by Max Velocity
The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was operating as a recce group at around the same time in North Africa and had been set up by an initially amateurish bunch of ‘jolly good chaps’ who had spent the years between the wars, based in Egypt, going on expeditions in vehicles in the desert and perfecting desert driving and navigation. They had even driven from India to Egypt. It came to be that the SAS got with the LRDG and had them taxi them to some of their raids deep in the desert behind enemy lines, leading to the SAS developing their own mobility capability, which is the historical precedent behind todays SAS mobility troops and the ‘pink panthers’ (pink was discovered to be the color that provided the best camouflage in the North African desert).
Imagine a post-event scenario. There is no Special Forces selection event: the situation is the selection event. We don’t really want Neanderthal tough guy’s, we want thinkers who are men of action; such as the ham radio guy who figures out how to communicate to other survivor groups, or the mechanic who manages to fix your vehicles after an EMP attack, or build an electricity generating system from scrap materials.
Be wary of the description of someone as a ‘sniper’. For a sniper, the shooting is the smaller side of their role. A sniper team is trained in skills such as covert movement, concealment, observation and communications. A sniper can be better considered a battlefield sensor. A sharpshooter or perhaps ‘designated marksman’ is perhaps a better term for the team member you have who is an expert shot and has an accurate long-range weapons system. Such a sharpshooter will be invaluable as a force-multiplier and will be able to bring accurate fire down on the enemy in both offensive and defensive operations.
Situational Awareness
A key trait to be developed is situational awareness. This will take the form of a general awareness of threat and will be strengthened by specific ground knowledge in your area of operations (AO). Training, followed by the experience developed as the situation progresses, are key to this sense of awareness. For your specific AO, the time spent learning ground truth is invaluable to building this awareness of the local environment. Some key indicators:
‘Indicator’: a sign that is noticed when something is not right in the environment. This could be a sign of impending attack.
‘Presence of the Abnormal’: Indicators that something is amiss. Examples could include: Presence of unusual objects at the side of the road, perhaps with no explanation and not usually present, such as trash bags, disturbed earth or even animal carcasses - indicators for an IED.
‘Absence of the Normal’: This could take many forms, but again is a key indicator for an attack. Examples could include: (1) a usually busy market day, main street of a small town, market stalls are out and stocked, as you move through you notice that the area is suspiciously quiet and absent people. Odds are, something is about to happen. (2) No traffic on a road that usually is fairly busy at that time of day. - Indicator for a potential ambush, perhaps an IED or a complex ambush.
Observers: ‘Dickers’: The term dicker refers to enemy personnel or sympathizers who loiter in areas in which you are operating in order to pass on information. There may be multiple of these observers hanging about in your AO. Sometimes they may be obvious, sometimes they may go unnoticed. The purpose may simply be to observe friendly forces procedures in order to gather information for an attack. They may also be there to observe reactions to an attack or to pass on information on movement in order to facilitate an attempted attack. They may be in possession of cell phones, ICOM radio ‘walkie-talkies’ or video cameras.
One of the key things with situational awareness is learning to trust your intuition, your gut. Experience will help you with this but it is all too easy to rationalize away that nagging feeling of doubt, and you must listen to it.
Mitigation
There are a number of ways that a threat can be mitigated:
Avoidance: Simply put, avoid the threat. Given that you will be operating in an area where there will be, by the nature of the situation, a general threat, then the threat as a whole cannot be avoided. However, given judicious use of quality information and ground truth it is possible to mold operations to attempt to avoid specific threats while at the same time facilitating necessary movement.
Judgment: Closely tied in with avoidance and the use of intelligence is judgment. Judgment is an intellectual and experience based asset and should be used to make decisions on which missions to run based on an assessment of available information.
Routine: Routine must be avoided, however tempting and comfortable it feels. NEVER SET PATTERNS. Patrols, security patrols, supply and logistics movement; it must be ensured that these movements do not set routine patterns. The enemy will observe patterns and plan attacks based on routines. Vary times, routes and patterns.
Routes: Closely tied in with routine is the need to avoid setting route patterns. A useful tool is the ‘honesty’ trace where returning team leaders mark a map board in the Operations Center (if you have one) with routes taken; this can be used as a basis to see historical patterns and plan future missions. Team leaders must be cognizant of what they are doing and what routes they are taking. If patterns are being set, the enemy will observe it and lay a trap. If possible, team leaders should be inventive with routes taken, and vary them as much as possible within the terrain available. There will always be limitations and choke points.
Deception: Leaders should give thought to how they can conceal their intentions from the enemy even for routine moves. Any way that can shake up the norm will create uncertainty with the enemy. For example, it may be that a leader is scheduled to take his team on a foraging trip. There is potential for operational security (OPSEC) to be compromised and potentially there will be an attack. What can the leader do other than drive out to the site on a standard route? Conjecture: Can they move out the day before and overnight, arriving at the site from a different direction the next day?
Observation: Closely tied in with awareness, observation is a function of all members of the team. It is tied in with training and professionalism. Team members cannot be lazy or complacent. They must be observant for threats and indicators; sectors must be covered while moving and static.
