by Max Velocity
Killing area: Also known as a Kill Zone, this is an area that you or the enemy has designated as the kill zone. Depending on the circumstances, it may have been prepared, perhaps sown with mines and booby traps, IEDs and registered for indirect fire. The enemy will be covering the killing area with potential fire. The killing area is often known as ‘the X’. It is always imperative to ‘get off the X’ as soon as possible.
Vital Ground: this is ground, the possession of which is vital to either the defender or attacker. Without this vital ground, you will fail. If you are defending your home or retreat, then the vital ground is probably the building itself.
Key terrain: ground that confers a marked advantage on whoever possesses it. It may be a little knoll next to your retreat building. You may decide to put a bunker on it to support your main position, but if the enemy destroys the bunker and gets their own machine-gun team up there, then they have an advantage conferred by this terrain feature.
Cover from view (Concealment): this is simply a type of cover where the enemy may not be able to see you, but the cover will not stop enemy fire. Examples are foliage, thin walls, and vehicles.
Cover from fire: this is ‘hard cover’. It is usually formed by the shape of the ground and will provide cover from view and enemy fire. Being in a ditch or trench is an example of cover from fire.
Obstacles: these will only ever slow the enemy down. If you are building a perimeter, don’t put out some wire/fencing and then go to sleep! All obstacles must be observed and covered by fire to be effective. Otherwise, the enemy will have the luxury to spend as much time as they need getting through or past the obstacle. Obstacles should be tied in with observation and early warning, for example it may be that you don’t have the resources to observe the whole perimeter, but you could put out some kind of early warning devices such as trip-flares, noise or light devices, to alert you to enemy presence. But remember, if you are not observing, then the enemy always has the potential to detect and bypass or deactivate your early warning systems. Consider the use of night vision to enhance night observation capabilities, and don’t forget the utility of low-tech methods such as guard dogs. It doesn’t even have to be a scary kind of guard dog: if your family pet barks at intruders, then he is right for the job. You are taking him with you, aren’t you? Geese are also noted as alarm animals. If you had little in the way of defenses, but you had a perimeter fence, a pack of dogs would go a long way to acting as early warning and defense devices within your perimeter.
Tactical Bound: this is a distance that is not specific, but which is determined by and depends on the ground. The idea of a tactical bound is that two formations will stay apart by a distance where, if one unit comes under effective enemy fire, the other unit will not be pinned down by that same fire. In close country the distance shrinks, in open country it expands.
Field of fire: this is the area that is covered by a direct fire weapon or weapon system. It will be determined by the range of the weapons and the shape of the ground and any obstacles to fire. A field of fire may be allocated by a leader and integrated with other fields of fire. It may be necessary to ‘clear fields of fire’ when you will cut vegetation growth back from your property or position to reduce concealment available to the enemy and provide clear fields of fire against anyone crossing that open ground.
Arcs of fire (sectors): this is where the left and right limits of a weapons firing sector are specified. This can be with actual physical ‘arc sticks’ which limit the traverse of the weapons or by designating features i.e.: “Your left of arc is the right side of the farm building, your right of arc is the left edge of the clump of trees.”
Stand-off: this is a distance where the threat can be kept away from you. It can be tied in with fields of fire. If there is a fence or wall around the perimeter of your property, then you can consider the stand-off as the distance between that perimeter and your property. If there is no actual obstacle there, then you have no stand-off, unless you intend to simply keep an intruder back by weapons fire alone.
Momentum
This concept refers to the requirement to maintain pressure on the enemy force during an engagement: mainly in offense but it also applies to defense. This pressure will be applied through to use of firepower and maneuver. You do not always need to be moving in order to maintain momentum; you could be maintaining suppressive fire which will neutralize the enemy. Maneuvering will increase the effective angles of your fire and create enfilade, and will therefore unbalance the enemy, hopefully breaking cohesion and will.
When you think about maneuvering in a tactical environment, think less about speed and running about. Of course, sometimes you will have to run fast! If you watch a Hollywood movie, there is lots of running about and firing while running, often with competing mobs of henchmen running at each other firing. Attacks are portrayed as a running assault. This is historically true in some circumstances, such as attacks ‘over the top’ in the First World War, and Russian “Huraahh!” charges in the Second World War. But this is what you do if you have lots of people and you don’t mind losing some (or lots) of them!
If you are a small professional force, or a small group of friends and family, then there is no such thing as an acceptable loss. If you are forced to do something tactical then you want to be thinking more along the lines of ‘slow is smooth and smooth is fast’. Use ground and cover, move steadily using accurate fire and movement in dead ground to apply steady pressure on the enemy, making use of angles of fire and flanking movement to increase that pressure and psychological advantage.
