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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 17

You’ve got minutes before they’re on top of you.

Is your defensive position secure, or will it collapse at first contact? 🧵

Knowing how to build a fighting position properly is a lifesaver. Here's how you do it.

Basic Fighting Positions

For as long as man has found it pertinent to kill one another, there has been a need for field construction to build defensive and offensive structures to gain an advantage over an adversary. From the siege towers of medieval Europe to the hastily built trenches of modern Ukraine, fighters have felled many trees and dug many pits to defend positions, obfuscate their location, and protect them from fire. While every rifleman is not a combat engineer, every rifleman should have a repertoire of the basic fighting positions that they can dig in the field under their belt.

Fighting positions are more than simple holes to hide in during artillery barrages. Fighting positions do provide a lot of protection from enemy fire, shrapnel from explosives, and other forms of indirect fire but they also provide an easy way to organize a team into fields and sectors of fire to overwatch large areas with little overlap. Positions can be built in a manner that allows units to defend a location of any shape or size, offering opportunities for even full 360-degree coverage if the situation demands it.

Position selection.

When selecting a location for a fighting position the acronym of KOCOA is commonly utilized for assessing prime locations for fighting positions. KOCOA is often used for tactical and strategic battlefield analysis. The letters stand for:

K – Key Terrain: Key terrain is terrain features that give a tactical advantage to either side or it may be an objective that must be taken or held. This could be a hill, ridge, gulley, bridge, or a building that oversees an area with a lot of enemy movement. Key terrain should be occupied or at the very least, denied to the enemy.

O – Observation and Fields of Fire: The ability to see your enemy and effectively engage them with direct or indirect fire is a core necessity of a proper fighting position. Fields of fire should be clear. Examples of an ideal field of fire would be down the slope of a hill or across an open field as both provide excellent line of sight for the defender while minimizing their own visual signature (especially for the one looking down a hill, these are some of the best fighting position locations).

C – Cover and Concealment: Cover protects from bullets and shrapnel while concealment hides one from view. Ideally a fighting position should offer both protection and stealth. If a decision must be made for only of those, the selection of which will depend entirely on circumstances unique to the situation such as the enemy, the team and their abilities, the objective, etc.

O – Obstacles: Obstacles will slow or halt enemy movement. Obstacles can be natural such as rives and cliffs or manmade with area denial tools like razor wire and minefields. Positions should be placed behind or beside obstacles in order to funnel enemy movement into the team’s fields of fires.

A - Avenues of Approach: Routes in which the enemy force can use to advance toward the team or their objective are the avenues of approach. These should be covered with fields of fire. Positions should not be on or in these areas unless there are no other options as they place the team in direct confrontation with the opposing force.

While the acronym is clumsy like most military acronyms, KOCOA provides leaders with a simple tool to identify strong areas for positions to be placed to better confront their enemy.

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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 14

The U.S. military has been warning about this problem for over a decade and Ukraine just proved them right.

Area denial isn’t about winning ground. It’s about making movement impossible. 🧵

Area denial, sometimes referred to as anti-access, is a common military tactic to control the access into and out of an area. Area denial is a particularly useful tool for irregular forces such as smaller special forces teams, guerrillas, and militias. The US military considers the adoption of area denial strategies by adversarial forces as, “[something] that may well be the most difficult operational challenge US forces will face over the coming decades.” While that quote may be from 2012 (JOAC 17 January 2012), it still rings true and can be seen in areas such as Ukraine where FPV drones create zones that units can only enter at their own peril. Area denial is a powerful tool in the strategic toolbox for units to make use of to help slow or fully stop the movement of enemy forces through an area. As usual, little disclaimer right here.

THIS IS NOT ADVICE TO GO DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL. DO NOT BREAK THE LAW. DO NOT CONSIDER BREAKING THE LAW. I DO NOT SUPPORT ANY EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS OR MOVEMENTS. I DO NOT SUPPORT ANY INSURRECTIONIST MOVEMENTS. I DO NOT ADVOCATE FOR ANY EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS, OR IDEAOLOGIES. PLEASE DON’T DRONE STRIKE ME.

Key Principles.

Prior to getting into the various forms of area denial and how they are employed, the key ideas behind it need to be explained. Beginning with the economy of effort. That is to say, the goal of creating the greatest effect with the least amount of effort. If we want to stop an enemy in an area, you can position an army in an area but that requires men, supplies, logistics, weapons, and more that you have to take away from other areas. Instead, if you can leave behind a series of traps with only a handful of men, you maximize your defensive capabilities without having to throw piles of resources at the issue.

Area denial is also a very robust strategy that can be used in rural or urban environments, different strategies and tools can be employed in different environments. Whether the force is denying a road in a mountainous area or a series of fields in the flatlands of Iowa, area denial can be employed to great success.

