Archive for category Tactical Thought Process

Tactical Thought Process: Tunnel Warfare, Cu Chi, and today’s Hamas

Dec 28

Posted by Matt in Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

     50 kilometers of tunnels?  Boy, that is an interesting factor for the ground campaign for Israel.  Obviously Hamas has been studying tunnels and preparing the battlefield.  And like what this great little article talks about, Hamas has learned what they can from Hezbollah and their experiences and they are ready to go. 

   But back to tunnels.  When I think tunnels and warfare, I think of the Cu Chi tunnel complex used during the Vietnam War.  Sure there are other famous uses of tunnels in warfare, but the Vietnamese were pretty crafty in this department.  Hamas has used their tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza, to cross borders to infiltrate martyrdom teams, and set up rocket launching sites that are connected by tunnels for safe launching and easy escape.  Of course the launch sites would be set up in civilian areas, to maximize civilian casualties for the retaliatory attacks that would soon follow.

   Another use for these tunnels will be for urban warfare.  It is quite a thing to fight an enemy that knows how to effectively use tunnels.  If the things are deep enough, none of these air strikes will touch them.  Hamas can also plant IED’s via tunnels, so they can take out tanks and other vehicles.  I also imagine that much of their munitions are deep underground as well.  And like the Vietnamese, Hamas makes their own munitions as well.  If they have the ability to launch 200 rockets a day, that means they have a very accelerated and advanced manufacturing and smuggling operation going on.

    So what does this mean for the Israelis?  Time to break out the flashlights, pistols, and the camera robots, and get underground to clear these things.  That’s if they can find all of these tunnels.  It will take careful searches to find these things, and rear security could be an issue.  Perhaps ground penetrating radar will be used, and I am sure tunnels will be just one of the multitude of concerns that the Israelis will have for the ground invasion.  -Matt

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VietnamCuChiTunnelsTactical Thought Process: Tunnel Warfare, Cu Chi, and todays Hamas 

Mai Chi Tho, a political commissar stationed in Cu Chi describes the region as a “springboard for attacking Saigon.” He goes on to say: “We used the area for infiltrating Saigon-intelligence agents, part cadres, sabotage teams. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was prepared and the necessary troops and supplies assembled in the Cu Chi tunnels.” By 1965, there were over 200 kilometers of connected tunnel. 

Analysis: The Hamas army

Dec. 27, 2008

Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST

Hamas, once known for its suicide attacks inside Israeli cities, is no longer a small-time terrorist group, but a large guerrilla army that has well-trained forces deployed throughout the entire Gaza Strip.

Were the IDF to embark on a ground operation in Gaza, it would face an army of close to 20,000 armed men, among them at least 15,000 Hamas operatives. The rest are from Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees.

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Books: Marketing Warfare, by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Dec 10

Posted by Matt in Books, Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

    It is always interesting to read about how the concepts of war fighting are used in other areas of industry, not related to war.  This book was a quick read, and certainly worthy of your time.  These guys break down Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and apply them to marketing.  This book is an excellent primer on basic military strategy, as well as opening up the fascinating and war-like world of marketing.

   I really liked reading about the burger wars, in which McDonalds competes with Burger King and others on the battlefield of the cut throat fast food industry.  Every move of these companies were compared to basic military strategy, and it is a blow by blow account of where they did well and where they screwed up in these battles.  The book is an After Action Review of these marketing battles. Other companies mentioned were IBM, Fedex, and Coke to name a few.  And because this book was written 20 years ago, this current edition has been updated with mentions of the current war and recent marketing battles.

   But the real reason I liked this book, is that I read it from a Counter-insurgency point of view, and how these marketing principles could help win over the local populations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.  This is nothing new, and I know the war machine out there has been calling up some of these marketing gurus for ideas, but it is still fascinating to learn about the concepts.  And for the ground level commander, they could easily use these concepts of marketing to sell their ideas to the local population.  Hell, most of us already have the mindset of what good marketing strategy is, based off of our military backgrounds.

