Contact!

by Max Velocity

  Static/Mobile Combinations

  In this case you will combine your defensive tactics to create a ‘hammer and anvil’ approach. The anvil will be your static point defense location. The hammer will be a mobile element that may be your QRF. This mobile element will deploy to offensively engage the enemy preferably in the flank or rear while they are engaged with the static defensive location.

  The idea is to maintain an offensive spirit, regain the initiative and exploit tactical surprise to unbalance the enemy and cause them to flee or break off the attack. If you are interested in causing casualties, historically a fleeing enemy is most vulnerable and if you engage in a pursuit you will be able to cause considerable damage.

  Defensive Operations in Built Up Areas (OBUA)

  Some of the techniques for defensive fire positions in buildings have already been covered. Remember that modern housing is relatively flimsily built and will not stand up to a lot of damage, or act as hard cover for high velocity rounds. If you are defending a retreat in an urban environment then you will need to consider establishing a stand-off area, which is an area of influence that you will control with GDA patrols and outlying defensive positions. You will decide on where your strongpoints are going to be and defend them accordingly.

  In an urban environment any street and open spaces will become fields of fire and killing areas for weapon systems. If you are defending your strongpoint then you will site your firing positions and weapons to cover the approaches and open spaces around that strongpoint. To establish an outlying area of influence you will push out OPs to surrounding streets to give you early warning of the approach of the enemy. You can create a mobile area defense effect by doing this, with positions set up for urban ambushes.

  When defending an area around a strongpoint, don’t consider moving in the streets. You should consider alternative areas to move along and create covered routes. Such covered routes could include backyards, sewers and through houses. Such routes are known as ‘ratlines’ and will allow you to engage the enemy at an outlying position and fall back without being caught in the open. You can establish roadblocks and obstacles, both outside on the streets and also in areas inside that you will fall back through, in order to slow the enemy and provide greater opportunities to catch them in your killing areas.

  If you are moving back through houses and backyards you can create ratlines by making holes in walls so you can move through the houses. You can create covert fire positions at various locations, ideally so that two groups can move back through a series of ratlines while covering the move of the other group and slowing the enemy down.

  If you use automatic weapons and snipers to make the streets deathtraps, then you will force the enemy to move into the cover of the buildings. If they have armored vehicles then your obstacles will need to be sown with IEDS and ideally you will have anti-armor weapons to use to conduct urban anti-armor ambushes. If they have armored vehicles then you can only slow them down with obstacles and it will be hard to prevent them from making ‘thunder runs’ down the main avenues of approach to your strongpoints, and then demolishing them. If you have to fight Main Battle Tanks and APCs, then you have to have the right weapons, otherwise you will be outmatched and your defended locations turned to rubble around you.

  For attacking forces, the doctrinal plan usually follows along the lines of ‘investing’ or surrounding the urban center, making thrusts or thunder runs down avenues of approach to take key strongpoints, followed by a detailed clearance. An alternative approach, perhaps when they don’t have the armored ability to do thunder runs, is to fight systematically through the houses to clear areas and move into position to assault enemy strongpoints.

  For any kind of vehicle mounted gang or post-event raiding party they will likely attempt mobile thrusts into urban areas with the aim of overwhelming any poorly prepared defenders; with correctly sited fields of fire and obstacles you will rapidly bring such a move to a halt and force them into the cover of the buildings. The buildings themselves will also be obstacles: you will know where your ratlines are and they will not be obvious to follow.

  If the enemy tries to move conventionally through the buildings to approach the strongpoint or follow you, they will be met by fire from sequentially falling back firing points, obstacles and booby traps. Booby traps and obstacles can be high tech such as trip wires and IEDs, or they can be low tech: think nailing doors shut, filling rooms with furniture or barbed wire, smashing out floors or stairwells, putting down nailed boards or nailing boards to the stairs and oiling them. Think ‘Home Alone’ without the comedy factor!

  When it comes to your strongpoint, this is your main defended location where all forces will fall back to once the enemy has been slowed and thinned out on the approach. This is the Alamo, but again hopefully you will not have to fight to the death here and you will leave some escape routes, even if it is into the sewers. The strongpoint will be equipped for a siege and will have built up ballistically hardened fire positions. You can even put positions in an attic and remove some tiles or roofing material to make an OP and sniper hide.

  Make sure you remove as much flammable material as possible and have firefighting equipment to hand, as well as pre-prepared ammunition/magazine dumps at strategic locations. Make sure that all the ground floor windows and doors are inaccessible. You should create alternate ratline routes even within this building by knocking out holes in walls and using ladders through holes in the floor instead of the stairwell. Ladders can be pulled up out of the way of enemy on ground floors.

  Create grenade chutes out of gutter piping material so that you can drop grenades, explosives (IEDs) or Molotov cocktails down onto enemy below as they try and fight their way up to you (make sure you don’t burn yourself out). Make sure that fire positions are hardened from fire coming from the floors below!