Area denial strategies also synergize well with other common defensive measures and can create overall plans of defense that are iron clad despite having limited equipment or manpower. For example, making use of observation posts operating as an observer for an FPV unit or an ambush that triggers when an enemy unit triggers a trap. This allows the already amplified force to be multiplied by an even greater factor.

Finally, is the psychological impact that area denial tactics have. Creating a zone of alienation that units cannot enter lest they put themselves in peril creates a heavy sense of unease in the enemy, weakening their fighting spirit. Couple this with any losses gained in the area, it can force smaller sized units in the area to think twice about entering the area and overall hurt the morale of the enemy.

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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 9

🧵A lot of you are terminally blackpilled. You are doing exactly what they want.

The incessant and obscene messaging is rooted in a 70-year-old blueprint for breaking the human will, rooted in the Korean War.

Understand the mechanisms and break yourself and others free:

Modern social engineering is a very refined version of the Thought Reform techniques the Chinese pioneered during the Korean War.

In these camps, beatings and physical torture took second chair to mental anguish and group ostracization.

The same tools that were utilized to try and create human robots that would espouse Chinese communism over 70 years ago are still being utilized today to manipulate populations and society as a whole.

First, we need to establish the history of this procedure and what it initially entailed...

Thought Reform and Brainwashing During the Korean War.

After capturing US soldiers, the Chinese military interned these men into camps where they were focused on turning them into tools of the state. Soldiers that would admit to crimes they did not commit such as saying they used chemical or biological agents in the field to hurt the United States on the international stage. The theory also held that after returning them home, the soldiers would carry their new programming and spread it among the US, leading to a communist revolt such as the one conducted by Mao. There were 7 key aspects to the Chinese brainwashing program. They were as follows: milieu control, mystical manipulation, confession, self-sanctification through purity, loading the language, doctrine over person, and dispensing of existence. We will delve into each of these.

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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 7

🧵Most prepared citizens want to be fit.

Most people have no idea where to start.

Here’s the no-BS guide to getting there. 🧵

Getting Fit:

It’s no surprise that most people in the US and Western civilization as a whole are not physically active enough. Many people are overweight, have little muscle endurance, and absolutely no cardiovascular ability. By not maintaining some basic level of physical fitness one is put at much higher risk for various health conditions such as heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and a number of cancers by up to 40% in some cases. From a more practical and less abstract approach, US Army data shows that soldiers with higher aerobic capacity and muscle endurance had less non-combat injuries in the field, as well as being more effective in their roles in the field.

From a prepping perspective, not being mildly to moderately fit puts yourself at a massive disadvantage and makes one a liability. Fitness means you can do the physical tasks such as walking home with a 30 pound get-home (bug out) bag, it means you can haul water from a body to your home for purification, it means you can cut up and remove the fallen tree after the tornado in your front yard, it means you can properly engage a potential threat if the fight lasts longer than a minute. Prepping is often thought of a “hobby” where you are just hoarding goods and items (something I have fought vehemently against and wrote 2 books because of it), as a byproduct of that mentality, the body is often neglected. Both from a medical perspective and a fitness perspective. Prepping is as much about “weathering the storm,” as it is about being able to effectively operate after it. You can’t be a basement shut-in forever.

Thankfully getting a basic level of fitness doesn’t require you to become a psychopath who lives in the gym and eats nothing but liver and chicken breast for ever meal. You can make minor adjustments that grow your abilities with TIME without even needing a gym membership! Americans tend to want to go hard and fast with things, expecting instant results, this is one of the many cases where that is not realistic. To become better we must slowly build ourselves up. The purpose of this piece is to help those who are just starting find initiative, assess their current abilities, build a weekly exercise regimen, and then stick to it. I also want to briefly touch on diet at the tail end of this.

Assessing Current Abilities.

Before determining what sort of exercise plan one is going to adhere to, they need to determine what their current abilities are. This unfortunately is a usually a very humbling experience and needs to happen. Without knowing what one’s limitations are, they risk injury, overtraining, or wasting time on an inappropriate plan.

Cardiovascular endurance can be tested in a high impact and low impact test, ideally one performs both. The high impact test begins with a 5 minute walk, then try to cover 1.5 miles as fast as one can without harming themselves. This does not mean push yourself beyond your limits and risk injury. If you need to stop or walk, that’s okay. After achieving 1.5 miles the time taken is noted and checked against a generic reference. If it takes less than 13 minutes, one is an above average point for a beginner, for between 13 and 16 minutes, that is a relatively average start point, and if it is longer than 16 minutes, they are below average (and that is okay!). The low impact test is a 6 minute walk on a flat surface and after 6 minutes the distance is noted, healthy adults often exceed 500 to 600 meters (~1600-1900 feet). Note all of this information for the next section and for goal planning.

