Contact!

by Max Velocity

  Now, if you are limited in numbers you may not be able to occupy those positions at all times, but you need to have 360 degree observation so that if those positions come into play, the observer is able to communicate this and defenders can be deployed to the right area. Again, if you are limited in numbers a position outside the property may be able to provide this level of over-watch and early warning. But an external OP itself needs to be either well defended all round, or covert.

  Figure 20 - All Round Defense

  Depth, in order to prevent penetration or its effects: The idea of depth is to ensure that if the enemy breaks through the outer line of defenses, then there are more defenses in depth to stop them. Your defenses should be able to absorb an attack, like a sponge, rather than be a brittle line like an egg shell. If we look to the military example above in all round defense, with the ring of trenches or bunkers around the central defended point, then to include depth there would not just be one outer ring of positions, but a staggered line of inner positions so that if the outer ones are overwhelmed, the enemy is not free and clear but still faces further positions to get through.

  For our more limited purposes, we can think of fall back positions in depth so that if we are being overrun, we can fall back and have an opportunity of further killing areas to defend against the overrunning attackers. Depth also means stand-off distances and fields of fire. Going back to the idea of having people posted outside of the building, if you have ground dominating area (GDA) patrols out, observation posts, check points and external fighting positions, then you are creating stand off and depth to the building(s) themselves. If the outer skin of your defense is the walls of your house, then you will only have the fields of fire available to you from your windows and once the enemy breaches the walls, you can only create depth by fighting back through your house, which is also a tactic with options but not as good as keeping them away from the house.

  A note on depth: if your house is breached, there is only so far back that you can fight until you are cornered. That location may be the place where you stashed your family. In this type of situation, where you are being overwhelmed by raiders, there is little utility in ‘safe rooms’. This is not a situation where you can phone law enforcement and wait until they arrive. No-one is coming, and the raiders are at leisure to take as long as they want to breach your safe room. They may want you or your family, and they will expect that the most valuable booty is in the safe room with you.

  Figure 21 – Depth

  If they become frustrated and can’t get in, they will likely burn it down around you. Either way, it’s end game for you and your family. Therefore, make sure you have egress routes and if you decide to make a stand and your defense is becoming overwhelmed, get out. Depth in terms of stand-off is also very useful because if you can keep the enemy away from the buildings, they are less likely to be able to use fire to burn you out.

  Mutual Support, in order to increase the strength and flexibility of a defense: mutual support requires that fighting positions are able to support each other by fire. This means that a position is not responsible alone for fighting of an enemy assault, but that other positions can fire onto enemy attacking that position and vice versa. The implied task from this is that you need the right numbers of defenders to occupy mutually supporting fighting positions tied in with the requirement for defense in depth.

  Remember the movie ‘Platoon’, where they are in the Fire Base prior to the final climactic enemy assault at the end of the movie? The squad leaders complain that the foxholes are too far apart (“You could run a whole NVA Regiment through them.” or words to that effect) and when the platoon leader tells his Company Commander he is falling back, the reply is to ask him where he is falling back to. This is a lack of mutual support and depth on this position as portrayed in the movie. ‘Arcs (or sectors) of Fire’ are used to create mutual support. There are two types of mutually supporting arcs of fire:

   Overlapping: This is where the arcs of fire completely cross over and positions can fire in front of other positions. This is the best case.

   Interlocking: This is where just the edges of the arcs touch, which means that there are no gaps in the sectors but that there are areas where only the weapons system at one position will cover the area to its front.

  Ideally, support weapons systems, such as machine-guns, will have overlapping arcs of fire while individual riflemen will likely be allocated interlocking arcs.

  Figure 22 - Mutual Support

  Concealment and Deception, in order to deny the adversary the advantages of understanding: Whether or not you have a low profile suburban house where you are hunkering down in the basement, or a multi-family compound retreat, you will be well served by concealment and deception. For the low profile retreat, you are trying to avoid becoming a target on a looter’s radar, so all your preparations will be covert. For a strong defended location, you may not be trying to hide the location in entirety, and you may also have sufficient strength so that part of your defensive tactic is to portray that strength, but even so you should conceal your positions and deny a reconnoitering enemy the ability to map out your defensive plans.

  You will want to consider your cover and concealment. If you are concerned by snipers creeping up on your property, you may also want to consider vision screens. Cover, will protect you from enemy fire, but you may want to tie that into a concealment plan so, for instance, your guard in the hard bunker is simply not shot while on duty in the bunker or walking/running to and from, either to change shifts or to deploy into a stand-to position as a reaction to contact. Use of natural vegetation can provide concealment, but you can also put up vision screens created by items such as cloth or camouflage netting, placed in strategic positions so that your people walking around your property are not in plain sight from an observer or sniper.

