Examining Terrorist Tactics: Using Vehicles as Weapons

Our Prayers are with all the families of the Dead, but especially the Copeland Family from Austin, Texas. May God Comfort them and also bring swift justice on the evildoers. -SF

 

The Latest Death Toll in Nice, France has reached 84 Dead, Including 2 Texan-Americans as a Terrorist used a truck loaded with grenades and weapons to plow into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day.

This video from Twitter shows the absolute carnage. I urge you to show this to everybody you know, not for the shock factor, but for the REALISM factor.

America needs to get their head out their ass and stop trying to find Pokemon and start getting ready for these bastards, because Dallas was just the beginning…they are GOING to hit us like this any day.

We can see from pp.54 in this 2010 issue of Inspire magazine, how it is recommended by ISIS planners to use vehicles as weapons.

“The idea is to use a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”

Large celebratory crowds now have to be considered Targets.

Vehicle access to these types of areas must be DENIED and/or HEAVILY RESTRICTED.

Armed Checkpoints with Barriers and Spike Strips must be the norm.

More to Come Later.

Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!

 

Examining GW Tactics: Fire and Maneuver in Urban AO’s

 By Hammerhead

In a recent Article, Law Enforcement told how they found a very large collection of ‘tactical writings’ in the home of Dallas Police Shooter and Army Panty Bandit Micah Johnson.

According to Police, the tactic of “Fire and Maneuver” or “Shoot and Move” was the tactic seen most often in Johnson’s “voluminous” notes.

Since Johnson’s MOS and military career was devoid of any real Combat training or experience while in Afghanistan, Where Johnson actually learned these tactics is up for debate. John Mosby in his superb Mountain Guerilla blog  makes the case that Johnson was taught these tactics possibly by somebody who had participated in Mil-Sim (Airsoft).

My personal opinion is that Johnson at some time or another, post-Army career, received training by Black Power militants within the BLM community, who are most likely, according to Robert Spencer from Jihad Watch connected with HAMAS through the help of CAIR, which is widely known to financially support Terrorism.

The student of history and Guerilla Warfare does not have to look very far back to see the deadly nexus between 1960’s  Black Power militant movements, like the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan, so the BLM/HAMAS-CAIR connection is by no means a conspiratorial stretch.

Below is a vid from a Black Panther rally in 2015 in Austin, Texas where armed black militants called for the death of “pigs” (Police Officers) with the ominous chant “Oink, Oink Bang, Bang.”

When one starts piecing together the Dallas attack, the “Shoot and Move” tactic used by Johnson was one of the main reasons police thought there were facing MULTIPLE shooters, instead of just one shooter, as the fire was coming from many different positions. Gunfire echo in an urban setting combined with the chaos and high stress most likely attributed to this confusion.

This is a very important lesson to learn, both in the study of Guerilla and Counter-Insurgency Warfare (COIN). The guerilla must use any and all “force multipliers” to his advantage to try to overwhelm the enemy (both mentally and physically.) One of the greatest force multipliers is the APPEARANCE that the Guerilla (or the Guerilla Force) outnumber the Conventional Force.

This tactic most often manifest itself as a psych-warfare tool first. Keeping the enemy confused and fearful creates hesitation in how they will respond both tactically and strategically, which gives the guerilla more time to plan and attack. We can understand this point better as we listen to the Police radio traffic from that day of the attack in Dallas.

Now that we have briefly touched on some of the offensive aspects of fire and manuever warfare, let’s talk about the DEFENSIVE aspects.

The armed citizen must understand that regardless if it is you and a perp facing off at 10 feet in a gas station parking lot or you pinned down in an urban shootout like the one in Dallas, MOVEMENT = LIFE! I will be touching on some of the more detailed aspects of urban sniping and fighting in some later installments, but right now the key thing for you to remember is to ALWAYS MOVE TO SOLID COVER AND KEEP MOVING UNTIL YOU ARE OUT OF THE KILL BOX. 

In Combat Shooting you will often hear the maxim: “GET OFF THE X!” (With the “X” Being the Kill box.) For those of you that understand how the OODA loop works (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) when you MOVE In a fight, regardless if it is empty hand, stick, knife or gun, you force your enemy to RESET their OODA Loop. Even something as simple as a side-step can buy you 1/2 a second of reaction time in a fight and that half-second may be all you need to neutralize your opponent  or escape.

When we are talking about a situation like the Dallas shooting, where civilians were caught out in the open with a shooter in an elevated position, Movement can be a tricky thing. Depending on the shooter’s elevation, your cover may be of little use since the shooter may be able to position themselves to look OVER and DOWN onto your position. This is what I mean by having SOLID or COMPLETE cover. Remember, If you don’t have a solid roof over your head, he may can see you and consequently, shoot you.

Combine this fact with the shooter using “Fire and Maneuver” tactics and this is how you can end up being PINNED Down and eventually overwhelmed and killed. I cannot stress enough how important movement is in these situations. Staying “planted” in a kill box, regardless of how “safe” you feel, is a sure-fire recipe for a funeral.

Pictures from that day show how officers and civilians alike were “hugging” the ground, Getting as LOW as possible behind vehicles or any cover that was available.

