“If I asked how to go become a Hunter-Gatherer, how would you respond? Even if you were one long ago, it would be difficult. We’re talking about nothing short of an utter redefinition of how you live, your identity and role in society, and entrance into a new culture. How does one “prepare” for that?”
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The Siege has been an effective military tactic for Centuries.
The Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Mongols, Barbarians,Vikings, English, Spanish, French… all of them used it with deadly effect in one way or another.
Additional Reading: Siege Warfare
Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!
This is great information not just for the civilian squad using Small Unit Tactics but for the individual civilian homeowner who may have to “Clear” his own home or other structure because time is of the essence and you cannot wait 30 minutes for Police to arrive. Fighting inside structures is tough and you need to train for this!
Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!
A very complete and detailed picture of what exactly happened July 7th in Dallas, TX when Micah Johnson killed 5 Police Officers and wounded 9 others.
Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!
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!
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
More than a month after it began, the battle for the Syrian city of Manbij drags on.
Now surrounded on all sides by a coalition of Kurds and Arabs, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, and supported by U.S. Special Operations forces as well as dozens of airstrikes, the motley assortment of troops is slowly rooting out Islamic State fighters one block at a time.
Yet, despite gains around the city, one cluster of buildings at the southern tip of Manbij has turned into a small redoubt and a symbol of the Islamic State’s determination to hold its territory. The structures, a series of grain silos, elevators and administrative buildings, have been hit by numerous airstrikes since 2014. And despite various reports of their seizure by the U.S-backed forces, they still appear either to be partially held by ISIS fighters or so laden with mines and booby traps that advancing troops are unable to enter.
Positioned a little more than a mile from the center of Manbij, the grain silos are a dominating piece of terrain that provides their occupants an unfettered view of the city. For the U.S.-backed Syrian forces, this means that their American advisers would be given an observation tower for calling in airstrikes while their Syrian comrades cleared the rest of the Manbij. The Islamic State knows this and, in turn, has fought doggedly to keep them, littering the buildings with snipers and explosive devices.
Initial reports on social media indicate that Syrian Democratic Forces began fighting around the grain silos in the first five days in June, a little more than a week after the campaign to take Manbij began. As the U.S.-backed forces began to encircle the rest of the city, ISIS refused to budge from the grain towers. It is unclear how many airstrikes have been called in on what appear to be reinforced concrete silos, but pictures and social media reports indicate that they have been continuously hit since the beginning of the month.
Read the Remainder at Washington Post
