by Max Velocity
When moving cross country in an advance to contact mode, the squad leader will move the team along an axis. This axis will provide a reference point. Before setting out on a leg across relatively open country, it is useful for the squad leader to get the team together in cover and point out the route ahead, the axis, and any relevant reference points, if the opportunity arises. If not, the axis is simply the direction the patrol is heading in. This becomes relevant because as the squad looks at the axis, the ground in front can be broken up into left (90 degrees left of the axis), half left (45 degrees left of the axis), axis, half right and right. This helps with target indication.
Reaction to Effective Enemy Fire: when the squad comes under effective enemy fire, the squad leader will give the executive order to take cover. This can be “TAKE COVER!”, “CONTACT FRONT!” or “ENEMY RIGHT!” – whatever works for you and has come to mind in training. The squad will react by taking cover by one of the two methods outlined: dash, down, crawl, observe, sights, fire or RTR. If at this point any squad members actually see the enemy, they should immediately begin returning fire and communicate this to the rest of the squad.
Bear in mind that if you come under fire like this, there may be casualties and also the enemy has chosen to engage you on ground of his choosing and therefore you are currently on the X. This means that the squad leader may have to make initial corrections to the position of the squad, depending on the available cover. This may take the form of maneuvering the squad, individual teams or individuals off the X and into cover to the front, rear or flanks. This is not an attack at this point; it is simply an adjustment into better cover.
Also, at this point the squad may choose to retire and fight out, which would be breaking contact with the enemy. If you have taken casualties, then at this point they are not a priority: engaging the enemy is the priority and you must not tend to casualties if the tactical situation does not allow it. The most you can do right now is to have them return fire, crawl to cover, lie still or apply self-aid. Self-aid at this point is a tourniquet high and tight on a limb as required. If they are next to you and you can, whip a tourniquet onto them high and tight, then get on with the battle.
Note: Near & Far Contact: it is generally considered useful to divide contact (or ambush) ranges into near and far. A near ambush is one where the enemy is within grenade range. A far ambush is where they are further away. Reaction drills will vary and it may be that for a near ambush the best drill will be to immediately fight through the enemy with the team nearest to the contact. This will be discussed further in actions on contact drills, under patrolling.
Locating the Enemy: Before you can go any further, you have to locate the enemy. This will be done by observation and potentially hearing. You may be able to see muzzle flash or the dust kicked up by the enemy weapons firing. You may actually be able to see the enemy. You may still be under contact or it may be that the enemy shot and scooted. Try to locate the enemy by:
Observation: if that fails then;
Fire: fire into likely cover to try and get a response. If that fails and the fire has stopped;
Movement:
o Initially, short rushes by individual riflemen to see if it draws fire.
o If no response, begin bounding over-watch, hard targeting out of positions.
o If no response, continue the mission.
Assuming a situation where the enemy fire continues and we are able to locate the enemy, once a rifleman locates the enemy he must give a target indication and begin to engage. The target indication will be passed by the squad as link men to the whole squad. As they locate the enemy, riflemen will engage. A target indication can be given in a number of ways, usually with a range, direction or indication and description.
Note: you will need to practice estimating distance, so that you can give accurate target indication ranges.
Target Indication Methods:
Simple: “Enemy front, 100 meters, tree line!”
Range, Direction, Indication:
o 200!
o Half right!
o Enemy in ditch!
Clock Ray Method: This method utilizes a clock face overlaid on a reference point (not your location). Example:
o 200!
o Half Right!
o Right corner of building!
o Three o’clock, 2 fingers*, enemy in gap in wall!
Three o’clock is from a clock face laid on the right corner of the building,
*Note: The finger or knuckle method: hold up your outstretched hand and lay your fingers or knuckles on the object and estimate how many fingers or knuckles the enemy is away from the object. It works very well.
Strike: Use the strike of your rounds:
o 200!
o Half Right!
o Watch my Strike! – fire multiple rounds in the area of the enemy to kick up dust and indicate the position. This works better if you have loaded tracer as the top few rounds in your magazine.
Winning the Fire Fight: This is about gaining fire superiority over the enemy to allow you to maneuver. This is where it becomes very important to use accurate fire to kill, suppress or neutralize the enemy positions to allow you to maneuver, either to break contact or to assault the enemy. To win the fire fight, the squad leader must utilize the weapons systems available to him to suppress the enemy. There may be more than one enemy position and location so he must direct his elements to fire where he wants them to fire. If you have designated marksmen he will be putting precision fire out to kill the enemy. Machine gunners will be suppressing the enemy position with accurate volume of fire. In order to win the fire fight the squad leader must issue fire control orders:
Fire Control Order: GRIT:
Group: which group or weapon he wants to fire.
