Contact!

by Max Velocity

  This does not take away from the need to be as physically fit as possible. But you have to be realistic. Don’t depend on carrying 150 lb. of gear and then find out you can't. Particularly when you find yourself malnourished and half-starved out there in the boonies post-SHTF running a guerrilla campaign. Think about a potential tempo of one operation every thirty days, with the rest of the time given over to admin, preparation, survival and recovery.

  I propose that a more realistic philosophy for gear carriage is a modification of the '3 day pack' concept. This means that you will plan to carry a medium sized ruck as a patrol pack, something just a little bigger than an assault pack. It won't have everything in it that you need. You will 'travel light, freeze at night' - your main comfort gear will be back in a 'G' or patrol base somewhere and may even get moved by vehicle or ATV, or pack mule.

  You will be carrying rations for maybe three days (one MRE or equivalent per day), emergency/E&E rations, water/water purification, ammo, batteries, night vision/FLIR, IFAK/medical kit, spare socks, a little bit of snivel gear, and something to sleep in, such as a woobie or light bag, plus bivvy sack. Carry a thermal poncho. Carry all the little ancillary stuff like lighters and bug repellent and all that.

  You want to be able to carry this with you and fight in it. You may potentially cache your patrol/assault packs at the ORP with a security party prior to moving onto the objective, but if you do you may never see them again. Leaving gear anywhere not on your person is a serious risk SHTF, because you may never see it again and you may not be able to replace it. So keep it as practical and light as possible, so you can move with it and are not tempted to dump it.

  This leads me on to a slight red herring - that of the tiers of gear to be worn on you - tier one on your person, tier two in your load-out, tier three in your ruck etc. That is all very well and good advice. But if you are operating out there in the boonies as a resistance fighter, dumping your gear may mean you cannot survive anyway, or you may become ineffective as a fighter because it cannot be replaced. It just depends on the situation. My philosophy is to be prepared to potentially dump some gear, like useless snivel gear. But in the main, if you can dump it why were you carrying it? If you find yourself breaking contact and trying to exfil, then your worst case is a sustained follow up by enemy hunter-killer forces. That is precisely when you need all your gear. If there is no urban center to fade away into, then you are out there in the boonies. If you can't get away, that is the time to set a hasty ambush, get close, and fight close. Like a cornered bear.

  Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. You never know, if you get close they cannot hit you with indirect assets, and you may get out in the confusion, if you fight hard. Otherwise, you did what you could. A time to live, a time to fight, a time to die. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating throwing your life away in order to keep clutching your collection of gucci tacticool gear - my point is more to ask why you are out there in the first place, what your mission is, and if you are going to strip naked and run, or turn and fight. This is precisely why you should be operating with a load that you can effectively carry and that you can shuffle-run with if necessary.

  Battle belts work, particularity for dismounted light infantry style operations., They are a pain when trying to sit in vehicles, Going with the battle belt set-up is entirely legitimate and you can carry a good amount of gear around your belt, particularly if you use suspenders/harness with it. If you wear a battle belt, you can throw your PC on and have additional ammo and ancillary pouches attached to that. You can then wear a patrol pack.

  Another way of doing it – the chest rig: [Photo not included]. It has room for 12 magazines across the belly. I have a triple pistol mag pouch on the bib. IFAK on the right side and FLIR Scout pouch on the left where I can access it for scanning from the halt while patrolling. . There is a pouch in the bib for ancillary equipment and a zip behind the mag pouch into large admin pouch. I have a Camelbak Armorbak on the back. I think this is a BDS tactical rig; I've had it a few years. Because of how the rig impinges on my waist belt area, I am wearing my Glock in a drop leg holster.

  This kind of rig is very comfortable and also works well when sitting in vehicles. It is versatile. It does not work very well with a battle belt.

  Which reminds me, someone asked in a blog comment how to make the battle belt work. If you don't have a full battle belt with a padded belt and suspenders, and you want to wear additional canteens with something like the chest rig that I am wearing in the photo, then you want to use a belt only, no pad. Otherwise, you will have to tighten it so much that it is uncomfortable in order to stop the pad falling down off your hips. With a chest rig, you can use a simple web belt with a few pouches that sit on your butt, so they do not get in the way of your chest rig in the hip area. This is a way of carrying additional canteens. You can fit two canteens divided by an admin pouch on a web belt and wear it so that it does not interfere with the chest rig. You may not be able to MOLLE the pouches in place on a simple web belt but you can tie or tape them and when it is tight on your waist the canteens/pouches will not move anyway, they will sit on your lower back.

