Rules for Radio coms

a well equipped radio shack

Communications are some of the most difficult task of the light fighter, but they do not have to be complicated, here are twelve rules to help in with radio coms.

1. There are other ways to communicate besides radios, field phones, string, flags, vis panels, semaphore, runners, whistles, horns, drums, pigeons, etc.

We too often become fixated on the radio, but make sure you have other simple means of communication. Some of the simplest methods and devices are the best, such as whistles and vis panels. A piece of paracord tied between two fighting positions can be tugged to alert the team. These light weight reliable tools should not just be brought as a backup to more high tech methods, they should be employed as primary means when appropriate.

2. Check the on- off switch

Stupid, yeah, but the most common problem with radio coms is people turning them off, failing to monitor them, or truing the volume too low.

3. Know your system: Make a trouble shooting list.

What are the trouble shooting steps for your radio? Antenna oriented correctly, connections snug, radio grounded, batteries in place, etc.? Make a list of these, and attach it to each radio issued to your team.

4. Encrypt your transmissions.

Use your SOI, and insist that your team use it too.  There is a time for plain speak, but it is the exception, not the norm.  Use plain speak at times when information is time sensitive and the situation is evolving quickly enough that the enemy is unlikely to benefit from any information they overhear.

5. Be smart about un-encrypted transmissions.

Once, in a fire fight, my team leader asked me over the net, “What is your location?” this was an active fire fight and the information was too time sensitive to encrypt.  I could have said, “In the ditch 50 meters south of the road”, but then anyone listening would know my exact location. Instead I told him , “I am 50 meters directly to your south”. This let him know him what he needed to know, but would be of little value to anyone listening in.

6. Assume unfriendly people are listening / monitor the enemy net.

This cuts both directions.  Even if you don’t crack their code, how much information can be gleaned from transmissions? Who has directional finding capabilities? Hint: Assume the other side does, unless you know otherwise.  Estimating from the number of call signs used you can determine the size and composition of enemy units.  If their chatter goes quiet, they may have pulled into the patrol base for the night, or be moving as a single unit, or massing for an attack.

7. Use on- the- fly authentication.

If you think the SOI may have been compromised, is there special knowledge you have on your teammates that could be used as on- the- fly authentication?  What river did we float last weekend?  What is my second son’s name?

If your enemy is from a different culture, these can be broader: What kind of tree did George Washington chop down?  What league are the Chicago White Socks in?

8. The best radio security is to keep the enemy busy.

If you put constant pressure on the enemy, they won’t have time to spend cracking your radio traffic.

9. Rotate SOI and frequency regularly, especially if compromised.

No explanation needed.

10. Keep transmitting, even if compromised.

The value of information that you are communicating to friendly units may outweigh the risk.  Even if the enemy hears your coms, he will have to react to them. Is his reaction gap short enough to cause you problems? You will have to judge that on a case by case basis.

11. Radio checks need to be a part of every Pre Combat Inspection.

Make sure everybody has an SOI and knows the frequency and the alternate frequency(s), has spare batteries, and check to see that radios will not shift in their pouches and hot mike.

12. Learn and use the standardized report forms. SALUTE and nine line reports exist for a reason.  First, they make sure you don’t forget to send important information; secondly, they make the report easier to understand.  Encrypted messages can be hard to understand (as in, “moving to north”). Is that you or the enemy? The forms help keep this information clear.

What are your thoughts, see a rule here you disagree with? Or one I left out? Please share in the comments.

Even when you have a radio, there is a place for the field phones. Photo by Brent Down

Winter Forge 2020

 I just returned from operation Winter Forge. This was a 24 hour long cold weather force on force patrolling operation. The event was hosted by S&S Training Solutions, Light Fighter Study Group participated as Op For.

 While I have done a lot of cold weather camping in primitive conditions, and a lot of force on force patrolling, I wanted the opportunity to put the two together. When I saw that Tyler Jackson’s Light Fighter Study Group was partnering in this, I jumped at the chance to participate. I’ll give a quick overview, and then follow with my key takeaways.

 We were issued MILES and Rifles at 0800 on Saturday, and immediately after, were vehicle- inserted to our basecamp in the far south of the area of operation. Our nine man patrol set to work establishing a listening post, setting up a two von- Reck shelters, and cutting fire wood. A five man arctic tent with a wood stove was already set up at the camp. These chores took till a little after noon, when we ate, and then sent out two three man patrols to scout the enemy defenses. By 1700, these patrols had made it back without being shot at, and were able to give us a detailed report. It appeared that the enemy had dug in an area defense on an east- to- west line in a saddle between two hills. We had good intelligence on the eastern end of the enemy line, but still knew little about their west end. After dark, we received a notional (notional is the cool guy military way of saying pretend) reinforcement to pull camp security, while we took the entire patrol to conduct a recon by fire. Each three- man fire team would patrol north on a parallel azimuth until we bumped into the enemy line. By drawing their fire, we hoped to get them to reveal their fighting positions. If things went well, we hoped that the distraction of a fire fight would allow our bravo team, who had scouted the eastern defenses earlier that day, to be able to probe deeper into their lines, and locate the enemy command post, which was our final objective.

 My fire team (Charley) had not yet been out of camp, and we would be patrolling over completely unfamiliar ground in the dark, but the recon provided by Bravo earlier that day was excellent, and although they guided us in, I think we could have made it on our own based on their detailed report. Bravo had marked the objective rally point with a cleverly shielded chem light, and from there, we had only to follow their azimuth to the enemy line.

