Feral Jundi

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Law Enforcement: On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Filed under: Crime,Law Enforcement,Tactical Thought Process — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 11:29 PM

   This is an excellent read, and I want to thank Matt for sending me this.  I love it when readers are inspired by stuff, and send it in for the rest of us to enjoy.

   I put this under ‘law enforcement’, but really, this could apply to military and security contractors.  It is a really good definition of what we are and what drives us.  It also defines the correct mindset to have in order to survive and win the fight.  Enjoy. –Matt

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 On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs

(From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)

“Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself.

The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?”

– William J. Bennett

  In a lecture to the United States Naval Academy

  November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.“Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep.

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Friday, June 5, 2009

Building Snowmobiles: The Attack By Fire and the Super-empowered Individual

Filed under: Building Snowmobiles,Crime,Disaster Response,Law Enforcement,Tactical Thought Process — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 12:58 PM

“It’s a schemer who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. I just did what I do best-I took your plan and turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It’s fair. “-The Joker, from the movie Dark Knight

     This is a building snowmobiles post for the simple reason that no one else is covering this arsonist story or fire in this way (minus maybe War Nerd), or really getting into the concepts of the ‘attack by fire’.  Oyler, the arsonist, is the ultimate definition of the super-empowered individual, and truly symbolizes a modern day Joker.  Fortunately, he will be meeting the same fate as that character.

   Now of course I will not give a DIY class about using the attack by fire, but I do want to give a hint to the reader that this is stuff we need to be thinking about.  Lets just say it should be in your toolbox of ideas, so you know how to defend against it. But according to the Geneva Convention, fire as an offensive weapon has been ruled out, hence why flame throwers are not used anymore. (I posted the protocol below)  But if you read through it, it lists everything a terrorist or an insurgent wouldn’t mind doing to achieve a goal.  So learning how to defend against it, is key.

     But back to the attack by fire and the super-empowered individual.  What Oyler did, is exactly what arsonists do, and that is get off on lighting fires.  He had been perfecting his technique all summer in 2006, and the Esperanza Fire was his so called ‘masterpiece of chaos’.  So what can we learn from this tragic event? I will attempt to answer that question, both from a smokejumper/forest fire fighter position, and from a security professional position, and also delve into the attack by fire from a warfighter and strategist point of view.  

     As a smokejumper, I fought many forest fires throughout the west.  We would fight the small fires, and we would fight the big fires, it didn’t matter.  We would fight naturally started fires(lightening started) and we would fight man made fires (trash fires, thrown cigarettes, etc.).  But the most disheartening and frightening fires, are the ones set by arsonists.  Especially arsonists that know what they are doing.

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Friday, January 16, 2009

Israel: How to Close the Gaza Tunnels, by William Saletan

Filed under: Israel,Tactical Thought Process,Technology — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 4:36 PM

    An excellent collection of ideas, on how to shut down these tunnel systems on the borders of Gaza.  I think a combination of several of these ideas are the way to go.  Who knows, there might be some contracting opportunities with this one for some construction company.  It would either be an Egyptian or Israeli company to work on this stuff, but you never know who they might contract for this stuff.  I posted some stuff regarding the SBInet Boeing project along the US border, and they experiment and use a lot of the same stuff to detect tunnels.

   My favorites are the combination of UAV/with sensors, and ground sensors, all tied into one center.  It sounds expensive, but anything that could reduce the smuggling operations would equate to less rockets being manufactured and launched. The tunnel issue will be a big deal during the ceasefire–when it comes. –Matt

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Holey War

How to close the Gaza tunnels.

By William Saletan

Posted Friday, Jan. 16, 2009, at 7:58 AM ET

In the skies over Gaza, Israel rules. Its planes, helicopters, and drones patrol and fire at will. On the ground, Israeli troops advance while Hamas lies in wait. But the ultimate battleground isn’t visible from the sky or on your television news. It’s underground.

Gaza is riddled with tunnels. Some are for smuggling; others are for transporting weapons; others are for hiding or ambushing Israeli troops. The crucial passageways—400 to 600, by recent estimates—run from Gaza to Egypt, circumventing the closed border. That’s how Hamas gets parts and material for the missiles it fires into Israel. Any deal to end the current fighting has to include “an effective blockading” of that border, “with supervision and follow-ups,” according to Israel’s prime minister. To stop the war—and to keep it stopped—you have to figure out how to stop the tunnels.

But how? Here are some of the options.

1. Buffer zone. Israel used to control a 300-meter strip between Gaza and Egypt. That wasn’t enough to stop Gazans from tunneling under it to Egypt. But what if the strip were thicker? Would that raise the cost of tunneling, or the probability of a collapse somewhere along the passage, enough to deter diggers? Israeli hawks want a buffer zone three kilometers thick, which would make tunnel excavation much more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. Lately, the Israeli Defense Forces have dropped leaflets urging Gazans along the border to leave their homes—an attempt, some experts believe, to use the war to widen the buffer zone. But good luck getting Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or European intermediaries to hand over three kilometers of south Gaza, much less remove the inconvenient residents from their homes.