Staying as Low as possible is a good tip anytime shooting is taking place, however, in an urban setting where the shooter is elevated, it is mandatory. We will discuss more on “Urban Sectors of Fire” in another post, but for right now it will suffice for you to understand that in an urban setting, depending on how elevated the shooter is, he may be able to shoot farther on the “oblique” than he can straight on, it just depends. Of course what kind of rifle the shooter is armed with and his skill level play heavily into this equation also. I highly recommend John L. Plasters The Ultimate Sniper and his section on Urban Sniping  for more advanced reading on this subject.

More to Come Later.

Stay Alert, Stay Armed, Stay Informed and Stay Dangerous!

 

Examining Terrorist Tactics: The Lethal Geography of Downtown Dallas

Exploiting Urban Geography

The shooting of 14 people during a protest march, 12 of them police officers, is without question a terrorist-style assault on the police force of one of America’s largest cities.

Five Dallas cops, including a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer, died from a gunman who declared he acted alone and wanted to kill police officers, white people and white police officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. The ambush follows shootings of black men by police officers in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis.

Police said one male gunman, Micah X. Johnson, died inside a downtown community college building after cops sent in a robot, which blew up an attached explosive device. A female suspect who allegedly fired at officers was arrested overnight.

Dallas Police said at least two gunmen had fired at them from a “triangulated … elevated position.”

There is mixed information about key details. For one, it’s not clear if there were one or two shooters — or more — or if any shooter was actually on elevated ground. Two men arrested while driving away from downtown were uninvolved in the shootings, as was a man photographed while carrying a rifle during the march.

However, if the gunman or gunmen acted as snipers, they would have exploited a particular vulnerability of downtown Dallas’ urban geography.

More than 50 years ago, ex-Marine and Marxist gunman Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Pres. John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch — now Dallas’ most famous tourist attraction — at Dealey Plaza blocks from where Thursday’s gunmen unleashed his rampage.

This isn’t to force a comparison, but to stress that a sniper — if he was perched— would have been at an extreme advantage over anyone in the street. Dallas, like many so-called “Sunbelt cities,” has an urban area that is both built up and yet is relatively less dense than many other downtowns.

It’s also to note an aspect of America’s modern security culture that has resolutely failed. We can build subtle barriers against car bombs and stop terrorists from boarding airplanes, but we’ve done little to prevent people with high-powered rifles from striking down their fellow citizens.

Here is a digitally-altered photo from Google Earth showing the location of the attack:

Read the Remainder at War is Boring

Crusader Corner: Killing The Terrorist Before They Can Kill You

This is not just great advice for LEO but also for Armed Civilians.

Everybody say with me like you mean it:

“Cut the Head off the Snake before they DETONATE!” -SF

The video footage of the terrorist attack at the airport in Turkey will have to be developed into a police training tool.

A new tool, used to teach cops to become combat thinking soldiers.

In the past they have been trained to be arresting law enforcement personal. The terrorist shot his way into the inside of the Turkish passenger terminal and then was himself shot. He hit the ground and his rifle went flying across the floor out of range, for the murdering Muslim to be able to retrieve it and continue killing innocent people.

In the cop world you are trained to think that now he is not only obviously wounded, he is unarmed.

So your seasoned skills tell you to secure the situation, and then render first aid to the poor wounded human writhing on the floor in such obvious pain.

Times have changed, the first thing you need to do is put a bullet into his head.

The Muslim terrorist, while writhing in pain was trying to get to his detonation switch and kill even more innocent passengers. One man in the video can be seen looking down at the Muslim terrorist on the floor and then realizing that “My God or My Allah, it looks like Mohammad has an explosive suicide vest on—I must run away.” If only that person had had a firearm and the training to dispatch the Muslim terrorist before the suicide vest was detonated.

Unless we change our training in the US, the average American cop can, and will make the same mistake.

You have to cut off the head of the snake–before he can detonate.

American cops do not execute the bad guys. No, we want to arrest them, read them their rights and then process them through our legal system, and that is how it should be. However, it will have to change when Mohammad the Muslim terrorist is writhing on the floor of the Mall of America. When one shot to his head will save the lives of countless shoppers who will otherwise be killed or injured when Mohammad detonates his suicide vest on US soil, hard decisions must be made.

In 1987 I was stationed at Chanute Air Force Base in central Illinois. The base was being evaluated by a higher headquarters inspection team. Part of the inspection was an anti-terrorist, graded exercise. During the course of the exercise the General’s aide (a Captain) was taken hostage and a “simulated” suicide vest was placed on her. The inspector “terrorists” held the base hostage for hours during that exercise. At one point two “terrorist” and the “hostage” came out of the building they were holed up in, and started walking toward a 1000 man dormitory full of young Airmen. We were told by the “terrorists” that if we tried to stop them they would kill the Captain. All the senior flying officers were concern with what we should do.

I told them the goal was to keep the terrorists from killing a large group of Airmen if they got into that dormitory. They offered no suggestions how to solve the crisis.