  You can also wear such a set-up with a ruck, particular an ALICE pack. Where you have problems is with rucks which come down low over your butt and have waist belts. Such rucks with waist belts will still work well with a chest rig, but less well with battle belts. An ALICE ruck will sit nicely on a battle belt, with the battle belt holding some of the weight like a waist belt. If you want to spend money on something 'gucci' like a nice Kifaru medium sized ruck/assault/patrol pack, then you may have to give up on the battle belt. You can then attach canteens or bladders to the sides of the ruck, which also means it is even more important not to dump the ruck. In which case, don't carry too much in it, so you can keep it on when exfiltrating!

  "But what about your Plates?" I hear you ask. Well, here is the beauty in the flexibility. Just have a clean PC with your plates in. This can be worn under your chest rig. This gives you the option of wearing a PC, or not. Also, in the event that you have to do physical labor, like dig a foxhole, while under threat of enemy fire but you don't want to wear all your gear, you can wear your PC. Set your chest rig and rifle down next to the hole, ready to throw on if necessary, but you are still protected with your plates on. If it is all attached to your PC then you have no choice - its either your PC and all your gear, or nothing.

  On the protection vs. mobility debate, you need to consider, if you have something heavy like Patriot Plates, if you are going to wear them all. Side Plates? Personally, I don't own side plates. None of this is a silver bullet to not getting killed. Not to say that side plates are a bad thing, but in all of this it is a balance. If you are wearing so much gear that you can't move, then you are carrying too much weight and you are combat ineffective.

  It's not whether we are going to die that is in question - just how much it's going to hurt!

  You may consider patrolling covertly without wearing your PC, just wear your chest rig. Or wear front and back plates, no side plates. If you have to fight a defensive battle, or assault a place, in a raid, then maybe wear them all. But not if you can't "keep low, move fast" when wearing it all.

  So to conclude this: there are various options to go for in terms of systems when setting up your gear. You have to plan for a system that will allow the components to work together (i.e. ruck, PC, belt, chest rig etc.) and allow you to operate how you want to. Don't plan to carry too much gear or wear too much weight. You need to go with what fits your strength and physical fitness, allowing you to balance firepower, mobility and protection. You can't plan to carry it all, and you can't live out there forever without resupply. So have a plan to resupply using alternate means, such as humping gear into a base, using vehicles and animals to carry it or resupply you.

  No man is an island, and no more so than when conducting resistance operations. All the more reason to work on tribe, network and team.

  CHAPTER THREEr />
  DECISION MAKING

  “If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;”

  KIPLING

  Introduction

  Inherent to any collapse or survival situation, as well as your current everyday life, is the need to make decisions. This is starkly illustrated by the previous chapter and the example of the ‘stay or go’ decisions that are discussed. Post-event, such decisions can literally be life or death matters and it is helpful to have a logical approach to this process. Such a logical approach, where you will go through a series of steps in order to make a decision, has utility in several ways.

  Firstly, the logical process will ensure that you thoroughly consider the situation without missing out key considerations. Secondly, the process will help your mind work in a crisis where you can cling to the ‘life-raft’ of a logical step by step process that will help you think through the situation where panic may be a potential issue, and perhaps where you are in an environment where others are panicking and there is a danger of you being swept up in it. Thirdly, familiarity with such a process will help your thinking process so that even without the tools or written materials for such a process, you will train to have the mental tools to work logically through a problem and make a decision.

  A key thing to do in a crisis is to make a decision. Often, right or wrong, simply so that you take some action. Hopefully, you will take the right action but being paralyzed by the enormity of the situation will not help and you need to do something. In a tactical kinetic environment, you need to make decisions. Go left, go right, but make a decision. Don’t sit on the ‘X’. This is where the mental discipline of a decision making process is so helpful, because in a time crisis such as a kinetic tactical situation you will not have the time to go through a formal decision making process, but hopefully your training in these processes will enable you to think rapidly and logically to make a decision and MOVE.

  Now, there are several things to consider here. Below, we will go through a series of examples or process that you can use. One of these is the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). This is a tool used by the planning Staff to offer courses of action (COA) to the commander that they work for. It is usually a time limited process that may be ongoing but also may be an isolated process. The problem with it occurs when courses of action are created, and decisions are made, based on simply the information that the Staff has at the time. This may be imperfect information and may need to be developed or further information gained, perhaps as reconnaissance is continued or the operation progresses.

  To make such decisions and carry them out without recourse to review is a significant problem and can lack the ability to develop the situation as the plan progresses. It is sometimes stated that a commander must have the ability to make a decision and stick with it, follow it through to the conclusion. This will have utility in some circumstances, such as where you ‘went left’ but on reflection should have ‘gone right’ but your team is now deep in the poop and the only way out is to fight through to the conclusion.