 The enemy line proved to be well- situated, as we were forced to assault uphill across a broad area of short grass and sparse trees. Once the enemy opened up, they kept a regular barrage of parachute flares going that forced us to go to ground. We pressed our attack a bit harder than usual for a probing attack, in hopes that it would allow Bravo to infiltrate their lines. We were keeping up a steady fire all along the line, when the enemy surprised us by leaving their positions and assaulting down the hill into us. This sort of counterattack is inherently risky, and usually reserved for desperate times, when the defender is in danger of being overrun. The charge worked for them, pushing us off the hill, but they suffered almost as many casualties as they inflicted. We suffered four casualties in this attack, but each fire team had at least one member surviving to piece together a picture of the enemy defenses. The prospect was not good. Their line was well- situated on ground favorable to them, well tied in to notional minefields on each end. This would be a tough nut to crack. The old Napoleonic math says you need a three- to- one advantage to take a dug- in defensive position, and by that math, we would need 21 instant respawns for our nine man squad to take their ten man defense. We were to have only 8. Moreover, the enemy’s spirited defense had kept Bravo from accomplishing their infiltration, and there was still a lot we didn’t know about the depth of their lines. It was already midnight as we finalized our plans to take their position in the morning. Tyler decided to concentrate our attack on the east end of the line, simply because that was the side we knew the most about. Our morning attack would look much like the night one, only concentrated on the eastern end of the line. Alpha team was stripped down to just two men, who would provide left flank security, and prevent the enemy from swinging their west end down to flank us. Bravo would again attack the easternmost end of the line, and a reinforced Charley would support in the center. We would hit them at stand- to, perhaps the most predictable time to attack. Until then, we would have about five hours to sleep, which turned into four hours when you take account of fire watch duty.

 At this point I should probably mention the weather and terrain. The Friday before the exercise began, a thick layer of sleet and freezing rain had coated the ground making footing treacherous. Then the temps had dropped, never getting above the twenties and dropping into the single digits at night. If that weren’t enough, a 10-15 mile per hour wind blew steadily the entire time. We were in northern Missouri on a bluff some two hundred feet above the Missouri river. The ground was everywhere steep, and cut with gullies and draws. During the Civil War, this had been the stomping ground of Confederate guerrillas, and for good reason; there were plenty of places to hide a small army. The cold and terrain wore on everybody. No one wanted to eat or drink, movement was difficult, and we had to move slowly, and be careful to not sweat. When sitting static in overwatch, the cold and wind quickly sapped strength and attention.

 When we woke in the morning, I made my cup of coffee, and was ready to be off, but Jackson insisted that each of us eat some hot oatmeal he had made. I was glad he did; as much as we didn’t want to eat, we needed the energy. We made our movement by starlight, and were in place for the assault just as the eastern sky was turning grey. With alpha on the left and bravo on the right, Tyler gave the signal, and we began our push forward. Crouching low, we moved across the field. We reached the enemy wire, and stepped over. Still, they had not fired upon us. There was a crackle of gunfire as bravo took out the enemy listening post. Moving faster, we swept forward on their line, but there was still no resistance. We crested the hill, and found men boiling out of a GP medium tent, only to get shot down as we pushed forward. The OC declared everyone still in the tent dead as we reached the door, so we wheeled to the left, and searched the rest of their defensive line, finding no one. Amazingly, at stand- to, they had only one LPOP manned, and the entire rest of the patrol was in the tent, trying to stay warm.

 In the end, we took only three casualties in the attack that we had expected to be so difficult.

Key takeaways: In the cold you have to fight not only the enemy, but the weather; your operational tempo has to slow down, you spend more time just staying alive.

 You need more stuff in the cold: more cloths, more food, more shelter, pioneering tools to cut fire wood. Everything is more work, and requires more people to do the same job. Troop care is always important, but becomes doubly so in the cold. Warm food and beverages are a must. Most of our calories were still provided by cold rations, but occasional cups of broth and tea did a lot to keep us warm and hydrated. Also, having the heated tent allowed us to regularly pull guys in from the cold to warm up and rest. In the end, this is what won the fight for us. By the morning, the other team was so worn down by the cold and wind, that they simply did not have enough men to conduct stand- to. We may have not been exactly comfortable, but we still had 100% of our team ready to fight. As Cole, one of the event organizers out it, we didn’t win that battle, the weather did.

 Experience and environmental factors matter. Kyle, the other team leader, is an Iraq veteran, and excellent leader. His guys put up and excellent defense against us, but not against the weather. Last spring, when I was in the field with Kyle, I was impressed by his ability to keep his guys in fighting trim in spite of the hot humid weather, but the cold brings different considerations. Tyler’s experience patrolling on the Estonian / Russian border in winter proved invaluable.

 Tips: a piece of sleeping pad cut down just big enough to sit on makes time pulling security a lot more comfortable. Sitting on frozen ground saps body heat.

 Have both caffeinated and un-caffeinated warm beverages. Sometimes you need to wake up, sometimes you need to sleep, but all the time you need to be warm.

 Eat and drink even if you don’t feel like it. You will burn a lot of calories and expire a lot of moisture in the cold. Oddly, nobody wants to eat when they feel this cold.

 The little chemical hand warmers stuffed in your socks at night really help to keep your feet warm.