2. Wall. Instead of thickening the old buffer zone, how about deepening it? Years ago, Israel tried a concrete-iron wall that extended 10 feet underground. A nice try, but fairly useless, since the tunnels went at least 20 feet underground. Then, just more than a year ago, two high-ranking officials from the U.S. Defense and State Departments went to Egypt with a proposal to build a new barrier, including “piles driven deep into the earth.” But even if you extend a wall far enough underground, tunnelers can dig through it.

3. Moat. Maybe, instead of burying a solid barrier that could be dug through, we should make the barrier hollow and fill it with water. That way, anyone trying to dig through would—well, let’s just say you wouldn’t want to be there when it happened. This was such an intriguing idea that Israel tried it several years ago, soliciting bids for a moat four kilometers long, 100 meters wide, and 80 feet deep. Estimated cost: $250 million. Israel scrapped the plan because the water would come from the sea and might contaminate Gaza’s groundwater. But the idea keeps coming back. Two years ago, Israel broached it again, and Egypt considered it. The U.S. officials who went to Egypt a year ago raised it again. Even the president of the Palestinian Authority has lobbied Egypt to do it.

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Monday, January 12, 2009

Israel: Gaza Webcam, Traps and Trickery, and the PR War

Filed under: Israel,Tactical Thought Process,Technology — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 1:48 PM

    All of this is developing, but we are definitely getting a picture of what modern day urban warfare really means.  This is a fascinating study, and these articles(4 total) give us a glimpse as to what is going with this.

   The couple stories that jumped out at me, was the use of tunnels:

 

In another case, soldiers discovered a mannequin dressed like a soldier at the entrance to a home, Halamish said.Had soldiers entered the home, the mannequin would have exploded, collapsing the floor and causing the troops to fall into a tunnel, where Hamas men would have tried to abduct them. 

 

   And this one:

 

Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli soldiers with their fire. 

 

   Tunnel warfare is definitely a factor in this war, like I was talking about earlier. The entrapment technique is different, and certainly one to watch out for.  Hamas wants to capture an IDF soldier bad. Although the IDF saw this coming a long time ago. 

      The Public Relations war is fascinating as well, and I posted earlier about some of the things they are doing to combat negative public opinion.  And what is really interesting, and I do not have any figures to back this up, is if the IDF or the Israeli government has monetized their PR effort?  

    You might laugh, but I am always watching commercials on all of the news channels, with some Israeli group asking for donations. Where as the IDF or the government might not ask directly for money from private donors, support groups within Israel are asking.  But for the government to take advantage of monetizing their online efforts with stuff like Google Adsense, would be very easy to do and would make them some money.  Or for them to put donation buttons on everything government related would work too. We already know that Israel receives money from the US government, but this new angle on financing wars would be an interesting study. Like I said with Obama and his online campaign, the power of the internet can certainly be used by an individual or even a country, to rally support and bring in donations for the cause.  The internet makes that process very easy to do.

   But all speculation aside, the biggest benefit of a major PR campaign online, is to defeat the other side’s PR campaign.  It is a war online, as well as on the ground, and there are no limits as to where this war is being fought.  –Matt 

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January 11, 2009

A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery

By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM — The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli soldiers with their fire.

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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Books: The Mission, The Men, and Me, by Pete Blaber

Filed under: Books,Tactical Thought Process — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 1:36 AM

   Yes, another winner of a book by one of America’s elite.  I guess by now the readers of Feral Jundi are noticing a trend with my book selections.  I look for books written by those that have been there and done that, and are considered to be the best warriors in the world. The members of the Unit are an elite crew, and when these guys talk, I pay attention.

   Also, the amount of these books coming out lately just amazes me, and everyone in the industry should try to take the time to read their stories and listen to their ideas.  The have a hard fought operational wisdom and common sense clarity that is very unique, and reading this stuff is pure brain candy for the security professional–almost Boydian (my new word for authors and their ideas that inspire me).  So let’s get on with my review.

   This book was named after the 3 M principle that Pete Blaber was introduced to early on in his military career.  It is a simple concept where the Mission comes first, your Men come second, and Me comes last in the order of priorities.  These principles have guided Pete through his entire career as a professional soldier and in his civilian life, and this is a major theme of the book.

   The format of the book is great.  For each chapter he discusses a leadership lesson learned, and tries to tie that in with the 3 M’s and what it takes to accomplish the mission.  So definitely do not skim this thing, because you will miss stuff.

   In this book, you will get a glimpse of Pete and his crew going on training treks through the mountains of Montana, to the various combat missions in this war and wars past.  He also talks about the various discussions he had with such individuals like Johnny Walker Lindh (American Taliban) and Ali Mohamed, and then ties in those interviews with the lessons we can learn from these individuals and how they were able to get so close to Usama Bin Laden(UBL).

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