensive setting. If we stay inside the vital zone, we would be OK in theory… but with bullet accuracy and shooter error factored in, we have to adjust the MPBR to float in a defined space despite inherent accuracy issues present in the shooter / rifle combo.

So the 50/200 +- yard zero is a great starting point, and depending on the projectile weight and barrel length, it will come up 1-1.5 inches of maximum ordinate (aka the bullets apex) and then dip below 1-1.5 inches where the MPBR would end. Since we count the total rise and fall, that gives us 2 to 3 inches of vertical resolution where the bullet will rise and fall in a 2 to 3 inch line.

That’s a pretty tight zero. Is it too tight? We can almost hit small game with that zero, but is a defensive rifle set up for small game or human sized targets? What’s the smallest point we might aim at on a human target? Let’s start by expanding upon why we want to ditch the 50/200 zero mantra and see how things go with a 4 inch diameter MPBR:

Point. Click. Hit.

If I am shooting a 20 inch AR15 with XM193 and a maximum bullet rise of 3 inches high, then I just extended my MPBR to 299 yards where at that point the bullet would dip 3 inches below the line of sight. That has effectively lengthened our resolution to 6 inches of rise and fall. That easily remains in the space occupied by a human head out to 300 yards! Remember, this sighting method is target defined and shooter-rifle-projectile unique. So in a self defense setup, we need to maximize the distance where we will hit our target without shot correction.

If the target is inside our zone… we want the rifle to be a simple point and click interface. Bam. Hit. We want the highest probability of hitting a head, torso, or half exposed limb. Point. Click. Hit. We want to maximize hang time to increase the probability our bullet will hit the target at unknown distances. Click. Boom. Hit. So why not 4.5 inches up and down if the average head is 9 inches tall? Why not a 3.5 inch zero for a 7 inch diameter vital zone? It all depends on your expectations of precision and how accurately and repeatability you can hold your rifle on the center of your intended target.

Goal: increase the probability that the projectile will intersect the target without calculations.

Factors: Rifle accuracy, shooter accuracy, target size, environment.

I would think that a target, once engaged, would be hiding and would present a small target for the shooter. Three inches of rise and fall (for a total of 6 inches of vital zone) gives us a great starting point for hitting hiding, peeking, or partially exposed targets. Rifle and shooter accuracy will play a role in deciding the final zero as we might be inside of the vital zone (say a headshot) where the bullet should just nick the target at the bullets apex… but if our ammo / shooter combo is shooting with 2MOA accuracy the INACCURACY could send the bullet another inch higher and that results in a missed shot.

So that’s why we need a little bit of wiggle room. 6 inches of vertical resolution should give us a good likelihood of hitting the target with a weapon capable of 1.5-2 minutes of accuracy… but if you can dial the accuracy down to 1 MOA with a match bullet, the MPBR system will deliver more consistent hits and we will get to that in a minute.

Six inches of total vertical resolution seems like a logical choice for a MPBR setup and extends us past our 50 yard / 200 yard zero a bit and is still a fine resolution for engaging defensive targets. I can’t think of anything I would shoot at that would be missed because my trajectory apex is three inches high. Look at your knee. It likely has a targetable area of at least six inches. Torso? This resolution is easily inside the vital zone of a center of mass hold.

So next I whipped up a basic chart to get an idea of what zero at 100 yards I would need to get a MPBR which targets a 6 inch radius. This is actually a very simple process as you would zero at 100 and then round up (in clicks) to the closest 1/2 value. If you have a 1/4 minute or 1/2 minute scope, red dot, or other optic you are all set.

XM193 and Mk 262: Sight in at 100 yards X high in blue for a bullet apex of 3 inches; the MPBR is in red for each barrel and projectile. The XM855 would benefit at similar zeros as it will be in between the MPBR of the 77 grain and 55 grain ammo.

Barrel Length 10.5 14.5 16 18 20
xm193 2.6 2.4 2.5 2.2 2.0
MPBR 262 281 289 300 303
Mk 262 2.8 2.6 2.6 2.5 2.4
MPBR 242 261 270 279 284

So you can see there is a bit of difference in the MPBR between rifle, carbine, and bullet. At one end we have the longer point blank range of the 55 grain XM193 and at the other end the sexy new hotness of the 77 Mk 262 at the other. If you were to build a field gun for targets from 0-300 yards, your probability of hitting any targets without aiming correction (provided it fits within your targets diameter) will increase by the use of military spec 55 grain ammo out of a 20 inch gun. Another benefit of this zero is reduction of necessary holds: Out of a 20 inch gun with a red dot and XM193, two holds would get you hits out to 400 yards, COM for targets out to 300 and the head for targets out to 400.

This method of sighting in gives you some excellent hit probability. If the target is near, a dead hold will hit anything your aiming at. If you estimate the target is at 300-400 yards, holding on the head will ensure rounds drop into the mid torso. If you were incorrect and your target was closer than you estimated, your projectile would still likely hit the head.

It appears that M193 or quality defensive 5.56 equivalent such as Hornady 55gr TAP… would make the best choice because of the 55 grain projectiles flat trajectory, and having the extra distance where we could still hit small targets helps… but when wind is thrown into the equation the M193 makes it more difficult to hit the small targets at the end of its MPBR. So back to the heavier match bullets, what benefit do they offer? Increased accuracy and increased wind resistance.

Accuracy, Wind, and MPBR:

Typically M193 is considered a 1.5 to 2 MOA bullet and Mk 262 is considered a match sub MOA bullet. Think of each bullet as a probability to hit an area based on its accuracy and construction. Groupings are the defining measure of whether a more aggressive MPBR would work. If your gun cannot keep groups inside the defined zone, then the distance you have chosen won’t work.

Ideally you should start with a accurate, rifle length free floated barrel, and use the best ammunition available to you. Bonus points if you reload. In the below example, I tightened the acceptable MPBR to 2 inches apex for a total resolution of +-4 inches witch is another useful form of MPBR. I like 3 inches, but the example best illustrates accuracy and wind drift of two common projectiles. The hold is on the nose or dead center of the face. The large red circles represent your accuracy and points of impact (both high and at the very end of your MPBR) with a 1.5 minute 55 grain projectile, and a 1 MOA or sub MOA projectile in the Mk262 example. The blue circles represent a mild 5 mph wind drift of each projectile.

As the above illustration demonstrates, the heavier match ammo still shoots flat enough to give us 250 yards of headshot range out of a rifle, while being more accurate and fighting wind better. At 400 yards the bullet dips a bit further down the torso than M193, but that’s still a hit.

Wrapping Up:

So ultimately, your shooting goals should play into the rifle and its associated setup and upgrades. A red dot or BUIS set up with a MPBR zero will assist you in hitting targets of opportunity and at any distance inside your MPBR box. Since we cannot effectively range estimate every shot on fleeting targets, best practice would be to utilize MPBR to ensure hits by maximizing bullet flight hang time as it relates to the size of our target. This method may be off-putting to those with a ACOG or similar rifle optic since it negates the benefit of the bullet drop stadia.

Overall, it seems that a 1.5-2 inch high zero at 100 yards will get you very close to the 3 inch maximum apex for several loadings. As we deviate away from the 20 inch gun, maintaining a 2 inch 100 yard zero “rule of thumb” across all barrel length and bullet choices will slightly reduce your MPBR less than what the chart says as you go with heavier bullets and shorter barrels. Best practice appears to be a heavy match bullet out of an accurate rifle length platform. This should increase your success in hitting targets without much correction.