  Fire positions should be protected all round so that even if the enemy gets into the room with you, you can still fight from the bunker. You can also create grenade ‘coffins’ which are coffin shaped sandbagged bunkers in the corner of the room to allow you to take cover if a grenade is tossed in. When it goes off, the enemy will rush the room and you have the option of tossing your own grenade out or popping up and engaging with small arms or both (you can sit up like Dracula from his coffin if you have a sense of humor).

  You should make the usual routes in the house impassable by creating obstacles such as filling rooms with furniture or wire, taking out the stairs or completely blocking them up or nailing oiled boards to them. Make sure that the enemy cannot get in by the ground floor but also (see OBUA offensive operations later) if they attempt to get in at a higher floor and fight down, make it so they cannot easily access upper floor windows. Place obstacles over the windows such as netting, wire mesh or nail boards across that will prevent entry but allow you to fire out.

  Give some thought to the types of weapons that you will utilize inside the building. You will need your long rifles and machine-guns to fire out of the building and engage enemy outside in your fields of fire, but inside a building long barrel length becomes unwieldy. You may not be able to have additional sub-machinegun type weapons available but you can at least have your backup handgun readily available.

  Also consider getting really ‘medieval’ and having weapons like hatchets available for when it gets really up close and personal and they get into the room with you, particularly if your magazine is emptied and you have no time to reload.

  You may also want to consider leaving an entry point less well guarded so that the enemy will use it and create a killing room inside that they cannot easily get out of, perhaps even booby trapped. Make sure that any booby traps that you use inside the building with you are not able to take you or the building out when they are initiated!

  If you create a defense like this, it will take an extremely motivated enemy to follow through with an assault and take it off you. They may try and stand off and use either fire as a weapon or larger caliber we
apons like tank guns or artillery in a direct fire role, or even anti-armor weapons; but if you are against that type of enemy, which would only really happen if you decided to mount an insurgency campaign against a foreign army that has invaded post-event, then at that point you are outmatched and will have to withdraw to fight again another day.

  You can make your strongpoint harder to set on fire, even dousing it in water beforehand if you have enough available, but eventually a building will set on fire unless it is made of concrete, at which point you have to get out. Such a defensive location is also not suitable as a colocation for your retreat and cannot house protected personnel i.e. in the basement. However, you should know these techniques because it is a sliding scale of tactics that are available to you and depending on the threat and what you are trying to achieve, there will be elements that you may be able to utilize.

  Urban Anti-Armor Ambush

  The aim of the anti-armor ambush is to destroy some or at minimum one advancing enemy armored vehicle and escape, not take on the whole enemy column, thus slowing them down and causing harassment and attrition.

  The urban anti-armor (anti-tank) ambush is a specialist drill technique designed for an urban environment. Such an environment has, by design, streets, buildings, side streets and alleyways. These side streets or alleyways create natural defilade. They also create multiple decision points for the approaching enemy armor.

  The elements of an urban anti-armor ambush are the early warning, kill team, and cover group. The way that it works is that the early warning team, which is possibly a buddy pair, will wait in an observation position where they can see which route the enemy armored vehicles will take. Obstacles could be used to help direct the enemy’s course of action better. The early warning team relays the message to the kill and cover teams, either by running or by radio, whichever works.

  The kill and cover teams will move into position. The kill team will occupy an alleyway or side street off the main street down which the enemy will come. The cover team will be further in depth, in a position to observe the ambush site, which probably means they are in a building further down the street from the ambush site.

  The kill team will at minimum consist of the leader and two firers. The firers need to be armed with a weapon that is effective against armor, such as an RPG, AT-4 or LAW rocket system. (Alternatively they could have an off-route mine (Explosively Formed Penetrator) and be ready to set it off, which is a different ambush technique).

  There must be two firers, side by side, in case of misfire or miss, and they will both fire at the same, usually lead, armored vehicle. When the enemy vehicle is passing the alleyway mouth, and its weaker side armor is in view, the leader will order the ambush sprung and the firers will both simultaneously fire their weapons at the tank and then the group will turn and run out of their as fast as possible, headed for a rally point past the cover group, meeting up or running with the early warning team.

  The cover group will immediately open fire to cover their withdrawal. It may be that the cover group does not have anti-armor weapons but this is

  Figure 23 - Urban Anti-Armor Ambush

  not a problem, they are aiming to suppress and distract any infantry accompanying the armored column, allowing the ambush team to escape. Hopefully the destroyed vehicle will partially block the street and hinder follow up.

  The cover group will then withdraw rapidly and all groups will meet up at the rally point, before moving rapidly off to their next fallback position as the attempt to hinder and attrite the advancing enemy armored column. It is also possible that in a larger city or AO, they could have vehicles cached and ready to extract in to another location.

  Entry Control Points

  If you have a defended location on any sort of property with standoff, such as a farm, compound, small built up area or town, then you will want to establish Entry Control Points (ECPs). This is a slightly more thought out version of the ‘roadblocks’ or ‘barricades’ that you may envisage blocking routes in to towns post-event.