Range: range of target.
Indication: target indication
Type of Fire: rapid or deliberate
Example:
Delta!
200!
Half right, enemy in gap in wall!
Rapid…..FIRE!
Note: rapid fire is a rate of 30 rounds per minute, or one round every two seconds. Deliberate fire is ten rounds per minute, or one round every 6 seconds. Slow hey? If it’s accurate, it’s all you need. If it’s not accurate, then you are just wasting rounds anyway.
Types of Fire Control Order: FBI Detective:
Full: a complete order, as above.
Brief: short version, usually at close range: ENEMY FRONT, RAPID FIRE!
Individual: selecting individuals in the squad to fire at select targets.
Delayed: a full order, but using the words “AWAIT MY ORDER….(pause)…..FIRE! This is used where you see enemy moving and want to wait till they get to a certain place before you open fire.
How a Fire Control Order should be given: CLAP:
Clear
Loud
As an order, with
Pauses
Locating the enemy and winning the fire fight requires that your team has personal courage and will be willing to put their heads up while under fire to observe and return fire. If they don’t, then you will be ‘pinned down’. Also remember that if you are there for any period of time, you need to adjust position to frustrate the efforts of the enemy to see where your head keeps popping up so he can’t get a bead on you.
Methods of military training in some elite units are designed to select for aggression and the ability to keep the head up while taking punishment. This often takes the form of some form of loose boxing or brawling type training where you have to deal out punishment while not being able to defend your head.
The British Parachute Regiment employs ‘milling’ which is one minute of two adversary’s straight punching each other without being allowed to defend themselves. They are not being selected for boxing prowess, but rather for their ability to keep their head up and accept punishment while dealing it out.
Other types of similar scenarios deal in creating situations of stress and fear and requiring that the candidate react to orders under those conditions. This is training and conditioning control of fear and reduction of the freeze response, so that in combat these individuals will have been selected and conditioned to react aggressively and respond to orders in the face of fear.
Once the fire control orders have been given the squad will work on suppressing the enemy. The squad leader will hand over control of the fire to the 2 I/C (usually the Delta Team leader) who will take it over and orchestrate it as necessary. The squad leader then needs to take a moment to do a combat estimate. This is an assessment of the ground, enemy and situation. He may decide to withdraw or to assault the enemy position. When doing his estimate he will be looking at the location and strength of the enemy, the shape of the ground and cover from view and fire. He will try and identify a fire support location and a mechanical process for adjusting the position of his squad by fire and movement to establish a fire support element in position and a route to the objective for the assaulting element.
This estimate takes practice and experience and requires an eye for the ground and a logical understanding of fire and movement and weapons placement. The squad leader ideally wants a fire support location and an assault position that are at 90 degrees to each other. He wants some cover in the fire support location and he wants a covered and concealed route around to the assault position.
Note that for a near ambush type situation it is possible that if a decision is made to assault, rather than withdraw, then a frontal attack may be possible, or feasibly the only alternative if there is no room to maneuver. Such a ‘two up and bags of smoke’ attack is not ideal. For such a near ambush response, the team or teams closest to the enemy will simply launch into the assault, with whatever fire support allowed by the relative angles of the other team. Depending on your formation when attacked, and the relative location of the enemy, will decide for an immediate assault if you can launch one team, or both teams side by side, and whether there is any angle there for effective fire support. A near ambush is grenade range, so it is no going to be any further away than about 30 yards. For anything beyond this, it is better to conduct a flank attack, as outlined below.
The Squad Hasty Attack: The attack phase is broken down into the:
Approach
The Assault
The Fight Through the Objective
The squad leader will in simple terms break the ground down into left, center and right and identify routes to the objective. He will then make a plan based on the best option available. The actual process of the attack is a drill so he does not need to give verbose orders. He issues QBOs (quick battle orders) which are a series of instructions that are passed down the squad by the link men.
To keep the example simple, we will assume that the location where the squad is located while winning the fire fight is suitable as a fire support location, so he will leave Delta there as fire support. He will take Charlie on the right side route to assault the enemy position. The following is an example of the squad leaders QBOs:
Delta prepare to give covering fire!
Charlie prepare to go RIGHT FLANKING!
Delta, FIRE!
Charlie, MOVE!
Delta team leader will order his team to rapid fire to cover the move of Charlie. Smoke will be popped as necessary.
Charlie peels out to the right behind the squad leader and he leads them at a steady pace through the covered route up to the objective.
The squad leader reaches his previously identified Forming Up Point (FUP), which is in cover at right angles to Delta Teams fire support position. He lays or kneels down facing the enemy and points his weapon in the direction of the enemy position. He will look to his left and right and ensure that his team has got on line (skirmish line) on either side of him.