The true value of this setup is that it helps free you from thinking about your target in hundreds of yards, instead it allows you to estimate either near or far. Point. Click. Hit.

Integrating this into my setup… I foresee finalizing my Razor HD II for two projectiles: 55 Grain Hornady TAP for general purpose, XM193 for practice, and I am moving to Hornady 75 gr HPBT for longer range work. The Hornady is considerably cheaper than the 69 grain SMK I have been shooting, and switching back and forth between the two loadings is as simple as uncapping the dial and rotating in a few clicks of elevation and wind-age. I think these loadings can cover all shooting I can ever realistically do. I really like this method as it increases the probability of intersecting the target at x range inside my MPBR zone. It’s important to get away from the 100-200-300 yard paradigm and examine a zero which allows a more fluid approach to hitting a target at unknown ranges.

The goal of a marksman is to study the platform and integrate the best practice findings into his or her shooting. I think it is safe to say that for work inside of 400 yards, the 77 grain Mk 262 offers the best probability of hitting the target if shot out of a rifle length system, and its excellent characteristics make it best for environmental conditions. XM193 makes a good substitute as your holds would be the same, but wind may knock you off target without some very light wind correction. This method has now replaced my “chest, head, hat” methodology which I was using with the RDS.

It’s time to test my new method at the range. Vacation week cannot come soon enough!

Parent article: http://www.thenewrifleman.com/maximum-bullet-flight-getting-the-most-out-of-ar15-zero/

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The Art of Camouflage

Here is a really good playlist of camouflage videos. Check it out, use it for training for yourself, your family, or your group.

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.

Intelligence Part 2

Here is part 2 of the SHTF Intelligence article from Samuel Culper of Forward Observer.

This is the second article in a series about using intelligence for preparedness. I’m starting from square zero, in order to introduce a new crop of Americans to the concept of using intelligence, to prove that there’s a need for intelligence, and to get readers quickly up to speed on how to incorporate it into their security planning. After getting caught up to speed, if you’d like to gain a deeper knowledge and put theory into practice, a book entitled *SHTF Intelligence will show you the way forward. You can find a small homework exercise here.

In the first article, we covered why we need intelligence and an introduction to the Intelligence Cycle. We use this cycle in order to produce early warning intelligence and threat intelligence; those are the top two priorities for the Analysis & Control Element (ACE) in a SHTF situation. Our ACE is the brain where we funnel information and out comes actionable intelligence. The ACE’s job is to inform the leadership about threats in the area, where they might be, and what they might do next. If we can get community involvement and start producing intelligence, then our work will be well worth the effort.

This second article is going to take our intelligence requirements– the things we need to know but don’t– and move on to Phase 2 of the cycle: Collection. (If you haven’t generated any intelligence requirements yet, you can get a start at the homework page.)

In any SHTF situation, we’re going to face one of two problems: either we’re not going to have enough information to make well-informed, time-sensitive decisions, or we’re going to have too much information to wade through, which will slow down our decision-making process. So what’s the lesson? We need to begin developing streams of information now in order to avoid problem number one, and we need to know what to do with that information in order to avoid problem number two. Let’s focus on solving problem number one.

It seems like a poor decision to believe that we’ll have access to lots of information during an SHTF scenario. I’m more than willing to concede that information will not be as inexpensive and easy to collect then as it is now. So the more information we can collect now, the less we’ll have to collect later. For now, while information is inexpensive and easy, we’re going to focus mainly on the Internet and other widely available sources of information.

Inexpensive and Easy Information

Say what you want about Google, but there is no better online tool to collect massive amounts of information. (That obviously goes both ways, as it’s always collecting information about you, so it’s a good idea to use online anonymity tools and an anonymous or pseudonymous email address.) We run into a problem, however, when collecting that information monopolizes our time. Who has time to sit at a desk and search for hours on end for information that may not even exist online? Not me, and that’s why we need to automate collection as much as possible.

Google Alertsis a great resource for automated intelligence collection. Some of my searches include:
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “crime”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “drug”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “gang”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “corruption”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “violence”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “Sheriff”
•“Waller County” and “Texas” and “whatever else is relevant to your security”

Etc…

Also, be sure to replace “Waller County” with your own town or county and state, and start getting more local information. You could even do searches for the name of your community or subdivision or for nearby landmarks. If you need help creating searches on Google Alerts, then just refer back to your intelligence requirements, which identify your intelligence gaps. (Caveat: You’re likely going to get some articles or posts that aren’t relevant. Don’t worry about them. Focus on what satisfies your requirements or that you can use to produce area intelligence.)

What Google Alerts does for us is creates a daily roll-up of new articles that Google finds about those subjects. I start my day every morning checking my Google Alerts to find more information about my area, and it saves me a great deal of time. Now, assuming that our searches use quality logic, one problem we may run into is a lack of reporting, especially if you live in a very rural area. If that’s the case, then we have a few options. First, I’d encourage you to go volunteer with your county sheriff’s office or local police department and get to know the crime, drug, and gang information from knowledgeable sources. Second, we could approach our local paper, if they’re not already doing it, to start writing more about crime or drugs or gangs (or all three) in the area. Third, if there’s no area paper or they’re not interested, then we could start doing it ourselves. (Local area “micro-papers” like the Appalachian Messenger are a great way to get our message out to the community, as well.)

I’d also encourage you to search Twitter and other social media for your area. For instance, a search for Hempstead, Texas on Twitter doesn’t seem to reveal much pertinent information immediately. However, I’m identifying people who live nearby posting about what’s important to them, and that’s certainly of some intelligence value. After a little digging, I’ve found a like-minded individual and discovered someone who could be a threat to my community.

If you’re concerned about critical infrastructure in the area, I’d steer you towards the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and their US Energy Mapping System, where you can see the critical infrastructure in your county (or across the country). If you’re interested in the human terrain, sites like City Data are great resources with tons of relevant information and mapping tools.

Of course, we can’t forget about the radio networks. You can rely on your Ham radio guy, or you can study for the technician or general class amateur radio test and begin learning Ham radio yourself. Forget about transmitting for a moment. Our ability to listen into communications, whether they’re from first responders, law enforcement, or a Ham radio operator passing along relevant information, is a mission-critical skill for the ACE. If we don’t have around-the-clock monitoring of at least police scanner, then we’re missing out on potentially a lot of important information.

More Difficult Collection Options

In a grid-down situation, or a scenario where our intelligence requirement can’t be satisfied with open source information, we’re going to rely heavily on other humans to collect for us. Let’s steer clear of calling this “source operations”, because it doesn’t need to be that complex or professional to get us through an emergency. By expanding our circle of friends and acquaintances, we’re expanding our access to information. Building rapport and becoming friends with individuals who are likely to have important information is going to greatly increase our ability to maintain situational awareness.

Beyond that, we should be using the eyes and ears of those in our community. We need to get our neighbors “bought in” to the idea that community security is everyone’s responsibility. I hate to use the phrase “See Something, Say Something”, however, DHS is on track to building lots of channels of information of potential intelligence value. Our message to the community could be as simple as, “Let me know if you see anything suspicious.”