Complacency Kills: There is a temptation to become complacent as the post-event situation progresses. Success can lead to complacency. Tied to this is the danger of being in the wrong mental state when an incident happens. There is a danger of denial, leading to ineffective response to contact. This is particularly a risk if the team is inexperienced and has not previously been in contact. Example: a team returning from routine forage. They are looking forward to chow and a DVD and are joking with each other in the cab of the vehicle. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there is a harsh concussion followed by the road being torn up by automatic fire, with rounds striking through the side of the vehicle. The sudden noise and violence of such a contact on its own has the potential of being paralyzing - if the team members are not in the right mental state, this can result in mental denial of the true situation and a reaction of freezing. It is the responsibility of all to train, rehearse (muscle memory) and constantly visualize (mental preparation) potential outcomes and situations while on patrol to ensure that if an incident happens you are in the right mental state to react without delay. You have to be able to mentally adjust to their situation having ‘taken a left turn’. Such situations, where you may experience this ‘dislocation of expectations’ can result, without proper training and preparation, in a flight or freeze response, rather than the desired fight response.
Training & Preparation: Thorough training in the designated Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is essential to success on the ground. Team members must be exposed to training and conduct as much rehearsal and tactical exercises as possible. This will also aid in team building and cohesion, which will benefit performance once post-event. Thorough training will also inculcate the necessary mitigation methods, mind-set and procedures in order to
allow effective performance on mission.
Communication: Communication is not only essential for coordination of units while on mission. It is also essential to mitigation in the sense that all team members must be aware and functioning to detect threat and any suspicious activity must be communicated to commanders so that necessary avoidance measures must take place. Also, effective After Action Reviews in the form of debriefings of all team members following missions will be essential to build the ground truth picture, and develop trends in order to predict enemy activity. This can be fed back in to future missions as a cycle. Threat and intelligence must also be effectively briefed down to team members in order to keep them updated and develop their observation skills and effectiveness.
Blog Post
Canteen vs. Hydration Bladder:
The purpose of this post is to discuss the use of canteens and hydration bladders, to point out some advantages and disadvantages, and to make you think about how you plan to carry and use water.
What do I mean by canteens? For this post, I will consider an canteen any sort of solid water bottle. Anything from an actual military canteen to a sports hydration bottle, one of those solid Camelbak sports bottles that you sip from the top of with a straw going down inside, a plastic water-bottle that you are reusing (with a twist-off lid or one of those drinking caps), or anything similar. The key thing is that a canteen will sit in a pocket or pouch and be taken out, raised to your mouth, and drunk from.
What do I mean by a hydration bladder? Commonly known by the brand name Camelbak, this is a soft collapsible bladder with a long drinking tube. The advantage is that the drinking tube can be attached to your gear, like your shoulder strap, and you can sip water out of the bladder without removing it from where it is stored, and you can keep both hands on your weapon. The key advantage of the water bladder is that it carries a lot of water (2 or 3 liters) and can be drunk from while you are moving, without having to take it out of a pouch or pocket.
So let's look at the Camelbak style bladder. It has the following advantages:
- Convenience of drinking, while you are moving and virtually hands free.
- Large water capacity, at 2 or 3 liters.
- Ease of carriage, on your back either attached to your plate carrier (PC), in its own carriage harness, or in your ruck or patrol pack.
Disadvantages:
- Hard to refill from a non-standard faucet style source of water.
- May be inconvenient to take off to refill, such as if it is fixed to the back of you PC.
- Can make a ruck or patrol pack carriage uncomfortable if it is worn on the back of your PC.
In my opinion, the Camelbak style of hydration bladder is the ultimate if you are taking part in short term operations, patrols or hikes. If you can fill it with 3 liters of clean water at your base location and then go out for several hours, it will serve you perfectly. It would also be a very useful emergency supply of water if, attached to your PC or inside your patrol pack, you left it there as a reserve. If you then had to break contact and bug out, you would have it there as a supply of water to last you several hours of your E&E.
So what about the less cool canteen? Advantages:
- Solid bottle that is less likely to get broken, leak.
- Easily refilled from non-standard water sources, such as creeks.
- More versatile.
- Easier to fill with hot water purified by boiling.
- Easier to use with water purification tablets or straws (you can get bottles pre-fitted with a purification straw).
- More tactically versatile
Disadvantages:
- You need to think about specific pouches, such as canteen pouches on a battle belt, to carry the canteen(s).
- You need to stop and take the canteen out to drink. Drinking needs to be done in buddy pairs while pulling security as part of a tactical short halt.
- Depending on the size and number of canteens you carry, you may not have as much water capacity as with a hydration bladder.
If we are looking at an SHTF situation, or one where you can expect to be out for long periods of time in the backwoods, then there are clear advantages to canteens. If you are having to boil water in a small pot to purify it, say on a solo stove, then it is easier to decant the hot water into a canteen. Similarly to pop in a purification tablet or use a life-straw.