   Which brings up the concept of the ‘Anbar Awakening’ or ‘Awakening Councils’.  To look at this from a marketing point of view is very interesting.  Once this tactic was identified as successful in Iraq, it was rolled up into a overall marketing strategy of the war effort. Tactics drive Strategy.   And I say marketing strategy, because we had to sell this tactic to the Iraqis, to the American public, to congress and to the world as the new thing that will work.  Interesting stuff and I recommend the book. -Head Jundi 

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51zw9iil7hL. BO2,204,203,200 PIsitb sticker arrow click,TopRight,35, 76 AA240 SH20 OU01 Books: Marketing Warfare, by Al Ries and Jack Trout

 

Review

The authors have tricked up this pedestrian book on how companies outmaneuver their competition by modeling it on von Clausewitz’s 1832 treatise On War. Forget customer surveys and what customers think they want: go after your competition as though you are conducting a military campaign. Use defensive warfare if you are on the “high terrain,” i.e., the industry leader, where often “the best defensive strategy is to attack youself.’ What does this mean? Translated, like IBM, you periodically come out with product improvements that make your old line obsolete. Second-and third-ranking companies should use offensive warfare. Here, set your sights on the industry leader and mass all your resources to attack at the weakest point. Avis, for instance, went after Hertz by emphasizing that it provided better service. They once had the slogan: “Rent from Avis. The line at our counter is shorter.” Companies in the middle should use “flanking warfare.” This may mean creating entirely new products: minicomputers or “Lite” beer, for example.

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Tactical Thought Process: Where Was the Incident Command in Mumbai?

Nov 29

Posted by Matt in Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

   So I am watching video and reading all of these reports coming out of Mumbai, and I have just been cringing. I mourn the deaths of hostages, and my heart goes out to the families. But there is a part of me that watched this attack from a tactical command point of view, and it pissed me off.  Could the death toll have been minimized if in fact the Indian response was coordinated and well managed under one management system?  I think so.

   Incident Command System or ICS is the most important element of the response to any incident or attack.  And this management system, if applied correctly, could have saved lives.  It is a system that would have helped to organize and call up resources quickly, and help to control and end the attack quickly.  ICS is a system used to bring order to chaos, and if the Indian government would have trained on this aspect of command, then they could have dealt with this in a much more efficient manner. 

    As for some thoughts on what was missing from the response, where do I start?  For one, if all of the police and military were briefed on ICS and how it works, then that would be a great start.  From there, the police(who are the first responders), would act as the Incident Commander for their particular scene, and request more resources.  That request should be in the form of how do we expand the ICS, because this attack is spreading all over the city.  I would also ask all resources to make communications with the Incident Commander, and establish the on scene chain of command.  But really, the first order of business is make your assessments of the situation, and order resources. And if that initial Incident Commander of the scene is not qualified for larger incidents, then he orders up a more qualified Incident Commander through dispatch.  Until then, that individual is in command, because there is no one else.

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Weapons Stuff: Tactical Life

Nov 17

Posted by Matt in Tactical Thought Process, Weapons, Weapons Stuff | No Comments

mastheadLogoWeapons Stuff: Tactical Life

 

     Check this out.  Tactical Life is an incredibly comprehensive website dedicated to  weapons.  In other words, this is some serious ‘Gun Porn’.  LOL The one section I really liked was the calender of events.  They post the various training dates for training classes of most of the tactical schools out there.  Although I don’t think the classes list is entirely comprehensive, it is a good start if you are researching available schools to attend. You can also sign up for their newsletter.  -Head Jundi

Website Here

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Tactical Thought Process: ‘A Message to Garcia’ and Accomplishing the Mission

Sep 21

Posted by Matt in History, Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

     I want to thank Scott for sending me this.  I was never aware of this story, even though I was in the Marines and an NCO.  So this was a treat to get this in the mail the other day and read it.  In summary, it is a celebration of the man with the resolve to accomplish the mission–the soldier or grunt with the ‘can do’ attitude. 

     The other thing I want to mention is that good healthy dissent within a group is important in order for organizations to evolve and learn and be successful.  So I do not agree with companies using this type of story as a means to shut up their employees or something like that.  

     If anything, this story is about giving your people a mission and the freedom to accomplish that mission anyway they can.  Rowan was not told the how, he was just told to do, and he did.  

     This story is a celebration of accomplishing the mission, and doing what it takes to get it done.  It is also a celebration of the soldier or grunt who presses forward through thick and thin, using ingenuity and resolve to finish the job.  And like what was mentioned before in Boykin’s book called ‘Never Surrender’–resolve is a highly desired trait in a special forces soldier. Good stuff. -Head Jundi

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0122Tactical Thought Process: A Message to Garcia and Accomplishing the Mission

The American officer that Hubbard referred to was Andrew Summers Rowan, a West Point graduate of 1881. 