Alternatively, starting (or joining) a neighborhood watch program is a great option. Not only will we get access to law enforcement officers and crime information, but we can also build a reporting system and give our community members a seat at the table. It also gives us a great excuse (something we call “cover for action”) to go door-to-door asking questions and providing information as the block leader of the Neighborhood Watch.

Finally, we absolutely need to be using police scanners and any other technology we have in order to stay on top of the changing security situation. In the Ultimate ACE Startup Guide, I’ve outlined what we need, why we need it, and where to get it.

Last Work On Collection

When we consider all the websites, radio frequencies, and humans to which we have access, there’s virtually no end to the potential for collection. (Just ask the NSA.) Having developed intelligence reporting streams is going to pay dividends for us when we have to navigate our way through an SHTF situation, and it’s going to solve problem number one: not having enough information. That’s a problem we can avoid by doing some homework now and setting our community up for success by developing sources to use later when we need to provide security.

In the next article, we’re moving to Phase Three of the Intelligence Cycle, which is Analysis & Processing. I’ll talk about how we can sort through information and begin building intelligence products that will support our mission of community security.

Samuel Culper is the director of Forward Observer, a threat intelligence service that focuses on domestic SHTF issues. He’s a former military and contract intelligence analyst, and author of SHTF Intelligence: An Intelligence Analyst’s Guide to Community Security. You can find out more about the SHTF Intelligence Center at his website.

Original article here

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Intelligence Part 1

Intelligence is vital for any effective operation. We need to learn about how to gather intel, and how to make use of it for the times ahead of us. Please add this information to your training, you will not regret it in the future. We cannot be effective fighters if we do not know how to scout, gather intel, and know how to make use of it.

Parent Article

This is the first article in a series about using intelligence for preparedness. I’m starting from square zero in order to introduce a new crop of Americans to the concept of using intelligence, to prove that there’s a need for intelligence and to get readers quickly up to speed on how to incorporate it into their security planning. After getting caught up to speed, if you’d like to read more in-depth and put theory into practice, a book entitled SHTF Intelligence will show you the way forward. You can find a small homework exercise here.

Why do I need intelligence?

You need intelligence because everyone has blind spots. A common theme in the preparedness community is beans, bullets, and band-aids. We need food and water to survive, we need medicine to treat injuries and illness, and we need guns and ammo for defense… but against whom?

In a S***-Hits-The-Fan (SHTF) or survival situation, if we’re dumping hundreds or thousands or more dollars into beans, bullets, and baid-aids, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should investigate our surroundings as well?

I think so. I was a military and contract intelligence analyst, and we in this country are likely to face a lot of the same types of situations that we dealt with in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to look at:

•Our neighbors and the populace. Are they for us or against us? What are their politics and attitudes? Which households should we approach to build community security in a SHTF situation? Which households will be adversarial to us?

•Key human terrain. Who wields influence in the area? Where do the nearest tradesmen, engineers, and medical professionals live, in case we need their help?

•Known bad guys. Who are the active criminals and gangs in the area? What are their activities, and how can we identify their indicators?

•Future bad guys. Who’s likely to engage in criminality in the future? Which parts of the population are going to resort to criminal behavior in a time of need? Most importantly, in what areas will they be active, and how will they affect my community?

•Law enforcement. How will they respond to a SHTF situation? If they’re going home, as is often assumed, then where do they live and how can we work with them?

•Critical infrastructure. What keeps the world spinning in our area? Do we have critical infrastructure that would invite armed security or suggest an increase in criminal activity? Where can we get the things we need to maintain our survivability?

These are just a few questions that intelligence can answer. At the heart of intelligence is the ability to reduce uncertainty. If you’re concerned about grid-down or financial collapse or the Golden Horde or some other event or threat, then some basic intelligence work should be at the top of your To Do list. Ultimately, what intelligence brings to the table is an ability to make well-informed, time-sensitive decisions.

Colonel John Boyd, an Air Force fighter pilot, was the first to describe the decision-making process he called the OODA Loop. Because fighter pilots have to make split-second decisions, their ability to Observe a development, Orient to what that means, Decide which course of action they should take, and then Act on it is a critical part of their survivability in combat. Similarly, lots of tactical shooting trainers have incorporated the OODA Loop into their curriculum for the exact same reason.

That ability to Observe and Orient is the informational phase of the decision-making process. Can you imagine getting into a gunfight, if you can’t see or hear your opponent? Yet that’s exactly what many are preparing to do on a larger level. We’re limited by our field of vision and line of sight, but with an intelligence effort, we can begin to see well beyond just our line of sight.

So what intelligence allows us to do during a SHTF scenario is not just see our opponent but potentially observe him before a conflict arises. This is called Early Warning, and it’s one of the two key responsibilities of our community security element.

The second major responsibility is producing Threat Intelligence. Knowing that a gang is active in your area is a good first step. We need to move beyond our intuitive approach to information and start using a structured, methodical process to completely remove our blind spots. In essence, we need to graduate from mere information and start producing intelligence.

The difference between information and intelligence is simple: information is raw data, and intelligence is the evaluated, assessed, and synthesized information that answers, “So what?” Hearing that there was a murder in your community is not intelligence; it’s just information. Identifying the perpetrator and his current location, finding out where and why the murder took place, determining how it’s going to affect the community, and compiling it into a consumable product is intelligence.

Intelligence_Cycle

We do this through the Intelligence Cycle. There are five phases, and I’ll briefly detail them in order. In Phase One, we understand our mission, assign analytic tasks and responsibilities, and begin generating our intelligence requirements (covered in the next section). In Phase Two, we task those requirements out for collection. Once that information is collected and reported, we start with Phase Three, where we analyze the incoming information. After filtering out the bad information and analyzing the good information, we produce the actual intelligence. We provide predictive intelligence, which is describing what might or is likely to happen in the future, or estimative intelligence, which is describing an organization’s strength and capabilities. Finally, once we produce the intelligence, we need to ensure that it gets into the hands of the right people. In Phase Five, we disseminate the intelligence to our leadership, our community security team, or the community at large.

Let’s start with Phase One. We need to generate some intelligence requirements or, in other words, statements or questions that describe intelligence gaps.

Let’s say that you do have a gang in the area. What don’t we know about that gang but need to? Do we know how many members are associated with the gang? Do we know where those gang members hang out? Do we know where those gangs are criminally active? Do we know if certain areas are at a higher risk than others (and have we mapped out those areas)? There are potentially lots of intelligence gaps we have, especially if we expect them to be active in a SHTF scenario.

So we can take these questions and start a list:

1.How many members are in the Leroy Jenkins Gang?
2.What are the known hangout spots for Leroy Jenkins Gang members?
3.Identify all high-risk areas for Leroy Jenkins Gang activity.
4.Et cetera…

If we’re building a house, or in our case an intelligence product, then this list of requirements represents our building materials. This is all the information– the lumber, nails, bolts, roofing shingles, doors, and windows– we need to finish our intelligence estimate. Without knowing what we need, we won’t build a very good house.

And thus ends lesson one. Head on over to our homework page for a practical exercise. I’ve also posted a video that will step you through the process of analyzing your community from multiple angles.