He will signal to Delta to give rapid fire and will stand up and move off with his team in a skirmish line across the Line of Departure (LD), which is the forward edge of the FUP, towards the enemy position.
As soon as Charlie team breaks cover in sight of the enemy position (hopefully his route was covered and he achieved tactical surprise) Charlie will take cover and initiate rapid fire onto the enemy.
Enemy Front, RAPID FIRE!
FIGHT THROUGH! FIGHT THROUGH!
Charlie team will break down into fire and movement and assault towards the enemy position. They can either do this in left pair and right pair moving in synch or the left and right pairs moving on their own. It just depends on the drills you train. The team will stay in lane and try and remain on line.
When they reach the forward edge of the enemy position (FEEP), Delta team will begin to switch their cover fire to the left (or to the right if it was a left flanking attack).
Charlie will assault and fight through the enemy position.
When Charlie reaches the limit of exploitation (LOE) on the far side of the objective:
STOP, STOP, STOP!
CHARLIE GO FIRM!
Charlie team will go into all round defense and establish security on the objective while the squad leader calls Delta team in. Once Delta arrives the squad will go into all-round defense in a pre-established drill i.e. Charlie will take one side of the circle, Delta the other.
The enemy may be dead, wounded, surrendered or fleeing at this point. While on the objective the squad must be observing for any depth positions and any further threat, including from the position they just fought through.
Note that the sort of ranges that we are talking about for a squad attack will be for anything out to about 300 yards. It all depends on the ground, but when you move to the flank you are likely to have an FUP situated no more than about 100 yards from the enemy position, and you would hope to be closer or be able to move through cover or dead ground to closer to the enemy position so that you do not have to fire and maneuver over that whole 100 yard distance. This is to give you an idea of the sort of ranges this will take place over.
Figure 17 - Squad Hasty Attack
Also note that US Army squad attack drills have a very mechanical method of the assault and rejoining of the fire support team: the first team will fight through from the flank, and go firm on the far side of the enemy position, the fire support team will then fight through in a second clearance straight ahead and go firm on the far side, leaving both teams at right angles to each other. In my opinion, this is too mechanistic and idealistic and fails to take account of difficulties of ground, visibility and how exactly the assaulting team ended up: it leaves open the possibility of the fire support team going ‘blue on blue’ with the assault team.
Alternatively, the fire support team can either rejoin the assault team on the objective by following the same route they took to the flank, which is theoretically cleared of obstacles and booby traps, or they can just head straight in. Either way, rather than having them do a second assault/ clearance across the same objective, it is perhaps more useful for them to be met and guided in to a security position, so the squad covers 360 degrees around. The objective can then be thoroughly cleared and secured.
The Reorganization: At this point the squad is re-formed on the objective and they have a lot to think about. The squad leader will go around the perimeter and ensure that he places the squad members down to establish 360 degree security. The 2 I/C is primarily concerned with getting ACE reports: Ammunition, Casualties, Equipment and doing any organizing that he needs to do, such as have casualties treated and re-distribute ammunition. The squad leader and 2 I/C need to be vigilant for multiple things at this point, not an all-inclusive list:
Enemy counter attack.
Surviving enemy on the objective.
Squad members who are wounded but don’t realize it.
Once the squad leader and 2 I/C have done the rounds, they will have to organize:
Treatment of casualties.
Ammo redistribution.
Prisoner handling.
Searching and clearing enemy dead.
Searching and clearing the objective.
Once the reorganization is complete, the squad can police themselves up and either continue the mission or return to base.
Blog Post
Using The Flank:
I received the following comment on my recent post 'There Will Be No Theme Music' from Mt. Top Patriot (MTP):
“Amongst all the outstanding education and wisdom's, the experience and examples you extend, to an inexperienced civilian such as myself, there is one aspect to effective fighting with a rifle in small unit techniques that is becoming evident to me that is essential to dominating and dictating the course of a firefight. Getting on the enemies flank. And maybe out flanking your enemies efforts to outflank you also.
The more I learn the more it seems out of all the tactics of UW and small unit warfare, the flanking maneuver embodies every concept of disrupting your enemies OODA loop, increases your survivability in combat, is the exemplification of moving forward in battle, demoralizes your opponent, and is in a manner a force multiplier, or is utilizing the partisans meager manpower and materiel to the greatest advantage and effect.
Can you expound further on the concept and techniques of attacking the flank? You used the flank in your books. Mentioned it in your postings. I have reread those parts many times and hopefully am beginning to grasp the fundamental truths of this tactic. It just feels like working the flank has quite a bit going for it in respect to fighting on your terms and keeping ones enemy reacting to your actions.”