Contact!

by Max Velocity

  The purpose of an ambush is to kill and as such it is ok to clear the ambush with fire as they search through, to ensure that no enemy are shamming. They will take any information or equipment of value from the enemy and continue to move until they get even with the opposite cut-off group, who may have to let them know by voice or signal when they have reached their limit of exploitation, at which point they will move back in through the cut-off and return to their positions.

  If the ambush is not sprung, then at a certain point, maybe a certain time depending on the orders or mission, the ambush will collapse and move back to the ORP and then home. For an ambush that is not sprung the order should be to collapse the killing group then the cut-off groups to allow flank security to remain in place for as long as possible. Leave no sign of your ambush.

  For an ambush that is sprung, once the searchers are back in the commander will give the signal to “WITHDRAW!” and the cut-offs will collapse back in to the killing group and then back to the ORP followed by the killing group peeling out in pre-designated order. It is useful on a dark night for the rear protection at the ORP to do something like shine a small red penlight so that the ambush team can see it and home in on it as they rapidly move back to the ORP.

  An ambush is like robbing a bank – once it has gone down you have to get out of there as quick as possible and clear the area to avoid enemy follow up or indirect fire. The ambush group will move back to the ORP as per the pre-designated plan as rapidly as possible and once there a head count will be taken.

  The patrol will then form up and move out at a rapid pace to the next RV. Once they get sufficiently clear, the pace will slow down to a patrol pace. If it is felt there is a need, booby traps and possibly a hasty ambush will be placed on the extraction route by a rear guard group.

  From the previous description it should be apparent that in planning an ambush patrol it is very important to be detailed in the orders. Rehearsals are very much key and every person has a specific place and role. Rehearsals need to be thorough and detailed and of the noisy and silent type so that there can be no doubt as to every person’s place at the various phases. To a certain extent it may seem to be simple for the rifleman because he just has to be in the right order of march and be placed down in his position, but it needs to be drilled in by training and rehearsal. There is no place on an ambush patrol for a cluster or for raised voices trying to fix a situation.

  Fighting in Woods and Forests (FIWAF)

  Fighting in woods and forests (FIWAF) will modify some of the offensive drills that have already been covered. Depending on the type of woods, it may be that your drills can remain pretty much the same, so long as they are not too thick and there are plenty of clearings. But in dense forests or woodland, including jungle, you will have to amend some of your techniques to take amount of the thick cover and concealment.

  FIWAF is a casualty intensive activity if you are up against a determined enemy. There is a lot of concealment provided by the trees and vegetation and a lot of cover provided by the tree trunks. There is also the additional dimension of the trees and the ability for snipers to get up them and engage from up in the canopy.

  If you are fighting from outside of the forest into it then you will conduct a conventional ‘break-in battle’ by establishing a fire support position to engage enemy in the tree-line and then assault onto the objective in the trees. The issue when in the trees is the limited visibility which impacts on the ability to conduct flank attacks. It is not the ability to go to the flank that is affected, but rather the ability for the fire support and assault teams to see each other which then increases the risk of fratricide in the trees. This may not be an issue depending, as previously stated, on the thickness of the vegetation and the amount of clearings. However, in extensive and thick forest you will likely have to revert to a more old school method.

  If you are a platoon advancing through the trees then you are more likely to have to go with two squads up in an extended skirmish line. You will use your third squad as flank protection, with a team on each flank. Think bush warfare in Africa, where you will be advancing in a skirmish line and engaging the enemy as you come across them and fighting through their positions.

  This is similar for a camp attack in the woods. If it is in a nice clearing then you may be able to do a 90 degree attack and also use the wood line to get close, but if it is in the trees then you may well find yourself advancing on it in skirmish line. This reduces the effectiveness of your support weapons.

  FIWAF is pretty much the same as the jungle. The difference in the jungle in a nutshell is the conditions of humidity and wildlife and the fact that you have to make different sleeping arrangements by getting off the ground. This will become relevant in some areas of the States such as the swamps in the south and if you are operating in these areas you are going to have to become comfortable with jungle warfare; you will want to get hold of some hammocks and learn how to construct an A-frame to make yourself comfortable.

  It is also traditionally true that you should not move at night in the jungle, due to the difficulty of movement; however, there are many areas where it is not true jungle and you can move about if necessary – you will have to assess your environment and the possibilities in your area.

  Roads, trails, clearings and firebreaks in a woodland environment become almost like the streets in an OBUA environment and they will become areas for ambush, killing areas and fields of fire. Vehicles will be limited to moving on trails and firebreaks and therefore this is a great opportunity to ambush them. Be aware in offense and defense that trees can be felled to block routes; this can be done in advance or explosively as part of the ambush. It is easy to bog vehicles down in a FIWAF environment and as such conducting an area defense in a forest environment gives many advantages to the defender, to include the concealment afforded by the wooded terrain and canopy.