 If you ever have the chance to participate in a cold weather exercise, I recommend you give it a try. Cold brings new challenges and opportunities. I know that I learned a lot.

For more information about S&S Training solutions or to attend and event go to https://www.sstrainingsolutions.com/

P.S. After first publishing this I got this comment From Kyle, I was unaware that he had also served a tour in Afghanistan, he had this to say about the differences in the cold weather operations he did there and what we did last weekend:
“I definitely learned a lot about keeping troops taken care of in the cold. Unfortunately even as cold as Afghanistan got, it was a different game than this weekend, as everyone had the optimum cold weather gear and a heated MRAP within 500m at all time. Doing the traditional infantry thing is much more difficult.”

I really appreciate the feedback that came from the many participants who read this post, in the end this is only my perspective based on what I saw, there were eighteen other participants and six people on staff making this happen, each has a unique and valuable perspective. The insight they share increases the learning value for all of us.

The Rule of Three

How do you organize your team for maximum effectiveness?

“During the whole affair, the rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance and resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body.  Indeed they knew too well what was proper, to do so.  Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself very much mistaken.  They have men among them who know very well what they are about.” -Lord Hugh Percy, after the battle of Lexington.

 Since time immemorial, men have understood that a team of men will defeat a mob, even if the mob is comprised of men who are superb individual fighters. This is largely why the Romans defeated Spartacus’s revolt, and the colonial powers defeated so many nineteenth- century tribesmen. The question I am interested in, in this post, is not whether a team is superior, but how should it be composed, and in what number.

 With a two- element team, you have fire and maneuver capability.  One element can fire while the other moves, bounding either forward (for the attack), backward (to break contact), or laterally (to flank).

The smallest possible number of people you can have, and still be called a team, is of course two. For that reason, the buddy team is foundational for soldiers and cops everywhere.  The weakness of the buddy team is that it has severely limited fire power, with only one person to lay down suppressive fire, while the second moves. One man can only easily cover a sector about 45 degrees wide.  A dispersed enemy will require more people to suppress.  Moreover, the buddy team is fragile, being only one casualty or weapon malfunction away from a single warrior.

  Far greater fire power and survivability is found in the four man fire team.  Not only does the fire team lay down twice as many rounds and suppress twice as wide an area, but it has the man power to continue function as a team, even if as many of two of its members are out of action.  Then, having cleared the area of enemy fighters, one team member can administer aid to the injured, while the other provides a security over- watch.  Even the old Boy Scout manual recommended a minimum of four boys for a backwoods hike. In case of injury, one could stay with the injured party, while two went for help.

 A great deal can be accomplished with a four man fire team, but still, you are limited. It just doesn’t have much mass, especially when divided into two maneuver elements.  The next step up in organization would be the eight man squad, which is commonly used by the U.S. Army.  In this configuration, with each fire team acting as an independent maneuver element, we start to see how truly functional a small unit can be.  It is not just a matter of eight men being twice as good as four. At these numbers, we start to reach a critical mass, where the whole begins to be much more than the sum of its parts.

 Even so, with only two elements, you are limited to simple bounding maneuvers.  Most battle drills, whether raid, ambush, or deliberate attack, call for three elements: Assault, Support and Security. In area defense, this breaks down into line, reserve and screening activities; still three elements.  Even the ancient Roman army was divided into three elements; Hastati, Principes, Triarii.

 If our basic unit is the fire team, this gives us a twelve man squad, as is commonly deployed by the USMC.

  To say twelve is better than eight, is not a simple matter of “more is better”. A twelve man squad fills every task at a minimum level, and achieves a synergy that is difficult with smaller numbers.

 All well and good, but what if you don’t have twelve men?  Obviously, you will have to make adjustments.  To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the team you have, not the team you want.  First, consider your mission.  Are you tasked with reconnaissance?  If your goal is not to make hard contact with the enemy (in other words see him without him seeing you), you may be better served by a smaller team. Smaller teams are easier to hide, and, as we pointed out earlier, two elements are all that is necessary to break contact if things go sour.  One of the classic examples of a tiny recon team would be a scout sniper team, consisting of a sniper and his spotter.  (While sniper teams are famous for taking out high value targets on the battle field, their value for scouting and reconnaissance, is often more important.)

 Another approach is to intentionally neglect one of the elements. For instance, if you are shorthanded, you may decide to task all of your meager resources to assault and support, and none to security.  While this is inherently dangerous, and there are many examples of commanders doing this to their peril, there are cases in history where commanders have used heavy violence of action and a rapid operational tempo in lieu of flank security.  In other words, they have attacked with enough vigor that the enemy is constantly on his heels, and too unbalanced to launch a counterattack.

 Finally, you can scale your mission down. Imagine this tiny, six man ambush: One buddy team is the attack, one is support, and the third is split into two lonely, one man flank security elements.  With teams this small, every man must be utterly dependable. There is no one to wake up a drowsy sentinel, and it is difficult to mix in new troops with less experience, when the numbers are this small, without seriously diluting your fighting ability.

 Lastly, you can alter your tactics. Outnumbered forces have historically employed far ambushes, baited ambushes, reverse slope defenses, booby traps, and sabotage.

 If you are a man who knows very much what you are about you can transform your irregular mob into an effective team.

Lightfighter’s reading list

A few months ago, I posted my principals of lightfighting. Today, I post my suggested lightfighter’s reading list.