Try to break the enemy’s cohesion and will to fight. Maintain momentum and steadily move up to increase the pressure. If they think they are getting surrounded and you are closing with them, they will likely want to break and run, they will not want to be cut off and killed in place. Sometimes you want to give the enemy a route to withdraw on. If you are really serious you can let them withdraw on a route but have cut-off groups in place to ambush them as they do so.
A very useful skill to develop both in defense and offense is the ability to ‘read the battle’. This takes training and experience. You should be able to tell by the information you receive, from reports from your sub-units, by direct observation and also hearing the direction and sounds of the battle, what is happening. If you have moved to the flank, even without radios you can hear when the fire support group has increased to rapid fire to cover your final assault. You can hear where the enemy fire is coming from and its intensity, and you can anticipate that they may try and flank you and roll you up, and you will hear once they begin to do so, but for instance you will have anticipated this and placed weapon systems to cover the relevant avenues of approach.
Operational Tempo
This again is not so much about speed, it is more about organizing your decisions, preparations and executions so that you can act faster than the enemy and get inside his decision cycle. So before he can react, you did something and dislocated his expectations. This is about getting inside his ‘OODA’ loop: Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action. If you maintain a high operational tempo then you are making your combat team operate at a higher rate than that of the enemy.
Historical note: We often talk about the best form of defense being offense. We also take about having an offensive mindset in defense (more in the chapter on defense). In the North African desert in the Second World War, the British Parachute Regiment fought for a period of time as ground infantry, not conducting airborne operations. This is where they gained the nickname ‘The Red Devils’. The Germans named them such because they were often covered in the red North African dust and the tails of their parachute smocks would hang down behind them looking like devils tails.
The Para’s developed a reputation for aggression and tenacity; they were an elite force. They had adopted a local shepherd’s expression as a war cry: “Woahhh Mohammed!” and would shout this as they were assaulting the Germans. The Paras took the offensive spirit i
n defense to the extreme on many occasions: once they got wind that the Germans were forming up in an FUP (Forming Up Position) for an assault, they would leave their positions and charge the enemy in the FUP, completely dislocating and disrupting the enemy in their preparations and routing them from the position.
Blog Post
‘Your force is unable to obtain fire superiority?’
I had the following question as a comment by ‘APX’ on my previous post ‘Combat Rifle – Solid Basics to keep you Alive’:
APX Asks: “I have a question maybe you can help me with, occidental military doctrine is based in gaining fire superiority to allow maneuver but...What would you do if your force is unable to obtain fire superiority? How would you improve your chances? I ask this because in a SHTF situation ammo could be scarce and our team's weapons not the best, maybe people with hunting rifles or shotguns.”
This is a good question and I felt it justified a longer answer, a post of its own. The overwhelming detail on this topic and similar tactical questions can to be found [in this manual]. Here are some comments on this particular question:
Gaining fire superiority should mean suppressing the enemy. Fire superiority is often mistaken as the same as suppression which is often mistaken for overwhelming firepower going downrange at the enemy, which is all well and good, but unless that is accurate and effective it is nothing more than noise. Rommel was quoted as saying something along the lines of “There is nothing more effective than plastering the enemy with fire,” which is true, so long as it is accurately targeted fire.
So let’s switch out the term fire superiority with suppressive fire, sometimes known as ‘winning the fire fight’. In order to suppress the enemy you must direct accurate effective fire that will either hit that enemy and injure/kill him or make him get his head down in cover and keep it down. Remember that you are both fighting for your lives, so noise alone won’t do it. He needs to feel that round crack past his head or over his trench while he is hiding in it, and know that he needs to keep that head down. If you can suppress the enemy you are able to maneuver with less risk of getting shot.
Incoming small arms fire has an inherent violence to it if it is close. If it is not close it’s just background. You will know if you are ‘pinned down’.
So back to the bolt action rifles in the original question: there is no reason why such weapons cannot be used to suppress the enemy, particularly if their very nature means you have to be more accurate with them. This exposes the weakness of automatic weapons: if you face someone with uncontrolled automatic weapons, they could be hosing down your general area but not effectively, while you can put one through their eye with your bolt action rifle. That does not mean all automatic weapons are bad, it depends on the operator: a good operator with a SAW firing short controlled bursts will kill/suppress well.
Similarly with semi-automatic weapons with thirty round magazines, like AK or ARs, these can be devastatingly effective but in the wrong untrained hands can be next to useless. So a lot of this comes back to quality of the individual and the level of training and experience they have. Once the adrenalin stacks up in a contact situation it is very easy to look over your sights and fire into or towards the enemy, rapidly pumping rounds downrange in the excitement of the contact. You have to mentally get a grip of yourself, re-focus to get a sight picture and get more accurate.