1899

A Message to Garcia

By Elbert Hubbard

 

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

What to do!

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Disaster Response: Leadership During Crisis and Effective Communications for Rescue Operations

Sep 14

Posted by Matt in Disaster Response, Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

 In Baton Rouge, La., Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco called for the evacuation of a nearly half a million people in the southwest portion of her state.

“Head north, head north,” she said. “You cannot go east, you cannot go west, head north. If you know the local roads that go north, take those.”

Noting the difficulty medical examiners have had in identifying the dead from Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Blanco offered morbid advice to those who refuse to evacuate. “Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms in indelible ink,” she said.

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     Ok, I understand what Kathleen was trying to convey, that this was dire and people need to go.  Especially if rescuers have to go in after people, and risk their lives in the process, all because someone did not want to leave.  But this is where I think officials like this drop the ball.

     The third statement she should have said, is that if you plan on staying behind, then you need to know how to signal rescuers that are flying around, and let them know your status.  

     I have already heard of stories out of the Galveston area in Texas, of rescuers risking life and limb to winch down from helicopters to people who did not want rescuing.  That is crucial minutes and seconds wasted on rescue efforts that were not needed or necessary.

     My solution to this is easy.  If leaders who feel the need to issue reports like this to the public, gave folks the knowledge necessary to communicate with helicopter rescue crews out there, then the that would go a long ways towards making these rescue efforts more efficient and safe.  

     So with that said, let me introduce the Internationally recognized Emergency Distress Signaling charts.  I carried a panel in my smokejumper kit back in the day to communicate with aircraft, just in case my radio went down.  Same thing in the military, and these signals are known by all pilots.  Heck, even in Iraq, we used VS 17 signal panels to communicate with the military just because we did not have radios to make contact with them.

    And you don’t have to have special signal panels to make this happen.  You can use your body to signal to rescuers, or use common materials laying around your house.  If these signals were talked about during these press conferences, then we could have seen a rescue effort that had more safety and efficiency added to it.  It would also have given the leaders a little more of an option to tell their people, than just using scare tactics to make everyone run away. -Head Jundi

 

PS- And for those with bad eyesight, ‘L L’ is the panel signal for ‘all well’, and the body signal is raising your right arm. 

 

And here is the Link for the Rescue Codes

 

 

figb 1Disaster Response: Leadership During Crisis and Effective Communications for Rescue Operations

 

 

figb 3Disaster Response: Leadership During Crisis and Effective Communications for Rescue Operations

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History: Unconventional Warfare Lessons From the Selous Scouts, by Leroy Thompson

Jul 16

Posted by Matt in Africa, History, Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

   This was an interesting little article about the Selous Scouts.  These guys were very effective and certainly came up with some important lessons in unconventional warfare.  I am sure the writers of todays current COIN operations took some note of the efforts of these guys.  At the end of the article, I also posted a link to the Selous Scout manual and site that I found this article at.  -Head Jundi

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selous10History: Unconventional Warfare Lessons From the Selous Scouts, by Leroy Thompson 

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE LESSONS FROM THE SELOUS SCOUTS

By Leroy Thompson

    To understand the Selous Scouts’ methods, one must first understand the Selous Scouts’ mission. The Scouts evolved to varying extents from the Tracker Combat Unit of the Rhodesian Army, the CIO (Central Intelligence Organization), and the Special Branch of the BSAP (British South Africa Police). When Major Ron Reid Daly was given the mission of forming the Scouts, Rhodesia’s borders were becoming less and less secure, as ZANLA and ZIPRA terrorists infiltrated in greater and greater numbers. Though the cover mission for the Selous Scouts remained the tracking of terrorists, in reality the unit was a pseudo-terrorist unit, using turned terrorists and Black soldiers from the Rhodesian African Rifles, as well as White soldiers in black face make-up from the Rhodesian SAS, Rhodesian Light Infantry and other units. These pseudo groups would infiltrate terrorist areas of operation, passing themselves off as terrorists and attempting to subvert the terrorist infrastructure.

    In many ways, the Selous Scouts learned from US counter- insurgency successes in Vietnam, drawing on the examples of the Phoenix Program, the Kit Carson Scouts and the Road Runner Teams. Even more did they resemble the successful pseudo teams which had been active earlier in Kenya. Constantly adding turned terrorists, the Scouts kept abreast of current terrorist terminology, identification procedures, and operations; often they were better informed about terrorist procedures than the terrorists themselves.