Light Infantry Tactics by Christopher Larsen.  This work is, in my opinion, the entry point to lightfighter understanding.  Critics have pointed out that there is nothing in this book that you wouldn’t learn from reading the Ranger Handbook.  While this may be technically true, this book presents the basics of light fighting in an extremely understandable way, with lots of quality photos and illustrations.  Most of all, Larsen is a storyteller. He includes a valuable lessons learned section for each chapter, with anecdotes that drive home the importance of each technique taught, in an entertaining and memorable way.  Larsen understands, correctly, that the NCO is the linchpin of successful operations, and devotes a significant portion of his book to troop leading procedures.  Wise warriors will take note.

For a bigger picture of light infantry, read A Historical Perspective On Light Infantry by Major Scott R. McMichael.  This may be the single most informative book in this list. I think all of the aspects of leadership, culture, training, tactics, and strategy that make up the lightfighting concept, are covered to some degree in this volume.  I reviewed this book individually in a previous post.

Book review of A Historical Perspective On Light Infantry by Scott R McMichael

The Defense of Duffer’s Drift, by E. D. Swinton, is a classic British work on all things defensive.  This is not your typical military manual; it’s sort of an Aesop’s fable of defensive tactics.  Filled with references to poetry and literature, both English and classical, I found it a joy to read.  This book grew out of the Boer War, where the Brits were facing some of the best maneuver war practitioners to ever take the field.  The Brits had to learn fast to defeat these Dutch farmers, who were experts at marksmanship, horsemanship, and field craft.  It is noteworthy that the British began to call their elite units, “commando” units; “commando” was what the Boers called their regular line units.

 4^th Generation Warfare Handbook, by Gregory A. Thiele and William S. Lind.  If you want to understand what lightfighting looks like on today’s battlefield, and why we need light infantry, this book is a good place to start.  I think the 4 generations of war paradigm is flawed, but it does present a useful construct for understanding military theory.

The Last Hundred yards, H. J. Pool. This is the work that brought small unit tactics back to the front burner.  This book is a back- to- basics approach to patrolling, communications, field craft, and reading terrain. Definitely a must- read.

Scouting and Patrolling, by Rex Applegate. This is similar to Pool’s work, but with an emphasis on reconnaissance.  Written during the Second World War, this book remains fresh today.

War, by Sebastian Junger. This book follows a platoon of 173^rd airborne soldiers through a deployment in the Korengal Mountains of Afghanistan.  This paints a good picture of how a small unit culture works, and how group cohesion creates combat effectiveness.

Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield’s historical fiction of the battle of Thermopylae.  This work explores what it means to be a warrior and member of a polis as contrast to living in a Hobbesian state of nature, or a subject in an empire of slaves.  This book is usually held up as a more historically accurate depiction of Spartan society, than those that have been recently played in film.  I would have to disagree, to a large degree, about the historical accuracy.  Sparta has come to symbolize the pure warrior society in the western mind, a sort of nation of Siegfrieds.  Pressfield’s book is no exception. It tells us more about what he thinks a warrior society looks like, than what Sparta actually was.  Nevertheless, Pressfield is too honest a man to present his vision as a utopia. His Sparta is rife with cruelty, abuse, and injustice.  He posits that this society, flawed as it is, is still better that living in the anarchy of nature, or the tyranny of empire.

Pressfield gets a second title on this list, with The Lion’s Gate, his history of the Six Day War.  In recent times, the Israelis’ warfighting doctrine has been uninspired at best, but in 1967 they were perhaps the best third- generation/maneuver warfare military in the world.  Not surprisingly, when you consider that their officer corps at the time had been trained by Orde Windgate, who’s work in Burma is featured in A Historical Perspective On Light Infantry.

StarShip Troopers, by Robert H. Heinlein, is last but not least on this list. This classic sci-fi novel explores the obligations of a soldier to society, and society’s obligation to its fighting men.  Written in 1959, when the best and brightest military minds believed that the future of war would be all missiles controlled from blast-proof bunkers, Heinlein was making the argument that even if technology advanced to the point that intergalactic travel became commonplace, we would still need boots on the ground.  It is men who fight wars, not weapons.  My favorite quote: “There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.”

What are your thoughts? Something I left out?  Something in the list that does not belong?  Please comment; I would like to hear.

Principals of Lightfighting

 

Small unit patrolling is more art than science. photo by Davis Winborne

It would be presumptuous to call these “rules”, or in any way imply that this list is definitive.

I am certainly not an expert on small unit tactics, or light infantry patrolling, but these are a few things I have learned in my time patrolling; mostly with One Shepherd, but also with S&S, and a couple of others.  It should be noted that these stem from the One Shepherd “Lightfighter” concept which is a unique doctrine that may not apply to the mission or structure of other units/organizations.  Most of these principals will represent mistakes I made myself, and the lessons learned thereby.

1. The team that patrols the most, wins. I can say, without qualification, that in every FTX I have participated in, the most successful team is the one that patrols more.  Patrolling is your eyes and ears on the battlefield.  The more you patrol the more you disrupt and restrict the enemy’s freedom of movement.  When the entire team is pulled into a static, defensive posture, your awareness reaches no further than your field of view.  You have then ceded most of the battlespace to the enemy.
2. Patrols need not be large to gather useful information. A two- or three- man patrol can often gather as much or more information as a squad- sized patrol, and free up manpower for other tasks.
3. You never have people, time, and supplies in the quantity that you would like. You will have to prioritize tasks, and often must choose not to do something that is normally  deemed essential.  When you guess correctly, you will look like a genius, but when you guess incorrectly, you will look like a fool.
4. Begin working to build team cohesion as soon as possible. As soon as you know who your team will be, have them begin doing things together. Have fire teams eat together, practice PT together, and do weapon maintenance together.  The importance of the task itself is not as great as the bond it begins to form.  The importance of this is difficult to quantify, but incredibly vital.
5. Rehearse everything, even if the rehearsal has to be done with an improvised terrain model, with acorns representing friendly, and pinecones unfriendly operatives. Rehearsing even the simplest of operations will save you heartache later on.
6. Written orders can save confusion, and emphasize the seriousness of a task. For example, tasks like watch rotations while the team sleeps, are often bungled because they happen in the dark, when people are exhausted.  A written watch rotation that each person looks at while it is still light, can help to keep an alert security posture.
7. Change your batteries before it gets dark. Enough said.
8. The most successful teams are often led by a fox and a terrier, two personality types. The fox, sly, cautious, sneaky, and risk averse; and the terrier, bold, aggressive, and vicious, often work well together.  One is better at strategy, and the other is better at kinetic operations. This combination works particularly well if the fox is patrol leader, and the terrier is his second.
9. Communicating with your team is more important than the risk of communications being intercepted by the enemy. We do not want to give information away to the enemy, but most communication lapses stem from excessive fear of communication intercept.  The importance of your team knowing where you, are and what you are doing, usually outweighs the danger of the enemy knowing where you are, and what you are doing,.
10. Communication is more than radio. Have more tools in you communications repertoire. Do not neglect field phones, semaphores, animal calls, flares, light flashes, and plain old shouting, just to name a few.

 

For more about One Shepherd go to: https://1shepherd.com/what-is-one-shepherd/

For more about S&S go to: https://www.sstrainingsolutions.com/

Do You Really Need That Much Ammunition?

Do you carry a reload?

 Not long ago, nearly all the experts on firearms recommended carrying at least one reload. With the advent of greater magazine capacity and more reliable firearms, the advice on how much ammunition to carry has shifted, some of the current experts don’t recommend carrying a reload at all.  However, an experience I had at a recent force- on- force exercise with One Shepherd made me think of a reason for carrying a reload that I had never heard expounded by the experts.

We were one hour into the three day exercise and we were already locked into an intense and brutal firefight.  With only a five man team, we were outnumbered almost two to one, and defending a front nearly three hundred meters wide.  Fortunately, we had enough depth to fight a delaying action, and that was our patrol leader’s strategy: trade space for time. Our orders were to hold them off for 24 hours.  Unfortunately, the opposition was aggressively driving a hard bargain, and although we inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, we had to fall back much too quickly, and were completely overrun in six hours’ time.

Falling back to lick our wounds and reassess our readiness for the next mission, we found nearly everyone on our team was amber on ammunition.  We had started the exercise with seven magazines apiece, now we were down to two.  These two magazines per man had to last for the next 42 hours of fighting.

As our team transitioned from the defense to the attack, the entire tempo of the battlefield shifted. We conducted small scale reconnaissance patrols and probing attacks. We waited, gathering intelligence for nearly thirty hours before launching a full assault.

Patrol leader Cole performs an emergency reload behind cover, Photo by Brenda Chaffe

There were multiple considerations that went in to our patrol leader’s decision to proceed with caution, but a large part was our lack of ammunition.  Nothing quite saps confidence like going into a fight with a severely limited supply of ammunition.

The situation reminded me a little bit of my youth hunting deer with a flintlock rifle. I would watch, wait, and stalk deer for hours, waiting for that perfect shot, knowing I would only get one chance.  Now that I hunt with modern rifles, I am more likely to take that chancy shot, knowing that I can drop the quarry with a quick follow-up, if necessary.

Self-defense is not greenside patrolling, neither is it deer hunting, but I think a lesson can be drawn from these two experiences that applies to a CCW situation.

There are lots of good reasons to carry a reload, but one I have never heard discussed is that it can instill confidence to engage a threat.  Most self-defense shootings occur and end very quickly, but some, like active killer and terrorist- type attacks, can last several minutes; moreover, the moment you begin engaging one of these types of murderers, you will draw the attention of a foe who is almost certainly better armed than you will be. Ammunition equals time in a gunfight, and active killers do most of their murdering in the four to five minutes that it takes to mount a police response. Even if you do not manage to kill him, having enough ammunition to keep a villain busy until the police arrive can save lives.

Col. Jeff Cooper was famous for saying: “The only reason for carrying a lot of ammunition is if you plan to miss a lot”.  His point is well taken. We are responsible for every round we fire, and every round that does not hit the bad guy has the possibility of hitting an innocent person. What I am talking about here is not having enough ammunition for indiscriminate firing, but having enough ammunition to give you the confidence that you can finish the fight.

If your everyday carry is a Glock 26 with a 10 round magazine, will you feel more confident knowing you have another ten or twenty more rounds in reserve?  I’m sure I would.

In the training exercise I relate at the beginning of this article, we were granted an unexpected resupply of two magazines per person. After the exercise was ended, and everyone turned in their left over ammunition to supply, the count showed that we had turned in exactly two full magazines per person. In other words, we’d had enough for the fight all along, but we needed the resupply to give us the confidence to attack.

 

For more information about One Shepherd go to:https://1shepherd.com/what-is-one-shepherd/

2018 Homeschool Small Unit Tactics Workshop

 

This is the second year I helped with the Homeschool small unit tactics workshop.  When we were in the planning stages, the learning objectives they wanted to cover spanned most every-thing covered in a One Shepherd Warrior Basic and Situational Training Exercise.  One Shepherd does all of this in a tightly compressed four days, and, in my opinion, only provides an overview of the subject matter. We had only a little more than a day to cover the same.  The emphasis this year was to be the raid.

Most of the students arrived by 19:00 Friday evening, and after and excellent BBQ of Bratwurst and corn on the cob, we covered some of the basics of map reading and land navigation.  Some of the students even brought their own compasses this year, which shows progress.

After that, we had a classroom exercise on radio protocol and radio theory.

After the radio class, there was an unscripted Air-soft brawl in an abandoned farmhouse on the property, which did provide some lessons learned that we could talk about when we discussed raids the next day.  I don’t remember when I crawled in to the barn loft to sleep, but most of the kids continued their gaming into the small hours.

We got them up for 06:30 PT, and then, after breakfast, we began instruction concerning traveling techniques and reaction- to- contact drills.

My son and brother-in-law arrived to help out. They provided our op-for, along with one of the dads.  In working with inexperienced students, I consider having an experienced, dedicated op-for to be essential. The quality of our training this year was much improved by their presence.

The students ranged from 12 years to 20, and were mostly boys that play a lot of airsoft, but there were also three girls in attendance who had never done anything like this before, and wanted to see what it was all about.  The experienced students were aggressive fighters, but were unaccustomed to fighting as a team, and certainly were not accustomed to leading one.  I appointed three of the most experienced as fire team leaders, and jumped back and forth alternately between leading the patrol, instructing, and operating as O.C.  This was less than ideal, and I think it may have been confusing to some of the students for me to bounce back and forth in so many different roles, but we made it work.

The property were were on was especially well suited to the airsoft platform, with thick cedar woods crisscrossed with logging trails, and lots and lots of micro terrain.  We were able to get a lot of patrolling practice in.  We hadn’t planned to practice ambushes, but the land lent itself to that technique so well that we ran several iterations.  It was really fun to watch how quickly they improved. The first couple of times our twelve student squad was ambushed by the three man op-for, they suffered heavy casualties; somewhere north of 70%.  By the later iterations, they were beginning to call out targets, and work together to maneuver on their enemy. They then were able to take out the op-for with the loss of only one man.  This also provided a good teaching point as to why, in a near ambush, the ambusher must outnumber the quarry.

During lunch, we had a classroom explanation of the raid, then we practiced a couple of ROC drills.

The students were hankering for some more evenly divided engagements, so we split one fire team off to work with the op-for, guarding a communications node.

The Blue team was to raid the node, tape a block of “C4” to the radio, and light a fire cracker fuse attached to it.

The Blue team had three key tasks:

Call in to higher to notify them that the raid was a go,

Destroy the radio,

Call in to higher to report the success or failure of the raid.

For this exercise, after guiding multiple rehearsals, I handed over leadership of the patrol to one of my fire team leaders, and acted as OC.  When the patrols/ reconnaissance teams were unable to locate the communications node after two hours of searching (op-for decide last minute to move the location; according to the scenario I had written we had triangulated on their signal, and therefore knew approximately where they were),  I suggested a plan B wherein they ran this raid as a movement- to- contact.  Counter- doctrinal, I know, but the kids, by that time, were spoiling for a fight.  The only problem was they had never learned that battle drill, so I constructed a quick sand table with some sticks and pebbles (sorry, Brent, I did not and never will carry a bag of green plastic army guys in the field with me).  With only that rudimentary explanation, they stepped off.

After a bit of marching, the left vanguard element made contact. The rear and right elements maneuvered to the flanks, and swept the enemy position. It was classic, albeit with high casualties.  Two of our new girls were the only survivors; but still, they had thought to pull the C4 brick off of their patrol leader’s body and blow the radio.  My primary regret of the event was that I did not get a picture of these two girls, the sole survivors of their patrol, blowing the radio, all while wearing faux pearls.

I didn’t adequately communicate the key task to them, however. The communication to higher was neglected, and somehow they believed that they couldn’t complete the mission until they hunted down and killed every member of the op-for.  I have seen the focus shift from the stated mission to killing the enemy multiple times in mil- sim events.  I think special precaution needs to be taken to prevent this mission creep.

All in all, the mission was a success. By the time it was over, they had really internalized the principles of communicating to maneuver as a team on an enemy position, and all the rehearsals played off, even though the battle they ended up fighting was much different from the one they rehearsed for.

For the final exercise, we switched things up, and had the Blue-for guard the radio while the Op-for staged the raid.

This one went quite differently. The Blue team patrol leader did a great job of reading the terrain, and using his OCCA to place his guys in all the right spots.  When Op-for attacked, they put up a fierce defense.  Op-for was also handicapped by the loss of one of their fire team leaders, who had to leave early, and without two strong fire team leaders, they bogged down. The raid began to feel more like a traditional, deliberate attack than a raid.  Even with multiple re-spawns, they never generated enough momentum to break though the enemy perimeter.

I think this event went better than last year, mostly due to lessons learned on my part.  I still am figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of the Airsoft platform. The lack of a longer range of fire is obvious, but this platform also lacks the noise that adds so much violence of action to a blank fire engagement.  It is simply hard to overwhelm your opponent with the hum of a little whirring battery motor.  Furthermore, there is no “near miss” indication, and on several occasions, I saw pellets streaming quietly by players who were unaware that someone was bracketing them.

By and large, the students did not take advantage of the micro terrain, and we definitely need to work on camouflage.

We would also be well served to spend a few hours on a stand- alone leadership class. I think most of my fire team leaders saw themselves as being saddled with a responsibility, rather than as a weapons guidance system for a four man rifle team.  Then again, I think everyone who has led a fire team or squad has felt like a bit of a babysitter from time to time. I know I have in the past.

We had students who brought in varying degrees of commitment. Some of the kids were really enthusiastic about learning tactics, and others were just out to play; though there’s nothing wrong with that, learning should be fun.  Even the enthusiastic students had many other conflicting commitments; these are farm kids, who had chores to do, and family businesses to help with. There was so much coming and going, that I was not sure on several occasions exactly how many people we were supposed to have on the field. This made constructing a logical progression of instruction difficult, but also reminded me of the farmers of Lexington and Concord who had to train around the requirements of their farms and shops.  If they made it work, we can, too.

For all that, the kids were outstanding; great attitudes and good sportsmen.  I repeatedly saw older ones stopping to help out the younger kids, even when it slowed them down or made the mission more difficult.  That is the kernel of real leadership right there.  I find myself wanting to emulate my students in these aspects.

All in all, I learned a lot and had a great deal of fun, and I think the students did, too.

As a post script, every meal was excellent, these people know how to feed teenage boys!

Big Boy Rules

I recently participated in an online contest/challenge that was put on by the Youtube personality Brent0331. You can watch his challenge here. The first 15 minutes are all about the prizes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO-2InQBgEY

The main gist of the competition is the issuing of a warning order for a three day combat patrol, with contestants being asked to submit a video PCI, or Pre Combat Inspection, of the gear, clothes, and equipment they would carry.  The PCI is a routine in which your patrol leader, or fire team leader, goes over your gear and equipment before a mission, to assure everything is in working order; and that you have all the tools and equipment to complete the mission.  I am not unaccustomed to the PCI; at One Shepherd we practice it before every mission.  However, it is a long time since I have had my gear inspected by a stranger.  It made me think about how I would look at my load, if I knew nothing about the person carrying it.

It’s not hard to find recommended packing lists for a long range patrol, and if everyone simply followed the list, this contest would not be interesting at all; but there some things you must have for every mission, other things you should carry for a specific mission, and even more that you can carry “just in case”.  The art of packing for any given mission lies in deciding what is truly necessary, and how much you are willing to leave behind.  Some will insist that the bayonet is indispensable, while another will not dare to step off without a hatchet, but will choose to leave behind his sleeping bag, preferring to shiver rolled up in a poncho.   When you have to pack in “everything you need on your back”, you simply can’t take everything you would like to have.  Conventional wisdom is that a reasonable load is one third of a person’s body weight.  It’s actually a rare occurrence for infantrymen to carry such a light load, especially as new technology provides them with more gadgets to bring.  My load for this contest was 120 pounds, nearly double the 68 that I should have been carrying.  If I were the patrol leader, and a new guy showed up with a 90 pound ruck, and a 30 pound combat load (as I had), I would definitely have made him reduce the weight of his ruck.

I have seen too many guys attempt to carry too much weight. They bring everything they might possibly need, and two miles in they are completely smoked; yet there are a few guys who actually do run insanely heavy loads, routinely and successfully. One fellow I’ll call Joe runs a large ALLIC ruck that he had modified to make it even larger. It makes my back sore to even look at his ruck.  Yet, he handles it well, and I have to say that there have been many times that I have been happy to see him pull some amazing and obscure piece of gear out of that ruck, like Mary Poppins.

On the other hand, if somebody my size showed up with a 20 pound ruck and ten pound fighting load, I would seriously question his preparedness. It is nearly impossible to get a load down that light without leaving behind lots of essential items.  These are the guys that become hypothermic in the first rain shower.  Still some people can, and do, run a load this light.  One guy I’ll call Alex does this. I have known him to step off for a three day mission without bringing a ruck at all. The few items he brought were all contained in his battle rattle.

While I usually don’t run quite as heavy a load as I did for the contest, my load was pushed up by my decision to carry a 30 caliber rifle, and by the mission- essential items that Brent specified in the contest rules. These things added a full 30 pounds to my overall load.  Yet, there were other areas where I was running light. I packed very little in the way of medical supplies, bringing only a basic first aid kit and a tourniquet.  I was also light on water, bringing only one quart on my battle rattle and two more in my ruck.

I have been patrol leader for both Joe and Alex, and they have both, at various times, been my patrol leader.  Never have any of us busted the others for our differing ideas about loads, even though they represent very different philosophies.  In truth, we have been operating by “Big Boy Rules”. Sometimes that phrase is used to mean: “Big boys don’t have to follow rules”, but in its best sense, and the sense we are using it in here, it means we trust each other’s judgement and experience. I know that each of these guys know their limits, and neither of them will do anything to jeopardize themselves, their buddies, or the mission, and they know the same about me.  We are all big boys, we can be trusted to make responsible decisions.