Testing muscular strength likewise is a relatively quick process and does not require any specific equipment, bodyweight is a decent enough baseline. Begin with testing pushups, see how many you can do without breaking form. If you can’t even do one, try knee pushups, if you can’t do one, try against a wall! Then try squats, perform as many as you can in one set. Then try a pull up if you have a pull-up bar (very cheap online and cheaper if bought used), if you cannot do one, try a flexed arm hang, if you can’t do longer than a second, note it. Finally try a forearm plank and hold it as long as you can with good form. Note all of this information for the next section and for goal planning.

You can also test your mobility and flexibility with a sit and reach test where you sit flat on the ground, legs extended, knees straight, and reach forward. Not being able to reach past your toes is generally regarded as a negative score and is something to work on.

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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 7

If your buddy took a GSW RIGHT NOW—could you actually keep them alive until help arrived? Or would your lack of basic combat medicine skills get them killed? 🧵

Combat medicine saves lives yet many shooters have no idea how to do it in a calm setting, much less under pressure...

Quick disclaimer. I AM NOT A DOCTOR. THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. SEEK ALL MEDICAL TREATMENT FROM A PROFESSIONAL! This article provides basic educational information only and does not substitute professional medical training or advice. Always seek proper medical training from qualified instructors. The author is not liable for any actions taken based on the information provided.

Basic Combat Medicine for the Every(rifle)man

Combat medicine is a topic that is rarely discussed despite it being lifesaving at its core. It is often ignored or forgotten in favor of trusting that a medic will be nearby when the unthinkable happens. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case and sometimes the basic actions taken by non-medical teammates can save the life of someone in dire need. Thankfully in recent years tourniquets have clamped their way down into the zeitgeist but as we’ll discuss, there are other basic measures that should be known, understood, and practiced by the average rifleman so they have the skills to save the lives of their comrades or even themselves.

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Spike

@spikesguides

Feb 6

You’re moving through the woods.
It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Would you recognize the signs of an enemy lying in wait, or stroll straight into their kill zone? 🧵

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance, or recon for short, is the deliberate collection of information relating to hostile forces, terrain, and the environment that forces will be operating within. Recon’s central objective is to gather intelligence, not to engage in kinetic actions. The intelligence gained from recon operations can give smaller fighting units the tactical edge that they need to leverage against a larger, hostile force. Without recon, forces are operating blindly in an area, working against the whims of the battlespace, but when teams are operating with the intelligence gained from proper recon, they can set the terms of their fights.

Purpose of Reconnaissance.

There are five primary objectives of the recon mission and the use of recon in general. They are: gathering information on the enemy, learning the area’s terrain, providing an early warning against enemy activity, supporting operational planning, and giving a psychological edge.

When gathering information on enemy personnel, recon teams can quantify and note things such as the number of enemy personnel, their uniforms, units, weapons, locate supply lines, and even estimate morale. Recon teams also observe and note movement patterns, keeping eyes on when guard shifts change, patrol timings, and convoy schedules.

Teams that are performing terrain study, also known as area study, are identifying potential choke points, highlighting natural cover and concealment, obstacles, and defensible terrain. Teams also take note of important local resources such as water, shelter, escape routes, and in some cases even food sources.

With regards to early warnings, recon teams sweep areas to detect likely ambush locations, or even identify actively manned ambush positions, IEDs, land mines, or enemy troop concentrations prior to contact. Recon teams identifying threats before the rest of the element enters the area can save lives by having maneuver elements avoid ambushes entirely or maneuvering around area denial assets.

Operations that are planned with good area intelligence are doomed to fail. The intelligence gained by recon teams can be the difference between a successful raid or ambush or total failure. Teams that identify and locate defensive positions based on avenues of approach are spotted during recon operations. While ambushes can be conducted in an ad-hoc way, an ambush planned around good area intelligence will almost always go better than the one without.

The mind is as important of a battlefield as the physical one, the status and soundness of it influence every facet of operations from the command level to the individual. Units that know the ground they are working on and the basics about their enemy in the area will operate more confidently and effectively than those who are working in the dark, giving them a psychological boost. At the same time, an enemy that knows they’re being scouted are likely to be more paranoid and apprehensive when working in the field. Finally, leaders that are equipped with quality intelligence will make faster, and better decisions.

Recon operations are conducting much more analysis than squinting on top of a hill at an enemy base (despite what Guntubers will tell you). Proper recon is as integral to the planning and conducting of operations as well as the overall proper functioning of a unit as equipment and supplies. Reconnaissance is how the intelligence that makes or breaks plans is gathered.

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