So far I have basically said that you can use a lot of different types of rifles to be effective so long as you are trained to do so, and conversely even if you have the best equipment none of that will help you if you are just a tacticool goon. Yes, a well-trained team will be more effective if they have better equipment, but I am telling you not to give up hope if you have just bolt action hunting rifles. The advancing German Army at the beginning of the First World War thought they were up against machine gun battalions as they pushed the British Expeditionary Force back to the English Channel. No, it was the fire power generated by the British infantryman with his bolt action Lee-Enfield rifle.
Shotguns are a different matter in my opinion, (mentioned in the original question). At least with bolt action rifles you can try and adapt your tactics to take advantage of range and accuracy if terrain allows, but with shotguns you lose range, volume of fire and also accuracy. Useful for close range contacts in close country, historically carried by point men in the Jungle; I’d prefer an AR.
The next part of this post moves on from the weapons that you are equipped with to the nature of suppressive fire itself. You will know based on who you are, the circumstances and your mission what your plan is for making contact with the enemy. If you are a small recce patrol the idea may be to break contact for which you will have rehearsed immediate action drills for contact left/right and front/rear. Upon enemy contact you will go into your RTR drill and then into the appropriate contact drill. It is of course important to suppress the enemy as much as possible when doing a break contact drill, which is why they are based on the principle of fire and movement, but given the fluid situation your suppressive fire is likely to be less effective as you move fast to get out of there: by which I mean you are not hanging around to locate all enemy positions and you are moving fast together with as much suppression as you can put down.
Remember that these contact drills are for emergency situations where you have walked onto the ‘X’ and as such they are emergency drills to try and get you out alive. Not all of you may make it, and you may not even be able to run, you may be reduced to crawling out along a terrain feature. That is the reality of the difference between rehearsed immediate action drills and what may happen to you on the ground as you crawl out perhaps dragging your wounded buddy by his harness.
If you are in more of an offensive mode then you will consider maneuvering onto the enemy position(s) once contact is made. This could be as part of a deliberate attack/raid or as a hasty attack as a result of unexpected contact. The unexpected contact is conducted as a series of battle drills. This is very simply how the first part of it works:
1) Reaction to effective enemy fire: RTR (Return fire, Take cover, Return appropriate fire.
2) Locate the enemy: Observation, target indications passed once the enemy is located. This may be very hard with a well-trained and concealed enemy and is a primary reason why it may be hard to suppress them: you can’t suppress what you can’t locate.
3) Win the firefight: this is where fire control orders are given to allow the suppression to happen.
4) The follow on hasty attack….which is the maneuver part.
Ok, so you just walked onto the X. Crack, crack, crack, you came under fire (assume no man down for now, keeping it simple). The element (squad maybe) scrambles for cover and is trying to locate the enemy and return fire.
Remember that you are on the X. You will not be able to roll into your offensive action at that point. You will likely have to re-position the elements of the squad unless you are already in good cover. You may have to fight your squad forwards or backwards or to the flanks simply to get off the X and into a better position. Once you re-position you will be better able to observe and try and locate the enemy firing points. Once you do that (communicate it using link men – “every man is a link man”) then you are able to begin to win the firefight where you are using your accurate suppressive fire to try and rip the initiative back from the enemy.
Once you roll into winning the firefight, this is when the squad leader needs to take a moment, leave the fire control to his second in command, and sit back and make an assessment. Remember, this was not a break contact drill; this is an offensive advance to contact. He will need to consider the enemy/ground that he can see, how the firefight is going, the assessed number and weight of fire from the enemy, and what he feels he can do. He may decide at this point to break contact, at which point he will order a break contact drill – but this is not an automatic immediate action, this is a deliberate move. Or, he will decide to put in a hasty attack. At that point he is considering f
actors such as the enemy/ ground, the location of his fire support element, covered routes to the enemy position(s) and how to assault the enemy.
Where reality diverges from the standard drill is how the enemy is behaving. Rather than being all in one position ripe for the plucking, they may have multiple firing points. If assaulting an enemy position, whether the enemy is in the open, in a trench or in a bunker (all have variations on how to best do it) you must consider the location of enemy firing points that are in depth and mutually supporting to the position you have targeted. Your fire support element will be suppressing all that they can, but as you move up and to a flank you will need to consider how to suppress depth and/or mutually supporting enemy positions in order to allow you to continue to maneuver. That is why you may reach the conclusion that you cannot assault, because there is too much to suppress in order to sensibly do so.
This is where reality hits us in the face. Unless you are facing a very simple solution, you are not going to be able to suppress all of the enemy all of the time, or even some of the time. Do you seriously think that you can shape the battlefield to where you can attack without return fire? No. You have to suppress the enemy to the point where you have the upper hand to allow you to maneuver. Other than that you must use terrain features and cover to allow your fire support element to survive and for the assault element to get onto the objective without being hit.