Samuel Culper is the Executive Editor of Forward Observer Magazine

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Force on Force Training

I know this is a long post, but it is well worth your time to read it. I love the stuff Max puts out, and his training concepts. It is important that we "DO", and not just "TALK", just like Max talks about in this post. Please go to him for training if there is any way at all you can possibly do it. Training is vital like I have said so many times in the blog, we have to be ready. So, please go to his site, and check out the classes he offers, where they are, and when they are, and do everything you can to get to some of them.

So the following post comes from two different posts, the first one from the MVT Forums, and the second, or main post is from the MVT Blog, see link in the body.

In comments on the forum version of ‘Tactical Notes: Force on Force Team Tactics‘ Diz and Robert make some pertinent comments.

Diz: You know, this is the irony of the internet. This is probably one of the most important posts on this subject ever to be published on line. Yet I would wager that the vast majority of guys in the co-called tactical community, or even the patriot movement if you want to go there, are off in the weeds arguing over stupid things, or discussing the latest spring fashions.

I don’t know how you could get closer to an actual firefight than this. Theory and opinion are one thing. What actually works in realistic training is another. Regardless of all the pet theories on-line, or what your buddy told you, etc, it either works, or it doesn’t.

Kudos to Max for doing this. And to all the lab rats who went through the first class. You guys (and gals) all rock.

Robert: Can I get an amen!

I wrote that fiction story that comprised our first engagement Sunday at the class, with some embellishments added in (retreat, drone, FLIR) to make the material applicable to SHTF stuff. I posted it far and wide on the internet and got a lot of Monday morning QB’ing from people not there (of course) but my FAVORITE was one guy on a survival forum telling me that

“almost nobody has that level of training…”
Really? Well damn who knew???

I can hear the discussion in the PAW, “Frank, Ted, Bill, Ed, Jones and Smith got whacked out.” “Who killed them?”

“Almost nobody got them…”

These things illustrate the entrenchment of the patriot and survival community behind their walls of self delusion, bitterly defending their (false) pride and ego.

But alas, there is always a remnant!!! :good: And it’s those 5% or less that will learn the lessons ahead of time, that will keep their mouths shut and LEARN, that will be willing to risk their vanity and false pride to put their skills in the crucible.

THOSE are the ones we need to focus on, let the talkers keep talking- that’s all they ever do. Blah blah blah “I would have done this…” blah blah blah “almost nobody has that level of training…” blah blah blah “why do I need to know that…” blah blah blah. They will realize one day no one is both listening or caring a rip….

The ones that truly want to make it, WILL put in the work, will make the sacrifices necessary, those are the ones that attend training, that are constantly trying to better themselves, to prepare, etc.

So I ask you, please help to spread the word. Best to use the blog version of the post, which can be found HERE. Link: http://www.maxvelocitytactical.com/2016/03/tactical-notes-force-on-force-team-tactics/

You will also note that I have social media buttons at the bottom of the blog posts, which you are able to use.

There is something very relevant in those comments. Here at MVT we are running a unique thing, real combat proven well thought out tactical training. We have invested heavily in training equipment such as the electronic pop-up targets, the training facility, the steel target shields to take the show on the road, the UTM bolts. The real deal. The problem is getting the word out, and weaning people off of the ‘tacticool’ BS.

If you find this website/blog/forum/training helpful, then please help to spread the word. Put it out there on other sites.

We know that there is whole lot of ignorance out there, and worse than that, there is the deliberate desire by those we may call ‘mainstream’ ‘tacticool’ trainers to prevent the emergence of training such as MVT. I know, I have experienced it. These are the same law enforcement focused trainers who do not believe that civilians should be taught small unit tactics, or anything above buddy pairs. These are the same clowns who only allow ‘vetted’ civilians to join them to run through SWAT fantasy camp, where BS dangerous ‘tactics’ are taught.

I am absolutely convinced that MVT has it right, and is offering unique and real combat proven training, and the word needs to be spread, and the ignorance needs to be pushed back.

Thank you.

Max

Team Coyote

Max Velocity Tactical

Tactical Notes: Force on Force Team Tactics

Posted by Max in Small Unit Tactics, Tactical Comment, Training, Uncategorized on March 29, 2016

Combat Team Tactics (CTT) can be viewed as the MVT ‘basic training’ class, which acts as a gateway to the more advanced classes. CTT puts everyone on the same page with a solid view of ‘what right looks like’ and ensures that everyone has a good grasp of safety and TTPs moving forward. CTT is a prerequisite for both Combat Patrol (CP) and Force on Force Team Tactics (FoF). Both CP and FoF complement each other, with CP teaching TTPs that will help during FoF, and FoF giving immediate feedback on whether or not you are doing things right or not.

You may have noticed that I have reduced prices on the 3 day CTT class (from $600 to $500), and made an effort to promote the Rifle Skills (RS) day along with CTT as a 4 day training event, total price $600, which is the same as the previous 3 day CTT price. This is an effort to not only promote the idea of more and better training, but to get students in through the gateway of CTT in order to allow them to progress to the more advanced classes, such as CP and FoF. CP is a 4 day class at $650 and FoF is a 2 day class at $350 (plus the UTM ammo purchase).

Thus, I want students to see the RS/CTT class not as something that must be crammed in at the weekend, in order to ‘tick the box’ but as a significant training event that requires investment of time. With tactical training, you cannot simply ‘tick the box’ by showing up once. I suggest a professional class such as CTT, CP or FoF at least annually, with your own regular training thrown in. Otherwise, these skills will perish. Many students who return to CTT time after time will attest to how perishable these skills are, and how much more you understand and retain if you return. A single attendance equals a superficial grasp of the concepts, that will soon degrade if it is not reinforced by both home and return training classes. It is possible to reach a very high skill level at small unit tactics, but you have to put the time in on the ground to do so.

This leads me on to FoF Team Tactics. I am enthused by the class not only because of the value of the class itself to the training and readiness levels of the students, but also because of how well it progresses the student from CTT/CP, and illustrates many areas in which lip service can be paid during the live fire training. The live training such as CTT/CP has such value in terms of the basic understanding of TTP’s, of safety, of battle inoculation and operating in an immersive small unit tactics (SUT) environment. However, for the very reason that the CTT/CP class may be only the first, perhaps second exposure of a student to such things, it means that some of it escapes them, or lip service is paid, which is where FoF comes in and delivers the hammer blow, and really nails this down. In effect, there is so much going on in CTT/CP that is new to the student, that some of it will escape him; FoF illustrates the basics, and the importance of them.

Tactical Notes from FoF Team Tactics:

I found myself going over many of the same basic points again and again at FoF Team Tactics, which are the same points that I hammer at CTT and CP classes, and it took a lot of ‘dying’ on behalf of the students to really hoist these things in. At CTT, a mix of poor physical preparation on behalf of the student, plus the ‘firehose’ information dump of the class, often result in poor attention to some of the basic areas that will keep them alive in combat, such as taking effective cover, and moving rapidly from cover to cover, or no movement without effective suppressing fire. Ivan does not shoot back, but in FoF when the live enemy is putting UTM rounds at you, and they are striking you in the face, or zipping past your head, it really makes the point. Here are some notes:

Rehearsal of team SOPs is vital.

Make a plan, and have a leader. Follow the leader, and allow him to direct you to achieve the mission, which means paying attention.