  The Max Velocity Training site is located in the woods and hills of West Virginia. This is ideal because it allows training to be conducted that is similar to where many will have to fight on the eastern seaboard of the United States. These deciduous woods are not so thick that tactics have to be modified entirely to the extended skirmish line ‘bush/jungle fighting’ technique – the availability of good terrain features, providing covered approaches, and the concealment provided by the vegetation allow for the conduct of flanking attacks without being so thick that that visibility is entirely lost. However, the woods do have the effect of reducing the ranges of effective engagements, and in reality a lot of your small unit engagements will take place at ranges on average between twenty five to fifty meters, probably not more than one hundred meters, unless you are somewhere bordering on a cleared area.

  What this means in effect is that the woods are ideal for the tactical deployment of competent, trained, tactical small units. Many of the advantages of larger units can be negated and the mixture of terrain and vegetation cover allows the prosecution of excellent classic light infantry (or unconventional warfare) tactics, such as raid, ambush and patrol.

  What you need to bear in mind is that the tree cover does provide greater concealment, not only from ground observation but also from aerial thermal observation. This will be better in the summer months when the canopy is fully leafed out. If you combine this with the, often steep, terrain features then there is great potential for terrain masking and the use of covered/concealed approaches and exfiltration routes.

  Understand that although tree trunks do provide concealment, they actually have to be quite large and mature in order to provide cover from rifle fire. Any of the smaller trees, at least up to a foot wide, will let a 5.56 M855 green tip type round pass right through. So don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by the trees. It’s better than nothing, they provide concealment, but only the larger trees will stop bullets.

  The other thing about tree cover is that if you come under indirect fire from mortars or artillery, unless the rounds are set on delay they will ofte
n detonate in the tree canopy (point detonation). This causes an airburst effect and will also send wood splinters flying around. If you are digging into a defensive position in woods, and face an indirect fire threat, you really need overhead cover on your foxholes. The great thing is that this is relatively easy in woods – when digging your foxhole, build up the sides (with dirt or logs) so you can lay logs on top as overhead protection (allowing a space for you to observe/fire out below the log roof) and then cover those roof logs with the dirt (in sandbags is best) that you dug out of the foxhole. You need at least twelve inches of overhead dirt cover to provide adequate protection.

  Figure 47 - FIWAF Platoon Formation

  Offensive Operations in Built Up Areas (OBUA)

  If we move our operations into urban areas, then we do not forget all the principles that we learned so far, but they have to be adapted to the specific challenges found in an urban environment. The simple presence of buildings does not create an urban environment, but the OBUA techniques can be applied to single or small groups of buildings, even if you are operating otherwise in mainly rural or wooded terrain. However, some types of structure do not really qualify as a building and therefore these techniques would not really be applicable; such as lean-to or small sheds or something similar.

  What is very important to remember throughout any OBUA is the type of structure that you are working with. Most OBUA techniques work best in strong structures where there is some protection provided by the structure of the building, but in many types of building there is no real hard cover available. This is because the structure of the building will not stop ballistic threats. Many houses in the US are made from wooden studs and plasterboard and will not stop bullets. Be aware of this, which comes back to the previous point about some structures not really requiring OBUA techniques simply because they can be ‘shot to pieces’ and cleared as an afterthought.

  TV and Movies also have a lot to answer for in our conceptions of urban warfare. It is also true that the nature of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade has taken us away from true OBUA (which the U.S. Military calls MOUT, Military Operations in Urban Terrain). This is because a lot of the operations in urban and village areas are more about arrest, search and capture. This, along with the assimilation of techniques from police/SWAT type entities has led to the current teaching for MOUT.

  In simple terms the current techniques are broadly ‘SWAT’ (hostage rescue) style techniques which concentrate on breaching through doors and flooding a building to overwhelm the occupants, capture and search. This is what is behind the ‘stacking’ technique where a team will set up outside the door of a property, breach the door and rapidly pile into the building. This is dangerous in an OBUA environment because stacking outside a door puts you all together, not dispersed, and vulnerable to fire, which is good for a stealth raid but not if you are in a fight. The door is not an ideal entry point into a defended building; it is a ‘fatal funnel’. Also, you are rapidly putting four men through a door into the unknown and if it blows, then you lose four.

  It is also true that a lot of what is termed here as “SWAT’ techniques has filtered down from Tier 1 Special Operations Forces CQB (Close Quarter Battle) raid techniques as part of arrest or capture missions over the last ten years or so. Such forces practice ‘ad infinitum’ for such techniques, usually surprise raids onto compounds, structures or buildings containing the target personnel. Such CQB has become a specialized industry and techniques have been refined specific to these tasks. That’s high speed stuff and requires intensive training, equipment and support.

  Although the police ‘SWAT’ techniques alluded to look similar to the military dynamic entry stuff, it is also true that the police CQB techniques are more suitable for use to breach, enter and subdue occupants for arrest. If there is a real threat of armed resistance in a building, SWAT does not usually go in. They wait it out and negotiate.