    As the Selous Scouts evolved, they undertook other missions such as cross-border raids, assassinations, snatches, raids on terrorist HQs in Botswana or elsewhere, long-range reconnaissance, and various other types of special operations. One early raid typical of this kind of Scouts’ mission was the snatch of a key ZIPRA official from Francistown, Botswana, in March 1974. These direct action operations resembled in many ways the MAC V/SOG operations in Vietnam. The number of Vietnam veterans in the Rhodesian security forces, in fact, had a substantial influence on the conduct of the war and on slang that was used. Terrorists, for example, were often called ‘gooks’.

    The Scouts lured terrorists into ambushes, from which few terrorists normally walked away; captured terrorists and then turned them to serve in one of the Scout pseudo groups; or turned them over to the BSAP for interrogation. The Scouts were very successful in gathering intelligence, at least in part from captured diaries and letters. This is an important element of counter­insurgency operations. Due to the fragmented nature of their operations, guerrillas rarely have ready access to communications equipment. As a result, they may rely on written communication, leaving much open to capture. Few guerrillas are sophisticated enough to use ciphers, either, so often captured communications are ‘in the clear’. Many politically inspired guerrillas are actually encouraged to keep diaries documenting their political development, and these also frequently include valuable intelligence information. Third World insurgents are generally much less security conscious than organized military forces about documents; hence, captured written material can be an excellent intelligence source, especially for order of battle data.

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Building Snowmobiles: OODA and You by Robert Greene

Jul 8

Posted by Matt in Building Snowmobiles, Tactical Thought Process | 1 Comment

   032%20SnowmobileBuilding Snowmobiles: OODA and You by Robert Greene

 

     This is a new category that I am really excited about here at FJ.  Colonel John Boyd is highly inspirational not only to me, but to thousands out there that are into radical thought processes and winning the fight.  He also was able to change the Pentagon from the inside out with his ideas, which says a lot about his ideas.  So in celebration of his ‘building snowmobiles’ concept, I will try to find the various idea people out there that are putting the pieces together to win.

     Also, if you want to get a good sense of what Boyd was about, there are several videos and audio recordings of him and his briefings.  Just click here to check them out.

      This article below, is a prime example of an idea guy ‘building snowmobiles’ out of Boyd’s OODA Loop.  In the future, I will seek out individuals who are creating new ideas out of the various pieces out there.  How this applies to the security industry, is that we are always trying to assemble the pieces in our area of operations and put them together to find solutions to defeat the enemy.  To us, winning is protecting our client.  

    In a larger sense, security companies are also building snowmobiles by winning bids on contracts.  They do this by constantly constructing plans and strategies within their own organizations to be more efficient and cost effective than the next guy.  And companies are constantly reworking their capabilities(building snowmobiles) and doing their best to deliver excellent services so they can keep those contracts.  

     On a personal level, we as security professionals are constantly evolving.  We must never say we are an expert, because that would imply that we know everything there is to know about a subject.  Instead you should always have the mind frame of having a firm foundation with the concepts, but always willing to look outward and inward and learn.  To continue to learn about yourself and to learn about your enemy.  And we are always taking all of this information and assembling it into what we are and how we do business or basically building snowmobiles. -Head Jundi 

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(This is the break down of the building snowmobiles thought experiment by one of Boyd’s associates.) 

 On to the experiment. Imagine four scenarios: someone skiing, someone power-boating, someone bicycling, and a boy playing with a toy tank. Break down each domain into its component parts: For skiing, there would be snow, chairlifts, skis, hot chocolate, and so on. Within their domain, the parts have directly identifiable relationships with one another. But scramble together the parts from the four domains, and suddenly it’s hard to determine any relationships at all. We are thrown into chaos.

Now, Spinney instructs, take one part from each scene: From skiing, select the skis; from power boating, the motor; from bicycling, the handlebars; and from the boy with his toy tank, the treads. What do these elements have to do with one another? At first, seemingly nothing — because we still think of them in terms of their original domains. But bring the parts together, and you’ve used your creative pattern-recognition skills to build … a snowmobile! “A winner,” Boyd concluded, “is someone who can build snowmobiles … when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.”