Effective scanning is essential. Head out of your weapon! Situational awareness, which includes scanning to the flanks, or you will be rolled up. How many times do cadre tell the students “get your head out of your weapon” and “scan means scan” on a CTT class? Tunnel vision and staring at where Ivan last was seems to be the trend!

Ensure you look in often for hand signals, otherwise you will be in your own zone, and have no clue what is going on.

Hand signals are essential during silent patrolling. The leader needs to be able to signal intent. Some of the things that you will need to consider hand signals for, that you may not have considered before, are as follows (examples will be given at FoF classes):
•Axis of advance / on line.
•Enemy direction
•Hasty ambush
•Bounding overwatch – forwards and backwards
•Peeling
•Flanking
•Move up / get on line / change axis

None of these hand signals will work if team members are not paying attention, by regular scanning of their sectors and to their buddies. If you get a hand signal, react to it and make it happen.

When it goes noisy, you need to be able to yell. Team members must listen, and every man is a link man and must pass the direction on. You may still have use for hand signals at this time, particularly if units become separated on something like a flanking move. Ensure that if you see something, you also communicate it effectively to other team members and the team leader. No secrets!

Do not be too hasty to rush to your death – do not attempt fire and movement if the enemy is not effectively suppressed. Rounds whacking into your team members every time they get up to run forward means the enemy is not suppressed, and in fact you are under effective enemy fire.

Ensure you identify cover before you move to it – and do not be hasty to rush to your death.

Ensure that if you have any type of stoppage, you improve your position of cover. Kneeling in the open to take care of a malfunction is not the recipe for a long life. This is taught all the way from the square range.

Suppressing the enemy means exactly that – effective accurate fire that will change the behavior of the enemy to where he can no longer suppress you.

To suppress the enemy you have to ensure team members have located him/them – use target indication ( 3 D’s) and ensure the information is communicated along the line. If team members are having their own individual fights with ‘their’ enemy, it means as one group gets up to bound forwards, ‘their’ enemy is not suppressed, and will kill them. SCAN! Do not get tunnel vision.

You must suppress the entirety of the enemy facing your team if you are to move without casualties. Due to inherent safety angles of moving groups (target obscuration), this will entail breaking the F&M down into smaller groups along the line as you get closer (i.e. breaking down from pairs to buddy fire and movement as the team gets closer – now taught on both the CTT and FoF classes).

Ensure that you are actually doing ‘short bounds’ and not ‘hero bounds.’ Move fast and low from cover to cover. ‘Keep low, move fast.’

Never underestimate the actual and psychological effect of a flanking move. BUT: ensure you are watching your flank so it does not happen to you, and ensure that separating groups does not lead to blue on blue situations.

Positively Identify (PID) your target before you engage. Not everything out there is the enemy, and just because it is moving, it may well be an injured team member that you just lit up.

Untrained armed teams will be responsible for a large amount of fracticide, both due to incompetence when first encountering the enemy and attempting to effectively return fire, and also due to indiscriminate target engagement. A large focus of MVT training is on buddy awareness, and breaking the tunnel vision of your ‘relationship’ with ‘Ivan’ so that you do not kill your buddies. This is something that is not understood in the ‘tacticool’ world of the square range, and is applicable to real combat.

Training, or ‘operant conditioning’ will reduce freezing, something that was also apparent on the FoF class. Yes, you should not be too hasty to rush to your death and you should suppress the enemy as best you can before you move, and you should identify your next piece of cover before you move to it, but at the same time, if you are doing a maneuver, such as a peel, then do it, don’t freeze and become unresponsive to the team. That will likely lead to the team’s death in place.

If you have a competent leader with a plan, then you as a team member should allow him to ‘use you’ as a ‘tool’ to accomplish that plan. If you are a follower, be a follower. That still allows you, as a ‘battlefield sensor’ to input information on newly located enemy, or flanking moves, or whatever, but you should do that and remain as a responsive weapon that the team leader can use to accomplish the mission. In team tactics, the leaders are using the ‘resources’ to put effective fire on the enemy and maneuver to accomplish the mission. Team members must be an active and useful part of that scheme, or the maneuver will stall, and you will start to die.

You can only develop the competence stated in the paragraph above, where everyone is a useful and active/attentive member of a team, alert to the situation, if you have trained and moved past the tendency to be an unresponsive blob, locked in tunnel vision.

That’s all that comes to mind right now, but I will update as appropriate if/when I realize that I have missed something.

You may note that most of what I have mentioned here is to do with the actual practical application of fire and movement, and SUT. This is not the sort of thing that will be grasped by reading manuals or watching videos. It needs to be trained, and it needs to be trained enough, through a mixture of live firing and FoF training, so that students will grasp this at a deep and unconscious level, thus significantly enhancing their chances of survival in a combat situation.

I cannot stress enough how I urge you, if you are a one-time or some-time-ago alumni or simply a blog or forum reader, to invest the time to get to a training class. It should be at least an annual event, with home based training for the rest of the year. If you can get CTT, CP and FoF done in the first year, you are hitting the jackpot and will be making significant advances not only towards the survivability of your tribe, but also in becoming dangerous to your enemies.

‘Team Coyote’

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Practice, Practice, Practice!

When was the last time you actually performed good quality training on weapon manipulation drills? Reloads (under stress), clearing weapon malfunctions, re-checked your zero? Has it been a long time? I hope your answer is no longer than a month ago for most of the items I listed above, and more like a week on the rest of them.

Just because you have taken a class or two, or have trained with your buddies, and long ago learned how to perform these actions does not mean that you are done and you will be able to react correctly in a stressful encounter.

These are perishable skills guys and gals, if you do not perform them on a regular basis you will become less and less effective at these skills. What you really want to do is to get to the point of “Unconscious Competence”. This is when you will just react and perform the action correctly in a timely manner without thinking about it.

Sometimes you will need to go back and cover the basics, professionals do it all the time. They practice the basics until they can not get it wrong (well very rarely anyway). That is what makes them the best at what they do. Even the most highly trained operator will continuously train on the basics as well as the more exciting stuff. They train each way, each action so many times that it becomes second nature. Most people do not have the time and money to train this often, but we need to be doing what we can, we need to be training as often as possible. Train on the basics by yourself, practice employing your weapon systems in various conditions, and reloads at home, this can be done anywhere anytime, so there is no excuse guys and gals.

I highly encourage you to get effective tactical training, but to also take the knowledge from there and train your team/group/family/friends in those skills. Become the "force multiplier" for your group by getting this higher end training, then going back and training them on the things you learned.

Check out a past post here on The Tactical Patriot about training, and links to training sites and schools here in the United States.

Training link post

Here is a little motivational video for you Patriots out there, keep in the fight! We need you to be ready!


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Guerrilla Warfare Information

I found these sites, and had to share them with you. These sites have tons of great information, and reference material that will help you improve your training, and give you some vital information you will need. Gain as much information from these sites as you can, take full advantage of what is available. Print everything you can so you can have a hard copy for when/if we no longer have access to electronic information.

Rural vs Urban Guerrilla

CIA Guerilla Warfare Manual

Guerilla Warfare Manual

Guerrilla

Guerrilla Warfare
By Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Here is a HOOYAA video for you guys. This is the attitude we all should have!


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Dogs and Tracking Part 3

Part three of the series. I hope you are getting something out of this, it is just good information to know.