  Vision screening is used on deployment military bases to cover areas where hard cover is lacking, perhaps to obscure the view into the base where the wall is low, maybe where there is a dip in the ground or similar. It makes it harder for an enemy sniper or mortar team to get ‘eyes on’ into the base. For example, if you had a fence around a property or compound, if you put vision screening on that fence, perhaps even raising it up in places to cover the view from high ground, you aid in concealment and protection from snipers.

  Maintenance of a Reserve: it is essential to have a Reserve, even if it is just a couple of people located in a designated spot in the center of your house. In pure doctrinal terms, a reserve cannot be allocated any other tasks. Practically, it may well be your Quick Reaction Force (QRF). However, once you have deployed the QRF, you need to stand up another reserve. In purely defensive terms, when there is a danger of being overrun, the reserve will be all you have left and you must keep it ready to be used when necessary.

  You should deploy your reserve to plug gaps in the defense. However, be wary of committing your reserve in defense unless it is absolutely necessary, because you may not be able to pull it back out again. Ideally, you could deploy your reserve in a ‘firefighting’ type role, plug the gap, and then send the personnel back into reserve. Be aware of feints and demonstrations by the enemy that may be designed to distract you and perhaps cause you to deploy all your forces to once side of your perimeter, before the main attack comes in from the other side.

  Administration: This is a key factor. While you are maintaining your defense you need to look after the welfare of the people, equipment and the site itself. Administration is what preppers usually concentrate on. This is your ‘beans, bullets and band-aids’. One thing about administration is that this is an area where those that are non-combatants can really pull their weight and make a difference.

  You must maintain a watch system which will be tied in to some form of QRF, depending on the resources and numbers available to you. Your watch system can be augmented by other early warning sensors such as dogs and mechanical or electronic systems. However, day to day you will need to
keep the machine running. Tasks will have to be completed, such as food will be prepared, clothes washed, latrines emptied, water collected.

  Depending on the extent of your preparations and the resources within your property, this will have a knock-on effect to your ability to remain covert and the requirement to send out foraging patrols. Directly tied to your storage preparations will be the time you are able to hunker down in concealment before you have to go out and replenish supplies. People will also start to get cabin fever, particularly kids, and you will need to consider how to entertain them. It may be that they can be allowed into an outside area under guard for periods of time; you will have to consider the situation and the factors of noise and visibility.

  We should be realistic about our modern day habits and it would be really useful to have some way to recharge batteries or provide a limited amount of power so that both kids and adults can have the opportunity to watch limited amounts of movies, possibly on portable devices, as well as reading, playing and playing board games. If you bugged out to a hidden location and are camping, you will be able to either use an in car DVD system or recharge portable devices, whether audio or DVD, from your vehicles 12 volt system.

  If you are hunkered down in a cabin, apartment or basement, then it would be ideal to be able to get some exercise. You don’t want to overdo it, because calories will be critical, and you don’t want to cause too much sweat or smell inside the limited environment. But something that allows quiet exercise such as a stationary bike or water-type rower will allow you to keep the blood circulating. Even doing yoga, calisthenics or stretching will help, along with push-ups and pull-ups. If you are really savvy you could tie this in with some form of electricity generation. A stationary bike would be ideal for this. It would also be ideal to have some sort of camping laundry detergent, of the type that will wash in cold water, so that you can do some laundry in a bucket.

  If you have a wood burning stove (be wary of the smell of smoke) then you will be able to boil water for purification, heat food and water, and also heat water to add to a solar shower so you can wash. If water is very limited, then you should at least have baby wipes to clean up with: ‘hit the hot spots’! Foot hygiene should also be carefully looked at, utilizing foot powder and changes of socks; when back at the base in administration mode something like a TEVA type sandal will allow your feet to breathe and dry out but also allow you to react to an emergency.

  Females also need to consider feminine hygiene product availability, cleaning of such items if they are recyclable, or disposal. Keep some basic medications to hand separate from your trauma kit for primary care: for example any medications people are taking (when you run out, that’s a reason for a forage patrol); anti-histamines for allergies as well as Epipens for anyone with anaphylactic shock allergies to bites and stings, athletes foot cream/powder, pink-eye medication, antibiotic cream and oral pills, band-aids, anti-inflammatories (Motrin), and Tylenol, both adult and kids.

  When you are hunkered down in your hide location to wait out the initial crisis, think of yourself as the crew of a ship out in the ocean; you need to have a watch rotation, someone on ‘mother watch’ taking care of the cooking, a work detail for anything that needs to get done (trash, laundry, water purification or fetching etc.) while other crew will have down-time for sleeping and relaxing. The more self-sufficient you can be, with stores and supplies, the more you can limit outside forays or contact until you are literally operating like a ship alone in the ocean. Be on watch for boarding pirates!

  Back in the cold war, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRPs) were trained to dig a bunker ahead of the approaching Soviet shock armies and wait it out inside this hidden underground hole for fourteen days prior to emerging and conducting operations behind enemy lines. If they can do this in a hole, you can do it in your basement with all the luxuries afforded to you. Depending on the size of your location and the numbers you have (make sure you don’t pack it too tight or with not enough resources for the numbers of people you have there), you may have to consider being able to have separate locations within your hide for sleeping, entertainment, eating, washing, cooking etc.