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 OODA Loop and You

February 24, 2007

by Robert Greene 

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at a company convention in southern California. This company has offices worldwide, is very successful in its line of work, but on the horizon are some dangers. They brought me in to address those dangers. The specifics here do not matter much, only to say that, like a lot of companies that were successful in the 80s and on up to the present, they have come to rely upon a particular business model that is part circumstance and part design.

Loosely put, their upper-tier employees operate more like entrepreneurs, each one out for him or herself. Each office tends to think of itself as an island, competing with the other branches across the globe. This works to some extent, as these entrepreneurs are very motivated to expand the business. On the other hand, it makes it very difficult to create an overall esprit de corps.

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Tactical Thought Process: David Kilcullen and Counterinsurgency

Jun 25

Posted by Matt in Tactical Thought Process | No Comments

   For me, this was an interesting story, about a little known guy that was hugely responsible for today’s Counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.  Another example of ideas saving the day, and luckily reaching all the right people to become reality.  We are truly grateful for people like Kilcullen and others in the past, like Boyd, who had the courage to present a different idea and change the culture and thought process from the inside out.  I just wish the higher command could have implemented these ideas from the beginning, when the signs were totally pointing towards the obvious.  Either way, I am glad we are on the right track now.  -Head Jundi 

 

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KilcullenTactical Thought Process: David Kilcullen and Counterinsurgency 

 David Kilcullen

 

The New Yorker

Knowing the Enemy

Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?

by George Packer 

December 18, 2006

In 1993, a young captain in the Australian Army named David Kilcullen was living among villagers in West Java, as part of an immersion program in the Indonesian language. One day, he visited a local military museum that contained a display about Indonesia’s war, during the nineteen-fifties and sixties, against a separatist Muslim insurgency movement called Darul Islam. “I had never heard of this conflict,” Kilcullen told me recently. “It’s hardly known in the West. The Indonesian government won, hands down. And I was fascinated by how it managed to pull off such a successful counterinsurgency campaign.”

Kilcullen, the son of two left-leaning academics, had studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Duntroon, the Australian West Point, and he decided to pursue a doctorate in political anthropology at the University of New South Wales. He chose as his dissertation subject the Darul Islam conflict, conducting research over tea with former guerrillas while continuing to serve in the Australian Army. The rebel movement, he said, was bigger than the Malayan Emergency—the twelve-year Communist revolt against British rule, which was finally put down in 1960, and which has become a major point of reference in the military doctrine of counterinsurgency. During the years that Kilcullen worked on his dissertation, two events in Indonesia deeply affected his thinking. The first was the rise—in the same region that had given birth to Darul Islam, and among some of the same families—of a more extreme Islamist movement called Jemaah Islamiya, which became a Southeast Asian affiliate of Al Qaeda. The second was East Timor’s successful struggle for independence from Indonesia. Kilcullen witnessed the former as he was carrying out his field work; he participated in the latter as an infantry-company commander in a United Nations intervention force. The experiences shaped the conclusions about counter-insurgency in his dissertation, which he finished in 2001, just as a new war was about to begin.

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Technology: Thumb Drives in the Middle East and Espionage

Jun 14

Posted by Matt in Qatar, Tactical Thought Process, Technology | No Comments

     This is an interesting story. My buddy that was working a contract in Qatar, was able to interdict a spy, that was stealing information on the base that he was working on. This device was on a key ring, and looked like a large pencil. The individual had a thumb drive inside this thing and there were numerous photos and documents on it, that they took from various computers on the base.

     I am posting this, because there are a lot of guys reading this that are in charge of gates and entry control, and this is just a heads up as to the kind of stuff that the booger eaters are trying to sneak in. They can actually hide thumb drives in all sorts of stuff now, because of their size, and there are manufacturers that creating all sorts of unique products that might not be too recognizable. This particular set up almost looks like something that is already sold in the middle east, or it could be home made. Either way, keep a heads up for this kind of thing, and the enemy is certainly creative enough to produce these kinds of things.

     And on a side note, my buddy was recognized by his company for a job well done, for catching this guy. No cash award, but they did give him a nice little plack. As for the spy, who knows what they did with him. And if any company managers are reading this, it would be pretty nice of you were to set up a cash award/recognition system for employees that have interdicted spies. It is the right thing to do, and it should be promoted within the organization as an incentive to stop such a thing. -Head Jundi

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thumbdriveTechnology: Thumb Drives in the Middle East and Espionage

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