As you can see, the dogs are the least of your worries. They are just one of the tools that are used to accomplish the overall goal of catching you. They are used for direction and tracking, and they supply information to the other searchers. A K9 may also be used to grab you, just as they would anywhere else they are used.

Even if you could somehow trick or neutralize the dog, you are still going to have to deal with quite a bit of other things. To get into range of doing harm to the dog or handler is to get very close to the people who are trying to find you, and help is only a radio call away. You will never encounter just the handler and the dog by themselves. The handler is armed, and behind them is a few more people who are armed and focused on support.

They don’t have to run you down. They just have to follow until someone else corners you or you give up. They will be constantly resupplied with water and rotated out for rest. They know your chances of that are slim. Many give a good long chase only to walk out and give up, because they are dying of thirst.

Understanding The Handlers

These guys are usually professionals. They have schools, certifications, experience, and decades of methods behind the art and science of using dogs. They will have learned from people who spent their lives doing this very thing. Many are dedicated to the cause and are driven to succeed for one reason or another. To them, the dog is a tool. The handler learns to read the dog like an instrument. He knows a great many things by observation, such as how hard the dog pulls and how eager he is. He can watch the dog lift its nose at a tree or lean in a direction. He can read confusion or if the dog is unsure. When he does read these things, he knows how to bring the dog back to a point it was sure or canvass another area. They can hold position and let the escorts fan out. Handlers will read maps and approach trails from angles they think will give them the best track. They will report a wealth of information to the other chasers. If they don’t catch you themselves, there is a good chance they had something to do with it.

Some departments don’t have their own tracking teams. They may have K9 units that consist of bomb or drug dogs but no actual trackers. A department like this will usually call on another department or hire a third-party civilian dog company. These civilian companies are usually made up of former military or police K9 handlers. They, in my experience, are more knowledgeable. They are the ones who chose to pursue a career in K9 services after leaving the military or police force. Their K9 companies do not deal with anything other than dogs. The don’t have to take classes on domestic violence or writing tickets, for example. The handlers are also people, which is to be kept in mind when trying to avoid being tracked.

How To “Win”

It is not the dog you have to beat; it is the handler. What you want is a morale win. You want the handler to give up. As I said before, the handler is a person. He or she has bad days and good days. They may have been called in off vacation or a day off to work on finding you. They get tired or are out of shape. They may be sick or have just been passed up for promotion. These things are not something you’ll likely be able control, but keep them in mind if you’re attempting a morale win. Every little bit counts.

Remember previously my notes on attacking the handler or the dog. Doing either of these things can harden the will of those looking for you. They will push through a lot more discomfort, if they have some payback in mind. They may let the bite dog chew on you for a little while longer before calling it off.

I have seen a handler show up at the start of a track wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He got out of his van took about 30 seconds to look an area over and then declare the dog couldn’t find anything. The dog never got out of the van. He didn’t feel like working that day. He didn’t feel like slogging through a wet jungle. This worked because he was the professional making the call on the dog’s ability. It also worked because tracking dogs were only one small part of a search.

Tracking dogs are usually on a leash. Sometimes, depending on the area, those leashes are thirty feet long. The dog tracks ahead, and the handler follows. I’ve seen more than one handler give up and declare a lost trail after they spent an hour unwrapping the dog from being twisted around tree after tree. It was almost as if the runner was doing it on purpose. Doing something like this takes a lot of time and will seriously hamper your forward progress.

Anywhere you go the tracker has to go and he has to take the dog with him. More often than not, the dog is leading him and may get into a situation or area that will take the handler more time to negotiate. A four of five foot climb or drop will cause them to lower or lift the dog up, or go around. The handler might have to crawl through very thick saw grass or briars. This can get annoying when it happens over and over again.

Some handlers don’t want to get wet. They will call a lost trail to avoid doing so. The handler on the government dime is getting paid whether they find you or not. That handler may be wearing body armor and/or weapons. This can add significantly to his ability and will to keep chasing you. They get hot and tired, as well.

Terrain dangerous enough to cause the handler concern is another deterrent. He’s got a dog pulling on a leash and walking close to perilous cliffs can cause him to back off. He may be afraid of heights or drowning. Knowledge that you’ve booby trapped the area can cause them to give up (the tracking portion).

Additional Notes

Some of the most successful people that avoided our teams, causing us to give up, were the ones that picked an easy and fast route and headed away in pretty much a straight line. They didn’t make any attempts to fool us and didn’t even try to cover their tracks. Speed and distance were their only concern. As we slowly followed them in full armor at the pace the dogs set, they kept increasing their distance. No one wanted to sleep in the jungle at night. By the end of the second day, they were far enough forward that the trail was getting weaker. Rain on the second day was almost a guarantee that the handlers would call it off. The further we had to go in, the further our resupply lines were stretched. We also knew that walking for days forward meant walking for days back. It just wasn’t worth it for what we were chasing them for. Even when the handlers wanted to go forward, the escort teams in full armor were getting tired and suggesting that he “got away”. If the person we were pursuing made it to any kind of civilization (even a small village), the tracking portion was over as far as dogs were concerned.

Remember what they are chasing you for. If there is a full-blown state-wide man-hunt in progress, you’ve probably done something (or they think you have) that is going to keep them looking for you for a long, long time. If they’ve decided to chase you for some lesser reason, you may be able to avoid capture by making it not worth the trouble, expense, or time it would take to catch you. Just stay away or ahead of them long enough and they’ll give up.

Helicopters can cost thousands of dollars an hour to keep in the air. If the searchers have this asset available, it will have specific areas to search and most likely be on stand-by to be called in when they need an overhead look at an area. Overtime, funds for third-party contractors, supplies, gas, et cetera are factors. Someone is keeping track of how much all of this is going to cost.

Get to an area with a lot of people, such as a city. This won’t stop the search and will bring its own problems, but it will pretty much stop the dogs from tracking you in the classic sense.

You can make things worse by trying. If for instance you stole a car, got involved in a high-speed chase, and then ran into the woods, they might look for you for hours before giving up. They got the car back. The rest is standard police work. Set up a booby trap that kills an officer and you’ll have major media reporting it and several departments and counties in on the search. They will NEVER EVER give up on you.

Dogs can be commanded to bark in attempt to flush you. Many people, upon hearing the dog is closer, make a panicked run for it. I’ve seen handlers, when they think they are close, yell something like “We see you! Come out with your hands up”. This actually works. A few people have come out and done just that.

Tracking Dogs Part 3

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Dogs and Tracking Part 2

Here is part 2 of the Tracking Dogs article. Please read, and take into account when working on your preparedness plans.

Cross a River

I specifically brought this one up. They laughed at this as a common misconception. They will have maps, and if they think you ran in the direction of a river, there is probably someone working their way up already without a dog. They will just run a dog up and down both sides of the river until they regain the trail. If they are close on your trail, they will send runners up and down both sides to see where you exited by finding the water trail and will actually gain time on you. Moving through water on foot slows you down, as well. Not even a swamp was a serious hindrance to the dogs’ ability to track.

Tarzan (tree top to tree top)

This didn’t work, because even in the jungle it couldn’t be kept up for long. The dogs would come to the tree and stop. At that point the handlers would fan out and start over, as they did when the dog originally found the trail. There were few options on which tree to go to, so it was obvious where they’d take the dog to start first. Hiding in a tree didn’t work for this same reason.

Climb or Descend

This didn’t work because they would just go around and start looking for a trail once at the bottom. They would run the dog along both the top and the bottom of the cliff, until they regained the trail. Looking at a rock face will tell them a likely climbing route.

Shedding Clothes

Many are of the mind that if you drop clothes, the dog will “find” the target, as in training, and give up. The handler will immediately set the dog on the new trail or use a different dog.

In the case of a bite dog, most dogs are trained to grab meat not clothing. They are trained to bite firm, solid, and to reacquire if they don’t have a good bite. If you think you are going to drop a jacket or shoes and the dog is going to focus on that while you get away, you are probably wrong.

Covering the Scent

A dog’s nose is sensitive to the range of parts per million. They WILL smell you through anything, including large amounts of bleach or ammonia. If the fumes are too strong, the handlers will skirt the area and have the dog regain the trail. They will swing as wide as possible to relocate you. Even changing clothes completely doesn’t help.

Outrun the Dog

This isn’t going to happen. The dogs have four legs and conditioning. Their diet is specific, and they live for the purpose they were trained for and are eager to please. You will tire out long before a dog will, even in the heat of a jungle. If for some reason the dog goes down, they will replace it with another.

Doubling Back

The dog will just follow the double back and eventually find the trail again. Once again, the handlers will see this coming and fan out to find where you eventually broke off. They may use multiple dogs to follow multiple trails.

Bait the Dog (including poison)

Most dogs are trained not to take food from anyone other than a handler. Dogs are usually not rewarded with food. Working dogs get a minute or so to play with a favorite toy or ball, as a reward for doing so well. Tracking dogs are almost always on a leash and the handler is right there to prevent it from eating anything.

Dogs also shouldn’t be allowed to contaminate evidence, so they are trained not to touch things. In the case of bombs or drugs, you can see why they wouldn’t want the dogs to come in contact with what they have found, possibly causing an explosion or poisoning themselves. Therefore the dog, once it finds what it is looking for, will give a sign, usually sitting down. Most signs are not verbal (from the dog). This is especially the case with bomb dogs, or when they are sneaking up on someone. If the dog encounters something it will probably just sit down next to it until the handler gets there to reward the dog for doing a good job and then continue on.

The dog may stop at each item and await directions from the handler. It would take more items than you can reasonably carry to make a difference in slowing them down. Also, you would be leaving a serious trail to follow.

Kill The Dog

To get close enough to kill a dog, you are going to have to get close to the handler and anyone else with him (see Kill the Handler). This might buy you some time, but the only thing it is going to do is harden their will to find you. In many states attacking a police or military dog is considered the same as attacking an actual officer. Even if it isn’t, once you show your willingness to use lethal force you have probably guaranteed a much harder or lethal response if they do catch you. Now you have royally pissed off a handler, done thousands of dollars in damage to government equipment, and may have shown them you are armed and willing to kill.

After you have gone and done that, they will bring in another dog and the game will start over, except now the ending is much more grim.

Kill The Handler

I’ll let you guess the serious consequences of doing this. Attacking someone, regardless of whether you kill them, is going to get you a lethal response. If the dog is bite trained, it will defend the handler, especially if the handler gets a command off. It is to be noted that there will never be just one handler or a handler by himself with the dog. The handler works the dog and is usually followed by several armed people who will do the apprehending. These people are almost always in radio contact with many other people. If they get a call out, your location will be pinpointed. If you somehow eliminate everyone with a radio, the fact that a team is not reporting in will be an indicator, too. Now that you have ensured your capture, you have murder on your list of offenses, as well.

Booby Traps

This has the same effect as attacking the dog or handler. You have to have the materials, knowledge, and time to set things like this up. Once a tracking team encounters something like this, it will slow them down as they anticipate more of the same. Even if your trap doesn’t kill or injure someone, you will suffer the same effects as if you had actually used lethal force on an officer.

Factors That May Help You

I’ve listed some things that really don’t help your situation. Here are some that may:

•Time- This is by far the biggest concern of the handlers I spoke with. The older the trail, the harder it is to follow. A day makes a big difference. A week makes it all but impossible. The fresher the trail, the easier it is to follow.
•Heavy Rain- This destroys scent trails. It’s not fool proof, but it is a big inhibitor. It spreads things out, and if you have heavy cover (like a forest or jungle), it will mix things up and bring other things down.
•Heavy Wind- This can disperse scent or give the dog trouble holding the trail.
•Open Areas- You might not think so, but this kind of terrain can be helpful. There just isn’t as much to rub up against or “hold” the scent. Rain and wind have a greater effect in this terrain. The down side to these areas is that you can be spotted easier.

Factors That May Hinder You

There are some factors that make things worse, and these include:

•Not having a place to go- Hauling butt into the deep woods at high speed for days is going to get you what? Yes, they didn’t catch you, but you got yourself killed from exposure.
•Heavy/unique scent- The stronger the odor of whatever you have, the more of a trail you’ll lay down and the harder it is for time or mother nature to get rid of it.
•Regularly Traveled Trails- Not only are these visible to the eye, they are often scented by you multiple times.
•Lack of Physical Fitness- If you aren’t up for a run, then you aren’t up for a chase.
•Carrying Weight- The more you carry, the more you’re going to have to rest and the slower you’re going to be. If you are shedding things, like water bottles, food wrappers, et cetera, it will only aid in finding you.
•Lack of Supplies- Two days without water, especially if you are on the run, and you’re done. They will be looking for you for more than two days. They will stake out the places you can get something to eat or drink.

Understanding the Chase

What most people think of, when considering being tracked by dogs, is a hillbilly in overalls leading a pack of baying blood hounds. The runner is fearfully trying to catch a few minutes of rest while listening to the dogs get closer and closer. That’s not going to happen.

First of all, all the tracking dogs I worked with never made a sound. The closer the team thinks they are getting, the less sounds they’ll try to make, unless they are trying to flush you. The exception is when tracking dogs are let off the leash, which can bay and howl in pursuit.

Most chases are not long drawn out affairs. It takes a day or two. What will happen is that someone will have decided a man-hunt is called for. A command post will be established. They will seal down a large area and start patrolling roads, streets, and intersections. They will look at maps and decide where to focus their searches. They will understand how fast a person on foot moves. They will start flushing out hiding spots. Imagine a commander looking down at a map. He knows about what time you started running. He’ll pinpoint the starting position and then, calculating how fast he figures you can run in that amount of time, he’ll draw a circle on the map and inform everyone of the main search area. Other assets from helicopters to neighboring state law enforcement will be close in on that area. When (and if) they decide to use dogs, it will be to initially get a bearing and direction. The dog will locate the trail, and this will cut down the search area significantly.

The dog team will then proceed to track, while all of those other assets close in on you from above and other directions. Depending on the terrain and direction, they may sprint forward and start hitting those hiding spots and choke points. Sending people forward can sometimes mess up a scent trail, but they’ll know this and avoid the most likely routes. Everyone will be in contact with each other via radio. That previously mentioned map will get updated constantly. Searchers will be rotated in and out to keep them fresh, though you get no such break. As time wears on, they know you will have to eat and drink. You may just give up. Eventually they’ll catch you crossing a road, river, lake, or hiding in an abandoned house, cave, bush, et cetera. If it is actually the tracking team that has cornered you or caught up enough to identify you, the escorts accompanying them will move in. This will be handled much like the chases you see on TV. The officers will call it in and everyone will converge while they run you down or hold you in position until you’re surrounded. Maybe a bite dog will be sent in to pin you. The rest is history.