A Camelbak would be harder to fill from a creek or pool, and to purify. Tactically, it also makes sense to use canteens longer term, because if you are moving on patrol and have to fill water at a suitable source, you can establish a security halt and send one or two guys down to fill up everyone's canteens. Camelbaks would be a nightmare in such a situation, particularly if you had to pull them off your gear to hand them over.
One solution is to have a couple of canteens on your belt and to also carry a bladder in your patrol pack or ruck. This gives you a back-up source of water. You can still purify water into your canteens and then fill it into the bladder to resupply your water. This kind of bladder could be one with or without an actual drinking tube, it could just be in there as a bladder of water that will collapse down when not in use.
This is another reason why you need to give a lot of detailed thought to your gear and how you will carry it. It is one thing you carry out short term operations and fill your Camelbak with bottle or tap water at home, but what about on extended operations? Also, if conducting short term and/or vehicle mounted patrols, it may be a good thing to have a Camelbak on the back of your PC. I have one that sits there but is not always used. It's also easy in a vehicle to have a stack of drinking water bottles and have a bottle to hand in a cup holder. But what about when you have to get out and overnight it? Don't underestimate what a pain it is to have a full 3 liter Camelback on your PC under a patrol pack. It pulls the straps out straight back and unbalances you. It is a pain on your shoulders.
In my opinion, this is a versatile way to do it:
- One canteen at least, maybe two, accessible on a battle belt or the side of a PC/tactical vest. If only one, have another somewhere else as a back up, such as in or on your ruck or patrol pack.
- A Camelbak either attached to the back of your PC, or in its own harness, to be used as necessary for short patrols or vehicle operations. If it is in its own harness, you can always take it off and pack it in the ruck.
- A hydration bladder (or the Camelback in the carry harness) stored in your pack/ruck as a backup supply to your canteens.
Don't forget to consider how you will purify water for resupply when you are out there. Also, don't forget that without water you will die, and the hotter it gets the more critical it is. You need to plan to factor in water resupply as part of your missions.
Hydrate or die.
Blog Post
Gear Philosophy Update:
I was recently asked a question in an email, from a guy who has bought a full set of Patriot Plates and is looking for a decent, modestly priced, plate carrier,. He says:
"So I have purchased a set of Patriot Plates. Front and Back 10 x 12. Sides 6 x 8. I feel fairly sure you have heard of these. They are a less than ideal solution compared to ceramics but they are better than nothing at all. They are mil-spec .25 inch steel rated for a 30-06 at 30 degree deflection. They are damned heavy. So I am doing a PT plan to get up to the AFPT rating of a 17-21 year old infantryman.
50 push ups.
60 Sit ups.
6 Chin ups.
2 mile run in 18 minutes. (This is the toughest for me.)
Not awesome, but I am coming up on sixty, but I think I am still fit enough to reach this goal. I am getting there. But I am still hesitating on a PC purchase. My eye seems to be settling on the [xxxxx]. But the best YouTube reviews I have seen indicate it does not accommodate the mag load out you recommend (and carry yourself)."
I have put up multiple gear posts in the past with suggestions and also information on how I have done it and how I recommend doing it. Just scroll t
he previous articles to read some of them. I have been running my training courses for a little while now and I have been watching numerous people go up and down the ranges with all sorts of gear set-ups. It has set me to thinking.
It is a balance of fitness and sustainability. The more you can carry, the more sustainable you are before resupply, whether that be with the number of magazines you carry into a firefight or the amount of days rations you can carry in a ruck. But again, that is a balance - you can increase the load you carry with greater strength and fitness, but there will always become a point when you are carrying too much, which will negatively impact on your performance, and ability to move, while in combat.
There is the old balance between firepower - protection - mobility. The more ammo you carry, the greater firepower that you can project, and for longer. The more armor you wear, the better protected you are. But weight of firepower and weight of protection will negatively affect your mobility. If you are not mobile, you will either be ineffective in closing with the enemy, either in close combat or on approach or withdrawal marches, or you will just die, because you were unable to 'keep low, move fast.'
You also have to look upon this in the light of a realistic scenario. You cannot go out and stay in the woods forever. You can't carry enough in your ruck to last for weeks. You have to be resupplied. This means that you will have to run missions from a base that is provisioned with supplies, like a retreat, or if you are elsewhere in a patrol base you may be resupplied by a logistics chain or by the auxiliary network. You are not going to lug your 100 lb. ruck everywhere and live out of it forever. This does not preclude moving patrol base locations, but it means that you have to have a way to be resupplied. Logistics.
This ties in closely with my posts on tactical mobility. It may be that you don't move out to that patrol base with a 100 lb. ruck, but more like a 60 lb. one and the rest of the gear is brought in by mule or ATV, or whatever, and brought to you or to a cache nearby. Or you do a heavy load carry in, or a couple of them, and then cache the stuff at a patrol base and operate light from there. Your 'G' Base may be receiving resupply drops either directly to it or via a cache system. If you are going out on short term patrols, then you carry what you need and 'travel light, freeze at night.'