  The actual US Army drills for MOUT are closer to what is covered here, which diverge a little from the CQB techniques you may be familiar with from the media. In a non-permissive kinetic urban fight, you have to approach, breach and clear buildings with slightly different techniques. This does not mean that SWAT style hostage rescue type drills do not have use if you have to enter rooms, just be aware of the dangers.

  It may be appropriate, in particular with large rooms, to put four men in through a breach. You should also consider using two man assault teams. Depending on what you are doing, a useful technique for a four man team is to have two men breach into a reasonably sized room, followed rapidly by the team leader to assess the room, with the fourth man in the corridor covering down it and also acting as a link man to the rest of the force.

  So, although these urban CQB techniques are effective, and are very effective as SWAT methods, they are not ideal for full offensive operations and will be amended here. Another issue is the portrayal of SWAT and military teams moving in the ‘half crouch’ technique with their weapon sights jammed into their eye sockets, moving the weapons around in an exaggerated manner with every movement of their heads. There is a certain amount of sarcasm here but it has become such a common portrayal that it has become almost taken as the right way to do things.

  It is true that you should have your weapons up in a ready position, and that your weapons should move with you and in the direction that you look, but that whole half crouch and weapon in the eye socket thing is not ideal. Just don’t overdo it. It is better to be moving comfortably, in a position where you can engage and if necessary walk towards the enemy as you do so, but realistically it is better to stop and engage rather than try and walk onto them while doing so. This does not preclude the use of the ‘toe heel’ style walk that you may use to steady your weapons as you advance down a corridor, for example.

  Also, have the weapon at the ready but be alert, both eyes open and looking over the top of the sights (exceptions include use of ACOG type optics techniques with both eyes open). At close range you will engage instinctively by pointing the weapon anyway, and the TV portrayal creates far too much tunnel vision.

  One of the mistakes you see with SWAT style entries is a whole crowd, or stack, outside focusing only one the building they are about to raid. That is because their focus is entirely on the person(s) they are intending to arrest inside the building; specifically and only on that threat. In a high intensity urban fight the threat is all-dimensional and you must place your support elements down to cover your moving elements with fire support. You must choose your routes and approaches to buildings with care and try to remain inside buildings rather than in the open street. Even when sending an assault element to stack up at a breach and make entry, as they move towards the breach they should disperse, coming back to a tighter formation when they actually stack on the entry point.

  In terms of entry, any entry point that you use such as a door or window becomes a ‘fatal funnel’ where you will be silhouetted as you move through it. If you do go through a door, move out of the way as rapidly as possible. The following are good principles to abide by for making entry into buildings:

   Enter the building as high as possible. It is better to fight down than up: To get to a higher entry point, consider how you will do it. You can move over neighboring roofs, use ladders, use parked vehicles or bring in your own vehicle and climb off the roof, using a ladder/vehicle combination if necessary. Assault ladders should be carried in an OBUA environment, and can be used even for simple stuff like getting over walls or fences.

   Create alternative breaches; avoid use of doors and windows if possible: you can breach walls utilizing mechanical methods such as sledgehammers, breaching tools and even vehicles. You can also use mouse-hole charges, which is a cross shaped wooden device with arms about a yard long each with explosives taped to the end. This is laid against a wall and blows a hole in the wall, also shocking and killing those inside the room. If you want to use an anti-tank rocket type weapon, think carefully: an RPG, AT4
or LAW type weapon will create devastation inside the room but will only make a small hole in the wall, unless it is very flimsily constructed, because it is designed as an anti-armor weapon. You will probably not be able to gain access through the hole created with such a weapon. A SMAW-D bunker buster would be more appropriate. You should also consider making alternative routes through the interior of the building by breaching and mouse-holing the wall rather than going where the enemy expects you to go.

   Clear the whole floor you enter on, before moving to other floors: This will aid command and control and also ensure you do not leave enemy behind you. Preferably you will be clearing whole upper floors and moving down, but if you did not get in at the upper floors you will clear your whole entry floor and then pick the next floor to make entry to.

   Use explosive or stun devices to grab the initiative before entering: This will depend on what you have and if you expect there to be any friendlies or neutral civilians in the building. If you have it, grenade a room before entering: be aware of the construction of the wall before taking cover behind the wall.

   A note on top versus bottom entry to buildings: you tend to be more committed with a top entry, and it may be harder to pull your people out, particularly casualties, if you are overmatched and have to withdraw from the building. A bottom level entry is more circumspect, but allows the enemy the advantage of being upstairs. It is easier to fight down than up, and things like grenades can be easily rolled down stairwells or even though ‘grenade chute’ pipes or holes in floors.

  Squad Level OBUA

  Let’s now look at an example of how an eight man squad could conduct an attack onto a building. As previously discussed, your techniques, numbers and methods can be altered as per the circumstances. We will assume a two level building, ground floor and an upstairs. For OBUA purposes our eight man squad will break down again into four two man teams as follows: