Contact! Page 6

  If you can have as part of your team a combat experienced vocal leader, then this will aid in snapping the green ones out of the potential freeze when you find yourselves crawling into micro-cover as enemy fire whips and snaps around you, snapping branches out of trees and kicking dust up off the ground around you. That is the value of a capable and experienced NCO type.

  When you have a quiet time, a very good preparation is to visualize situations. Visualize the drills you have trained and run them through in your head. This can either be done in general or specific to a new situation. What do I mean by this? You can generally visualize your, and your teams, reaction to a surprise enemy contact. You can also visualize it relevant to a specific role you find yourself in. For example, if you find yourself manning a gun in a turret on a convoy, as you are driving along visualize situations and run through your reaction. As you approach an overpass, or a village to the side of the road, run through actions on contact and prepare yourself for when it happens. This will keep your mind in the game.

  You can also use the visualization process as part of running combat estimates, or scenarios, through in your head. For example; you find yourself in a patrol base or defensive position. Before you selected it, you would have run through the location factors in your mind and decided how suitable it was (i.e. METT-TC & OCOKA in US Military terms). Once in occupation, you will base contingency plans off how you are sited to the terrain, approaches and egress routes, and how you expect an enemy to approach and attack you. You can then visualize your responses and in this case turn that into actual plans/positions and brief accordingly. You can even do rehearsals within the allowances of the tactical situation.

  Alternatively you can have ear buds in and listen to heavy metal music. And be taken completely by surprise when rounds start striking. Your mind will not be in the game, is my point.

  When you come under fire, you won't know if you are going to be hit or not. When you put your head up to locate the enemy, which is necessary if you are ever going to suppress him and thus allow movement, you won't know if you are going to take a round through the skull. Well, that is why combat is scary. It takes courage to put your head up. However, if you have trained right, you won't be thinking too much about that, only in the back of your mind - that is why we have drills. You should be thinking of your role and your place in the drill. If you are the team leader you have to think about how to get your team out of there. If you are a rifleman you need to think about locating and suppressing the enemy before communicating a target indication to the rest of the team. That is why we train and have drills; not only because the drills work, but also so we actually have a clue what to do when we find ourselves enveloped in violence, when death stalks around us.

  If you truly are 'pinned down' you will know it and you will be glued into whatever micro-cover you can find. Do you know what micro-cover is? You need to figure that out, or come to WV and I will show you. Anyway, if you are the individual or element that is truly pinned down by effective fire, you are relying on other team members, who are under less pressure, to locate and suppress the enemy to allow you to fire and move.

  The good news is that despite the absence of theme music and glory, there are some upsides. A firefight is dangerous, but it can also be very exciting. There is a visceral excitement to the sound of gunfire and also the explosions of indirect fire. Well, at least I think there is. Particularly HMG fire - although mostly if is on your side! The beat of a 240 (7.62) or .50Cal HMG carries with it a deep motivational force. The staccato beat of the gun will lift you and move you. If you ever can, in an SHTF situation, procure machine-guns and utilize them in support, it will do a lot for you, not just the physical suppressing effect or the firepower, but the effect on your morale. But even without belt-fed machine guns, the sound of rifle fire is exciting. You can see it when I run the squad attack on a CRCD class - as the first bunker is being assaulted and the depth enemy is being suppressed, there is a crescendo of excitement that everyone gets caught up in. That is why training must be realistic - all that is missing is the rounds coming the other way, but if you are drilled enough you will follow through and do it anyway when the time comes.

  One of the things that good live firing training will do for you is allow you to operate with less panic and better as a team. At the basic rifleman level an example is your shooting - rather than panic shooting, over the top of the sights, better training will allow you to apply accurate steady fire onto the enemy position. After the essential task of actually locating the enemy (for which you have to observe from your position of cover), accurate fire will allow that enemy to be suppressed effectively, which will therefore allow movement coordinated as a team, which will ultimately mean less of you will be wounded or killed.

  Of course, in the above situations I am really talking about situations where you are taken by surprise, where the enemy has engaged you and they have therefore seized the initiative. That is why we have 'contact drills'. Even a squad that is offensive minded and intending to 'advance to contact' and then execute a hasty attack, has to wrest the initiative off the enemy, locate them and win the firefight, before they can move on to the successful assault. A small team on patrol, if surprised and contacted by enemy, has no business going on the offensive. You are trying to survive so break contact and get out of there.

  As I mentioned in my post about casualties, a contact situation can be worst case and potentially not survivable, such as getting caught a well sited ambush. However, these contact drills originate with the British SOF, designed for small dismounted recce patrols. That is not only why they are ideal for small groups out on patrol, but it also shows the provenance of the drills: they are not weak-assed 'run away' drills. It is simply that there is a time and a place. Correctly executed break contact drills are extremely aggressive, with a weight of accurate fire put down on the enemy and aggressive movement conducted to get out of the kill zone. You should hit the enemy hard before melting away. If they follow up, you hit them with a hasty ambush. These are not submissive drills, they are 'time and place' drills.

  The time to go forwards is when you plan a raid, or perhaps an ambush. It may be that you do this after 'bumping' the enemy and breaking contact, before circling back to recce their position. Either way, you need to locate and recce/OP the enemy. You will then plan a raid. For a raid, you will use the element of surprise and you will start with the initiative. This is the vital difference between a surprise contact (or hasty attack) and a raid/deliberate attack. For the deliberate attack, you will have scouted the area and made a plan. You will have identified a fire support location and a scheme of maneuver for your assault and flank/cut off elements. That is when you will want to consider going forwards.

  Blog Post

  On Fighting:

  The first thing you want to do with a fight is avoid it. This applies equally well both now, and in any post-collapse type scenario.

  To help you with that avoidance plan, you need to work on being alert and aware. Not only will that awareness help you spot and avoid potential threats, but it will also help deter those predators that are observing you, weighing up their chances.

  Being alert, carrying yourself confidently, and looking like you have a chance of handling yourself will go a long way to avoid the fight. Don't look like a victim.

  'Mindset' is a bit of a 'tacticool' expression, but it means well. If you are not in the business of getting into fights, you have to worry about it coming to you. If you are suddenly attacked by a blitz attacker, perhaps some kind of psycho, bent on your destruction, then it will be a big surprise and they will have a good chance of overwhelming you. So you have to be ready to go if surprised.

  The advantage of a psycho blitz attacker is that they are prepared to go all the way. You are not only taken by surprise, but you are weighed down by all the baggage of not wanting to be in a fight, conditioned by society, worried about self-defense laws etc. It is not a time for denial. If he does not take you
out immediately, then you have to fight back. It's not a time for "Wait, try that again, I wasn't ready."

  As for fighting styles, there are lots of options. I haven't been in a fight in a long minute, but growing up in the UK it is true that without guns in society, there is a readiness to go to hand to hand fighting: No chance of the other guy carrying concealed or having one in his truck - but he may have a claw hammer or knife under his jacket. Chuck out time at closing from the pubs was basically street fight time. As morals in society have crumbled, it is increasingly mob violence.

  In the UK, most fighting is boxing based. On the streets, if you go to the ground you are most likely to be kicked into unconsciousness by his mates standing around. It's a bit of a mob thing. But there is more and more MMA in the UK, and thus grappling.

  I don't truck with this advice about not punching people. Punch them in the head. If you can elbow or knee them, fine, but in the absence of that hit hard and fast as many times as you can until they go down and you can get away. That's the next point. If you can't avoid, defend aggressively, hit them with everything you have. Then, don't hang around for awards, get away.

  If you do get in a fight, however cool your martial arts training is, expect to get hurt. Chin down, eyes up, prepare to take it and wade in to hand it back to him. It’s not pretty and no-one will really win. If you can walk or run away from it, you have succeeded.

  If you do get taken to the ground - and most people in the US train in Jiu-Jitsu/MMA so it is likely that they will at least try, know what to do to get out of it. You can't just be a ‘stand-up’ fighter and expect to get away with it.

  That leads on to escalation of force. In this article I have not really been discussing weapons, but if you have them be prepared to escalate in proportion to the level of force being used against you. And it is not a medieval jousting tournament, so be prepared to over-match them. There is no chivalry in a street fight. Use force proportionate and 'reasonable' in the circumstances.

  As for styles, whatever floats your boat. Just train in something that will allow you to damage the bad guy. I trained at school in Judo. I was on the team. I remember taking punches in school-yard type fights while I closed with, threw and clinched them. Seeing stars as punches come flying in is not cool; once I was forced to my knees by a flurry of punches before I managed to get in and finish it.

  I decided that I needed to learn how to punch, so when I got to College I started Thai Boxing. That really does teach you how to inflict punishment, but you have to be able to take it too. In more recent years, when I get a moment, I do a bit of Filipino Kali. What I like about that is the reaction training to at least do something to avoid an incoming punch, stick, knife. As I get older, I like the idea more and more of not taking a whack to the head.

  Granted, I'm no black belt, and when the fight starts, the adrenalin pumps and it all goes a little crazy. That's the time when you go back to what you know, which usually involves trying to punch the living crap out of the other guy. Whoever really has their mind in the fight, will usually overwhelm the opponent.

  So, you have to be able to get a little crazy. 'Controlled aggression’. If you are actually crazy, then in the words of Miranda Lambert at the excellent concert I took my wife to not so long ago: "Hide your crazy (girl)."

  If you are surprised by a blitz attacker, then you have to instantly turn on the crazy, not freezing or living in denial.

  But remember, there is always a ‘badder’ dude in the valley, always someone tougher than you. Or maybe you are sick, exhausted and/or hungry, not on your top game.

  Physical Preparation for Tactical Operations

  “If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -

  Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

  And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!”

  KIPLING

  This is a tactical manual and therefore there is a requirement for a certain amount of physical ability and activity to accomplish drills. However, it goes beyond that. You have a responsibility to yourself and your family to be in shape NOW. Illness and disease excepted, if you have your health you have no excuse to let things go. Post-event, it will be too late.

  Take a long hard look at yourself; are you in shape and can you do better? The more physically fit you are the better you will perform overall in a survival or combat situation. You will tire less easily. There will be a lot to do that you may not be accustomed to; lifting, carrying, digging, loading, unloading, hiking etc. To be physically prepared, you don’t need to be a super-person or a triathlete. You should be able to carry weight both on your back and in your arms. You should be able to dig and lift. Ideally, you should be able to carry a heavy rucksack uphill and fight. It is about being robust.

  Try to do some basic fitness, some kind of aerobic activity like running, biking or rowing. Throw in some push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups. Be the sort of person who will go out and dig that hole or lay that paving in the garden. Laboring would be good preparation for a post-event situation; if you work in an office, landscape the yard at the weekends. Go hiking. A certain amount of aerobic ability is needed, so that you can at least hike with a pack and carry your weapons. Train by running, walking or similar. There is no utility in being overweight and your mobility will be severely hindered in a survival situation.

  On the tactical side, you can’t be fit enough. Movement under fire is an extremely tiring activity. You may be running, crawling or ‘fire and maneuvering’, which is short sprints or rushes, followed by hitting the ground, firing and repeat. A lot of this is anaerobic activity, which means you can’t get enough oxygen in however hard you breathe: ‘sucking it in from China’. You can train for that with sprints and shuttles but really you just need to make sure that you have a good overall level of fitness and that your weight is controlled. You will have adrenalin to aid you and a lot of the ability to achieve this kind of physical activity is rooted in the will to win and determination of the individual.

  Bear in mind that if you have a ‘man down’ situation and take a casualty, you will have to have the physical ability to move them. Casualty movement is a physical challenge. The stronger and more robust you are the better able you will be to add value to your team. Conversely, if your team members or yourself are overweight and unfit, not only will they find it hard to help the casualty or physically perform because they have let themselves go, it is also a lot harder to move a grossly overweight casualty.

  You are likely to have to be some sort of hybrid between an infantryman and a farmer/laborer. Think the original citizen soldier. Conventional infantry work itself can be a lot like laboring; a lot of digging, such as trenches (foxholes), latrines, filling sandbags and making bunkers. Conventionally, if you are a line infantry soldier facing a threat of indirect fire, you have to start digging a ‘shell-scrape’ if you are going to be static in a location for more than fifteen minutes.

  Patrol bases will have shell scrapes dug around the perimeter, in or behind which the infantry soldiers will live. Digging a ‘Stage 3’ fire trench with overhead protection can mean constant digging as a fire team for thirty six hours. An ambush position in conventional warfare should be dug in, with shell scrapes dug for each firing position. This is to protect from both direct enemy fire and also against incoming artillery fire.

  This is a far cry from the recent wars over the last 10 years, where some infantry have been engaged in this kind of work but many of the coalition forces involved have been conducting vehicle mounted mobile operations from secure FOB’s (Forward Operating Bases), protected by HESCO bastions (HESCOs are large volume stackable wire mesh and cloth ‘boxes’ that are filled with earth or sand, like very large sandbags). Be prepared for a life of physical activity, from carrying weight to laboring and occasionally engaging in a firefight.

  This is not a physical training manual and it will not presume to recommend various fitness regimes for you to follow. The p
oint, as laid out above, is that you should take sensible measures to physically prepare and be ready for the demands that a post-event situation could put on you.

  If you are the head of your family, then you need to be able to physically protect your family when the SHTF. Now, there are other aspects to this including age and illness. You only have to spend some time on a shooting range, or even at the Mall for that matter, to see the various shapes and sizes that come through. Many of the range user types definitely rely on the old joke that, “You may be able to outrun me, but you won’t be able to outrun this 5.56 / 9mm /substitute caliber here.”

  Being in such poor physical shape is only doing them and those they will need to protect a disservice. On the other side of this are those that are genuinely disabled or old, despite a healthy lifestyle. Many of the shooters on a range will be sensible law abiding older folk with CCW permits. They are determined to be able to defend themselves in a self-defense situation or home invasion. And they will, no doubt. But they will be less likely to be able to deal with the rigors of the overall post-event scenario and the physical demands. Even your combat veteran from Vietnam era is slowing down now.

  So, beyond keeping yourself fit and healthy as best you can, there are limits to this created by age, infirmity, disease and disability. However, such characters can bring a huge wealth of knowledge and experience to the party and therefore the best approach would be specialization to allow best use of resources. Thus, the message here is not so much that everyone needs to be super-fit, more that there is no room for self-inflicted laziness and lard-asses: get out and keep physically prepared to the extent that you are able. Step away from the cookie jar!