  But otherwise, when you are not so deeply committed, you must try and avoid inflexibility of thought and develop the ability to process new information and amend the plan accordingly. You were going to stay in place, but new information appears that makes that unwise or untenable. The ‘stick in the mud’ part of you does not want to leave your carefully prepared home and supply dump, but you must have the mental flexibility to do so if it is in the best interests of protecting your people.

  The ‘OODA’ Loop

  Frankly, I am including the ‘OODA’ loop here firstly so I can’t be accused of leaving it out and secondly to point out an inherent danger in its simplicity. The ‘OODA’ loop was originally designed to analyze combat reaction in fighter pilots, became an item of military doctrine, and has now become a tactical training axiom. It is a very useful concept, and also very simple. At the ‘hands on’ level of a tactical gunfight or a fighter pilot in a dogfight, it is very instinctual. In military doctrine, it is better used at a strategic and operational level to describe getting inside the enemy’s decision cycle.

  The ‘OODA’ loop describes a decision cycle and stands for:

  O – Observe

  O – Orient

  D – Decide

  A – Act

  Don’t let anyone tell you that if you had not heard of the OODA loop you should not, for example, be considered tactically competent. The OODA loop is an instinctual process that you will do without realizing it. You observe the action, you orient to it, you decide what to do and then you act. So it really demonstrates that if you are quicker to run through the process, you can short-circuit what the other guy is doing and cut into his decision cycle, seizing the initiative and keeping the enemy off balance.

  Other than describing the process, and letting you know the importance of being quick to run through it, it appears that is where the utility of the OODA loop ends.

  Now for the danger part: it is all very well to talk about the importance of the OODA loop, and being fast at it, but if you freeze or act in denial, or don’t act correctly, then you have the potential to fail, which may be fatal in any kind of fight. The OODA loop is nothing without the right training to develop muscle memory and to help put you on the path to taking effective action.

  More important than the OODA loop is the process of training and mental preparation/visualization that will allow you to rapidly orient to a developing situation, decide what to do and then act appropriately.

  The Military Decision Making Process

  This is a planning tool that will develop courses of action; once you decide on what you consider to be the best course of action it will become your plan. Be careful of making decisions in isolation and trying to follow them through without considering the new information that you gather, perhaps as you move from your home to a designated hide or retreat location. The level of detail of the planning is dependent on the amount of information available and the time that you have to plan.

  MDMP is a seven step process consisting of:

   Receipt of Mission

   Mission Analysis

   Course of Action (COA) Development

   COA Analysis

   COA Comparison

   COA Approval

   Orders Production.

  Receipt of Mission: You will not be given a mission, but as a prepper you will decide on what that mission is. This will be decided by circumstances and information feeds that are available to you. As a side note, intelligence is defined as information that is analyzed and processed, so you will likely not have intelligence, but you will have available information that you can process to become your own intelligence. You will have your overall mission, which is likely to be the survival of you and your group, but to move towards that you will have to decide on the smaller mission, which is what you are using MDMP for.

  You may be making the stay or go decision, or be running out of water and looking for a way to collect some more, or perhaps someone you care for did not make it to the retreat, cut off by the event and subsequent chaos, and you are considering the viability of a recovery operation. These are just examples of the sub-mission that you will encounter as part of the overall survival process.

  The MDMP has utility for these missions. It is helpful for you to state this mission, usually in the form of a task to achieve with an ‘in order to (iot)’ second part (the unifying purpose) which achieves the requirement for mission command. It may be that you are giving this mission to a tactical team that you send out so use mission command to give them the mission and purpose: “Forage team will conduct a recce in the vicinity of Devastation Avenue in order to (iot) find a source of water for re-supply.”

  Mission Analysis: This is where you, or the group you gave the mission to, will anal
yze that mission and pull relevant considerations and actions from it. The mission consists of the tasks given to you (the mission) together with the unifying purpose, which is the part after the IOT phrase, against which all factors falling out of the MDMP process will be considered. There are four questions to mission analysis, which will result in considerations that will be incorporated into the following MDMP process:

   INTENT: Commanders intent. What is his/your desired end state? Where is the main effort? How must my action directly support my commander’s intent?

   TASKS:

  o Specified: What tasks must I complete to fulfill my mission?

  o Implied: what tasks fallout from the specified tasks that I must complete to fulfill my mission?

  o Examples: I have to defend my retreat; therefore I must have suitable weapons and training. Or, I must get to objective Alpha, which is across a river and the bridge is down; therefore the implied task is that I need to conduct a river crossing.

   CONSTRAINTS & FREEDOMS OF ACTION: What limitations are there on my freedom of action? Time, space, resources, control measures, rules of engagement, assets, logistics, legal and law and order. By when do I need to make my decision? Use the 1/3 : 2/3 rule where you only take a third of the available time for your planning process, allowing subordinates 2/3 of the time for their battle preparation. Issue a warning order to set battle procedure in place.