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Dogs and Tracking

Here is some good information I found about tracking dogs over on the Survival Blog. I am posting it because I think it is good information that the American Patriot should know about, and to have knowledge of.

I had read an article some time ago about tracking dogs, and I didn’t get to respond to it then. However, here is my experience. It’s not the dog you are trying to beat; it is the handler.

I have a lot of experience with tracking dogs. I used to guard the copper pipeline in Indonesia. The copper mine (also containing some gold) was on top of a mountain. Once the material was taken from the ground, it was mixed into a slurry and pumped miles through the jungle to the port. This pipeline was under constant attack. People would cut into the pipe, fill some buckets, and run off into the jungle. We would have to track them with dogs, in the hopes of arresting them. Usually it was the military or police doing the cutting, so there was plenty of incentive to get away.

I spoke to most of the dog handlers about how to get away if a person were being tracked. They were adamant that there was very little a person could do to cover their tracks or fool the dogs. We had people climbing trees and jumping from tree to tree in order to break the trail. Some would run through rivers, ponds, and swamps or even climb and descend cliff faces.

You also have to understand that when the authorities decide to put on a manhunt, you are not coming up against just dogs and handlers; you are coming up against entire departments. They won’t send a couple of guys and a dog into the woods after you. They will set up a command post that sends and receives constants updates, as professionals coordinate the search for you. They can put up helicopters with heat cameras. They will drive along roads or get ahead of you and/or send other teams from another direction. They can seal off huge areas and blanket it with searchers or just wait you out. Even if you could take off at high speed into an endless woods, you would eventually run out of supplies.

Many times when someone is on the run, they don’t even use dogs to find them. Almost all of them are caught and caught quickly. The dog tracking team is gravy. If they see that you have only one way to go or few options, they’ll just high-tail to those spots and send fast chase teams after you without a dog.

Understanding Dogs

These dogs are multi-thousand dollar pieces of equipment. All professionally-trained dogs are certified regularly on their ability to do what they are trained to do. All handlers are certified and trained on not only their ability to handle a dog but to handle specific dogs. Both the dog and the handler have training requirements, records, and certifications. Any department worth mentioning is going to have a well-maintained team. Just like any other equipment, these dogs will be regularly evaluated for serviceability.

Some are good at some things, and some are good at others. For instance, drug dogs range widely on their ability to find certain drugs. Some will be good at finding cocaine, while others excel at finding marijuana. If the authorities know what they are looking for or suspect something specific, they will pull out their heavy hitter for that specific thing. If a dog fails, they will use another.

Finding you is a game to the dog. They work for rewards, and that reward is usually a few minutes with a favorite toy. Just like any other trick, the dog is taught and rewarded for doing well. The dog is eager to please and is fairly simple minded in its pursuit of you.

It is not a relentless machine hunting you down. Think of a dog that enjoys playing fetch rather than the “Terminator”.

There are generally four kinds of law enforcement dogs: Attack (Bite), Drug, Bomb, and Tracking. Of course, there are many more specialties, such as agricultural, cadaver, money, et cetera. All of these dogs specialize in finding something.

Most dogs are single purpose, but you will occasionally find one that is cross trained. When dogs are cross trained, they are usually primarily trained in one of the nose-oriented jobs and then taught to be a bite dog. Cross-training is more likely to happen in departments with smaller budgets or K9 facilities.

Tracking dogs are very similar. Some dogs excel at finding people under different conditions. Some do better at finding people in the forest or jungle. Some are used to locating a scent, and others follow it. Some are slower and more reliable, while others are runners and will bolt in the direction of the scent trail and then reacquire it. You may come up against more than one kind of dog. For instance, they may use their sure-fire slow and steady dogs to negotiate difficult terrain or an area they think a runner is using counter-measures. They then may switch to fast dogs over terrain where there is limited choice of direction or to finally run someone down when they see him. You may get tracked by a tracking dog, and then upon seeing you they may release the bite dogs.

Tracking dogs can be of any breed. I’ve seen mixed-breed mutts taken from shelters and trained to sniff out one thing or another.

Bite Dogs

These are the dogs you will most likely encounter at the end of the chase. They are the ones most likely not to be on a leash when you do. They can be used to flush you out of a bush, attic, or any other hiding place. If the tracking dogs come to a stop and are going nuts barking at a bush, cave, et cetera, it’s the bite dog coming in after you. A bite dog is normally released when a target is in site and distinguishable to the dog by the handler.

Almost always the dog will latch onto you and hold you until the handler arrives. Bite dogs are trained to grab you in a specific way, usually by an arm or a leg. I saw one dog that was trained to grab a person by the ankle and rotate in circles until the handler got there. This caused the victim to fall down and be spun around. This is so that the victim cannot kick at the dog.

If available, or if they think there will be trouble, or if a dog is having a hard time, or you are attacking the dog, they will release another one or just shoot you (with a bullet or taser). No matter what you do, once a dog has been told to stop you, you are going to be seriously hindered as far as escaping any further. The handler and the rest of the team will be right on top of you, either way.

Bite Dog Training

There are several things that make up a good bite dog.
1.Its ability to bite you, when commanded to do so, and where/how trained to do so.
2.Its ability to firmly hold that bite as long as necessary.
3.Its ability to reacquire a bite, if it loses it.
4.Its ability to let go and back off when commanded to do so.

The following problems may occur:

Problems with #1– The dog bites without command. It may bite other officers, or the handler, or you. It may bite you in an “unauthorized” place, such as the crotch or throat.

Problems with #2– The dog bites but does not grip. This may cause the dog to repeatedly bite you over and over again, causing injury.

Problems with #3– Sometimes once a dog loses the bite, it will not bite again, which is bad for the officers.

Problems with #4– The biggest and most common failure (in my experience) is #4. With an aggressive breed and after a chase, the dog just will not let go. The handler constantly yells commands at the dog, and the dog doesn’t listen. This causes a rush of officers on the victim to pin him while the handler physically removes the dog from the person, sometimes injuring him at the same time. I’ve seen dogs bite officers at this point or rush back and bite the victim once he’s in handcuffs.

Most bite dogs are larger, aggressive breeds that have the body weight to seriously challenge a full-grown man. Once it has you by a leg or an arm, you are not lifting 150+ lbs and dragging it around, especially when it doesn’t want you to and is actively fighting you. Even if you could do this, you’re not going to be able to move fast enough to avoid the tracking team.

The Bloodhound

This dog is better at smelling things out, because of the shape of its head, ears, and posture. The of the way the dog is built, it has its head low to the ground and level. Its ears are out and actually catch and keep the scent in its face, keeping a kind of pocket around the face and nose of the dog. On top of this, it has a very powerful nose. In my experience an actual bloodhound is rare. They excel at smelling things, and any department that put money into a bloodhound will always train it to locate something. I’ve never seen a bite trained or cross trained blood hound.

Tracking Dogs

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