  An ECP is designed to allow the control of traffic into and out of the location. It is not simply a block, although it needs to be able to be closed when it is necessary to seal up the location, perhaps when facing an attack or incoming horde of refugees. You can establish an ECP at your remote farm property, or at the entrances to the town you are defending. Note that if you have an ECP, then you will want an alternate egress route, not only to allow your patrols to vary their routine, but also to provide an avenue for a counter attack if the main entrance is under attack, and also to allow a break out and withdrawal as necessary. Think the ‘sally port’ on an old castle.

  An ECP needs to be able to slow down and stop approaching vehicles, provide standoff, and also cater to pedestrians. Also consider the need to be able to conduct ‘public order’ operations at your ECP should you have a situation with an unarmed but starving and desperate mob, something that may not necessarily immediately escalate to the use of lethal force. You may want to consider Tasers, riot guns and CS gas if you can get it. If you are defending a town, one would hope that the local police department would be equipped and willing to help out, and if they were gone, perhaps you could get hold of their equipment.

  The components of an ECP will be:

   Standoff

   Warning signs

   A ‘chicane’ (S-Bend) to slow down approaching vehicles.

   Ability to stop vehicles and/or close the ECP

   A sentry to check the vehicles for ID, recognition etc.

   A close cover person/searcher

   A cover fighting position or bunker

   A search bay

   Reserve or QRF

   Somewhere to turn around for those denied entry.

   Access to flanks denied

  The warning signs will let approaching vehicles know to slow down and that lethal force will be used if they do not. There will be a physical ‘S’ type chicane built into the road that they will have to negotiate. They will slow down and approach the sentry, who will be in the road or at a guard shack. There may be a vehicle across the road, a raising barrier, or perhaps caltrops pulled across the road, to deny entry if the vehicle keeps going. If there is trouble the sentry is backed up by the searcher, and if there is bigger trouble the fighting position will be covering the ECP and if necessary the QRF can be called.

  It is important that the areas around to the sides of the ECP do not allow vehicle access. For example, if you had a ranch property, then you could situate the ECP perhaps 75-100 yards back from the entrance to the property. This would create standoff and also perhaps some concealment for the ECP from the road.

  You would build up the ECP but to the sides you need to create obstacles such as berms, felled trees, or wire strung between trees or pickets to prevent vehicles and personnel simply avoiding the ECP. If you don’t have the resources you need to put the ECP up close to your gate with no standoff, and this will help for the vehicles but without an effective perimeter obstacle, such as a good fence, you will be relying on observation of your perimeter alone to stop ingress from dismounted persons.

  An ECP needs to be run like any other rotating position, such as an OP, in order to allow rest. Below is a simple schematic showing a possible ECP setup:

  Figure 24 - ECP Schematic

  Traffic Control Points (TCPs)

  Traffic Control Points (TCPs) are most likely to be conducted by you as part of Ground Domination Activity Patrols, or Satellite Patrolling, around your secure base as a form of clearance and extension of your sphere of influence into the surrounding area. There are multiple ways of conducting these but for our purposes here we will concentrate on a couple of methods that can be used for temporary TCPs when patrolling.

  It’s important to note that if you go out and establish a TCP then in fact it is an Illegal TCP (ITCP) unless it has some form of legitimacy established by the situation and the fact that you are establishing some form of
law and order. To gain any form of legitimacy you have to be representing some form of defense force that has taken responsibility for an area and you must keep it lawful. You can’t profit or loot from a TCP!

  So, really you are establishing temporary TCPs on routes and maintaining them to check passing traffic. If they are good guys, then they go on their way, if they are bad guys then you can take appropriate action. The need for TCPs does assume that there is still sufficient traffic on the roads and routes: another use for TCPs is to establish a checkpoint inside or on the outskirts of a town or area, similar to an ECP but perhaps simply just a two way checkpoint where IDs and business can be checked, which may have the effect of reducing crime and looting.

  When establishing a TCP, you need to consider security, the ability to stop vehicles, and cut offs. A TCP is a little like an ambush, in that vehicles will come into your area and if they do any ‘bad stuff’ then you have cut off groups to prevent escape. You also need to site your TCP well: it is no good if incoming traffic can see it a long way off and evade you. You likely want to have some kind of concealment and perhaps site it around a bend in the road, preferably so that the approaching vehicle is past your cut off groups before they see the TCP and can evade it.

  You can use vehicles to physically block the road for a TCP but if you are trying to maintain a flow of traffic this may not be ideal. You can use your vehicles to establish a temporary chicane in the road and a good method for stopping any escaping traffic is to use caltrops. Caltrops are some form of chain or maybe rope with spikes on, which can be pulled across the road so that it punctures the tires of an escaping vehicle. Cut off groups can have caltrops at each side of the TCP, on the opposite side of the road from them with a piece of paracord across the road; they can then pull the caltrops across on command.