Yet, if a knowledgeable stranger were to PCI each of us, Joe would be busted for being too heavy, and bringing unnecessary gear; Alex would be told to bring a ruck, and fill it with all of the essential gear he chose to leave behind; and I would be busted for being too heavy, and still not managing to bring enough water.  In general, these reprimands would be most right and proper. Most people have unrealistic ideas about their needs and capabilities in the field, and until they have proven themselves, they should follow the advice of the patrol leader, who is responsible for the completion of the mission.

As I write this, the contest has not yet been judged. I am curious to see the commentary that Brent and the other judges record.  If I were the judge, my entry would not be one of the top four, yet I would still carry that load on the patrol he outlined.

You can watch my entry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8DQCaLs6KE

And my son’s entry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRQcl0HlO5U

One Shepherd

I was lying face down in a ditch; the cacophony of gunfire and shouting was all around me; I was pinned down, and alone.  This is what they were talking about in the basic class when the instructor told us, “Never lose your battle buddy”.  I had agreed with him; it made perfect sense, but until I got out here in the fire fight, I had not understood two important things: A. how easy it is to become separated from your battle buddy, and B. how deadly it is when it happens.

I was exhausted from two days patrolling, topped off with a morning fire fight.  With my lungs busting for air I screamed out “Kruger!” as loud as I could, hoping he would hear me above the din of battle.

No response, but I could hear the voices of the men hunting me: “Noah, he’s in the grass right on my twelve. Move up, I have him suppressed.”

To say I was in a ditch is a bit of an overstatement. It was really the muddy rut of a farm road, not more than four inches deep.  With my head turned sideways I tried to lift my left eye above the edge of the dirt in an effort to see my attacker.   Beep! my harness sounded indicating an enemy shot had barely missed me.  Reflexively I smashed my head back down into the mud.  I had to move, and I had to move fast.  Like a centipede, I began crawling; but instead of having a hundred legs to propel myself, I had only my ten fingers and toes.  I dared not lift myself up to my elbows for a low crawl. I had no idea if there was cover ahead, but I knew I was not safe here.

“Jackson, move up, he’s moving.” Again, the voice was my enemy’s.  I swung my M4 up over the edge of the rut and sent a half dozen rounds of grazing fire in the direction of the voice.  It was blind, un-aimed fire, but at least it might slow them down.  I dragged myself forward as fast as I could, my head scraping the ground, my right ear filling with mud. The worst of it was my wagon rut was playing out, growing shallower as I progressed, and leaving me more exposed.  I tried to call out again in an effort to locate the rest of my team, but as I filled my lungs to shout I inhaled a mouth full of acrid smoke.  Someone had popped a smoke grenade, and the gentle breeze wafted the orange smoke across the battle field.  The epicenter of the cloud was too far away to provide real concealment, but I took a chance, and, pointing my weapon straight ahead and holding the stock close to my body, I rolled to my right, over the median, and into the other parallel rut of the farm road.  The gunfire intensified, but I had already moved, and, just as I had hoped, the right hand rut was a bit deeper in this spot.

“BSR, BSR!” I shouted again hoping to locate any member of my team (we were the Baltic Slav Republic for this exercise), but it seemed that the bulk of the fighting had moved away and to my left; there was no answer.

The plan for the assault had been straightforward and workable, but now we were less than two minutes into the contact, and the plan seemed to be a long- ago piece of fiction.  The battle was going on elsewhere, and I was fighting, not to take an enemy position, but simply to stay alive.

Channeling, or Funneling, was another thing they had warned us about in Basic.  Human beings will take the path of least resistance, especially when they maneuver under stress. Usually this causes fighters to bunch too closely to provide mutually supporting fire.  However, it can also cause you to be channeled away from your team, too far away to maintain visual and auditory communication.  Again, it had made sense, and in the shoulder drills we had practiced maneuver, learning how to avoid it; but here I was, channeled away from my team.  I continued forward, heart pounding and lungs gasping for air.  My one eye, gazing over the edge of the wagon rut with a tortoise’s eye view of the world, spied an inviting fold of the land, a depression large enough to hide a man on hands and knees. If I could just make that! Then I could really move, then I could turn this thing around and bring the fight back to the enemy!  Just then the enemy came into view, he rose up out of the grass ahead of me and took two steps before he planted again, firing as he moved.  I had my rifle up, and fired as he did, but my shot went wide. One of his registered, and my ears filled with a loud, persistent buzz, indicating I had been killed.  I took off my hat, signaling to all friend and foe that I was no-longer in the fight, and stood up.

This account is written, mostly from memory, of my first Field Training Exercise with One Shepherd, some five years ago.  Some of you reading this may be chuckling to yourselves at the dramatic tone I evoke. This is on purpose. The training at One Shepherd is immersive, it is normal to forget that it is all a training game.  Yes, the ammunition fired by both sides are blanks, but the adrenalin is real.  I tried to capture that feeling in this piece.

One Shepherd teaches light infantry tactics and small unit patrolling, as a vehicle for teaching leadership.  If I had to sum up what they do in one sentence, I would say that they are an NCO school for civilians.  They typically outline the classroom instruction briefly, and then put the students immediately into force- on- force training, to cement the lesson.  The fact that I can, to this day, remember that firefight this clearly, and the lesson it taught me, is testament to their unique teaching method.  The FTX is the three day force- on- force culmination of each of their semesters.  For more information, or to sign up for classes go to: http://www.1shepherd.com/