I contacted my tactical team sniper and told them to shoot both of the “terrorist” and they did. Of course in the exercise scenario the poor young Captain was killed when the bad guys detonated the suicide vest (outside and away from people–simulated of course). Did the flying officers ever have a fit. I can still hear it “Captain Harl you got Captain “Jones” killed and you may have cost us a passing grade on the terrorist exercise.” You know what, we passed the exercise test. When the senior inspecting Colonel asked your General how else did he plan to save the lives of so many Airmen, there was no other alternative. You have to be willing to anticipate “acceptable losses.”

I went from being the “dog” of the exercise to having a very happy General when we got an excellent grade for stopping these “terrorists.”

I was a trained Air Force cop and I understood that you were supposed to pull your Miranda card out, read the bad guy his rights and then cuff and stuff him in to the back of a squad car. Senior flying officers do not like the term acceptable losses, to them it means losing airplanes. I was however also an Army trained Infantry officer and we did not worry about your “rights” in combat, we just killed you, before you could kill us. There are always loses in Infantry combat and you had better learn to accept some.

This concept of killing before the Muslim terrorist can kill you will become second nature in the future.

For a while there will be a learning curve that will involve many a US cops getting killed for not killing the snake fast enough, or having their law enforcement career destroyed because they did shoot first. Once there are hundreds of dead Americans lying in their own blood at a mall or a sports stadium, and everyone gets to see it up close on 24/7 TV news, concern for the terrorist’s rights will shift to rapid snake killing.

Close quarters combat training will have to become the norm for all on duty cops, not just the tactical teams. Every cop will need an “evil” black rifle and will find themselves carrying that rifle more and more as a daily tool and not something setting in the patrol car just in case. This will cost money for departments to acquire the rifles and the money for training time and ammo. Of course the public will be upset at first, but after a while not seeing a long gun in the hands of a cop will be the oddity.

Private Citizens will start to exercise their abilities to open carry long guns, that will take some more getting use to, but it is coming.

Life is changing and those who do not like guns but expect strangers in uniforms to show up with their guns and save the day will suffer the most.

“Cut the snake’s head off” will have to become the cry of the average American.

Making sure you have the correct tools to fight the snake is something that needs to be dealt with now. So, do not wait until the snake slithers into your town.

As an American police officer it is time to insist that you always have a long gun in your squad car with lots of extra loaded magazines ready for the snake fight at any moment. As an American citizen, if you do not own a gun, buy one, if you own a gun then by a second one.

As always when in doubt, buy fresh ammo. Call the folks at Buffalo Bore Ammunition (buffalobore.com); their “snake” killing ammo is Strictly Business.

Strictly Business is an interesting term and implies a seriousness of the situation and the need for not only being prepared, but being prepared with the correct quality tools that will keep you alive.

Killing the snake, staying alive and keeping your family safe. Now that is Strictly Business.

Major Van Harl USAF Re. / vanharl@aol.com

Read the Original Article at Ammo-Land

Examining Terrorist Tactics: Istanbul Airport Terrorist Attack

Last week, three ISIS terrorists conducted  simultaneous attacks on the unsecured areas of Istanbul’s international airport.  They entered the airport armed with AK rifles and suicide bomb vests.  They split up, went to separate areas of the airport and began shooting and blowing up their bombs.  A total of 42 people were killed and 238 more were injured.

Why should we care?  We should care because the same terrorists have stated that they will perform similar attacks in the United States.  We can study the tactics used in their overseas attacks and develop countermeasures before they bring them stateside.  Here is a discussion of the key elements of the attack and what we all need to do in order to avoid being killed if a similar event happens here.

-Guns and Bombs- All of the terrorist attacks with the largest number of fatalities involve both guns (usually long guns) and explosives.  To prepare for an active shooter requires that you also be prepared to deal with a terrorist bomber.  The two groups use both methodologies simultaneously.

Most shooters don’t know enough about bombs.  You must understand how terrorist bombs are detonated, how they are used, and how far away you must get to be safe.  Take a bomb class.  Until then read this article.  Then understand about secondary devices.  This type of information can truly save your life.

– Three Pronged Attack.  A hallmark of Al Qaeda (and now ISIS) attacks is the three pronged attack.  They are continuing the trend here with three attackers at the airport.  They use multiple attackers to ensure that at least one makes it to the target if the others are interdicted by the police before arriving on site.  It’s basically a back-up plan.  In this case, the three attempted to enter the airport.  They were stopped by police at the entrance of the building (this airport has additional metal detectors at the airport entrance).  When they realized they couldn’t make it through security with their guns and bombs, one terrorist pulled out a gun and began shooting at police.  That provided enough of a distraction to allow the other two terrorists to slip inside unnoticed.

The key thing to remember is if you witness one terrorist attack, you should assume that more are coming.  There will always be a followup attack.  Don’t hang around.  Get yourself to safety.  The followups may not be in the same location like these were.  Police need to be aware of the three pronged strategy.  If one attack occurs, the police should be deploying additional resources to protect other pre-identified targets for attack.

– Heavy clothing and large bags remain the best indicators of a potential bomber.  Take a look at the photo below from this article.  All three terrorists are wearing heavy coats that were wholly inappropriate for the June Mediterranean weather.

Read the Remainder at Active Response Training