  You will want to be able to separate people so they can get a little bit of a break if they get at each other’s throats as a result of the stress of the event and the tight living conditions. This is also why the ability to exercise or work at chores is good. Go out and split wood if you need to take out frustrations!

  You may have a house with a basement and you will perhaps establish a watch position in an upper window. You may have boarded up and/or blacked out the ground floor windows and you may therefore use the kitchen and some ground floor locations as your work and administrative areas, with the back door acting as access to the outside and for chores such as latrine and trash dumping etc.

  If you have a basement this can be where some of the noisier activities take place, such as kids playing and watching movies. It is also your sleeping area and the ‘stand to’ emergency rendezvous for your non-combatants if you are attacked. If you have a generator then think about location, noise and how to soundproof it, as well as times to run it. You won’t be able to sound proof it effectively on a still quiet night.

  Regarding your ‘non-combatants’ or protected personnel; what you do with them depends on who they are. The younger kids will need to be protected in the safest location you have. Others will be useful to do tasks such as re-load magazines, distribute water and even act as firefighting crews. Note that you need to have fire-extinguishers and buckets of water and /or sand available at hand during a defense to put out any fires. You may have, for example, a Vietnam era relative who may not be able to run about but may do very well in a fire position with a rifle as a designated marksman, or alternatively to protect the kids.

  The more tasks you give people during a crisis, the more the activity will take their minds off the stress of the situation and the team will be strengthened. Ammunition replenishment, water distribution, casualty collection point, first aid, watching the rear and looking after the younger kids are all examples of tasks that can be allocated to make people a useful part of the team when personnel resources are tight.

  Static (Key Point) Defense

  Static or Point defense refers to a situation where you are defending a key point and your defenses are situated around that key point in static fighting positions. An example would be defending your vital ground, which may well be your property or retreat location. Remember that if you decided to go for concealment, you may therefore not have occupied actual vital ground or key terrain in your vicinity, such as being down in a dip with a hill or elevated ground overlooking you. In that situation, the hill becomes key terrain (even the vital ground) and you will need to make a plan for a static defense of it, perhaps by establishing an OP/fighting positions(s) on top of it.

  Elevation does provide a marked advantage to a defender, it will make the enemy attack uphill towards you and you will have the advantages of ‘plunging fire’ down onto them (refer to the definitions of forward and reverse slopes) but you should be careful how you occupy it. If you are in open trenches or behind linear cover then you should consider how your heads are sky-lined from the perspective of the attacker. Consider moving forward off the crest so that you have the ground behind you as a backdrop. Alternatively, if you are in bunkers with overhead cover and a backdrop, you will have to worry about sky-lining your head less.

  If you are in a house window, you need to be back from the window, never protruding your weapons outside. You should cover the window with some form of tattered curtain or burlap stripping so that you can see and fire out but it darkens and obscures the visibility into the room. Remember that you need hard cover and a bedroom wall will not provide this, so build some sort of protected fire position inside the room back from the window.

  Mobile (Area) Defense

  Mobile or Area defense refers to a situation where you are defending an area. To defend this area yo
u cannot simply have a huge amount of static positions because you will not have the resources, hence ‘he who defends everywhere defends nowhere’. The idea of an area defense is to establish a limited amount of static defensive positions around your vital ground and then utilize mobile resources.

  This requires sensors, such as OPs, which can detect a threat and activate a decision response. Such OPs will be sited to cover the approaches to your position and will overlook NAIs (named areas of interest). These NAIs will be decision points for approaching enemy forces and also decision points for your mobile defense forces.

  Once the OPs report back that the enemy is approaching via a certain decision point the mobile force will be activated to a TAI (target area of interest) and will establish a blocking position. This blocking position would usually take the form of some sort of ambush, locations which will have been scouted and prepared in advance so that they can be rapidly occupied and await the approach of the enemy.

  Key to this form of defense is coverage of possible enemy approaches by well sited and concealed OPs equipped with surveillance and communication equipment, as well as the necessary stand-off distances to allow deployment of your mobile forces to cover the activated TAI.

  You consider doing this sort of defense in a situation where, let us conjecture, you have moved to a bug out location as a survivor group to a large forested area. You have established a hidden and defended base camp where you have safely stowed your protected personnel and stores. You establish an area of influence around this concealed base with GDA patrols combined with static OPs covering the likely enemy approaches in to your area, which would be any roads or trails and the related road/trail junctions and decision points. You may have an ideally vehicle, maybe ATV or horse, or worst case foot mounted defense force either situated at the base camp or more likely at a strategic rally point (patrol base) which is best to act as a jumping off point for deployment to the TAIs. When an enemy approach is detected, the force deploys to a pre-designated and prepared ambush/blocking position to engage the enemy.