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.

A lot of people prepare for contact. Fewer prepare for the part that happens first: being detected.

This thread is a tour of the specialized threats that make that gap costly. 🧵 Specialized Threats and Countermeasures.

“You can't say that civilization don't advance, for in every war they kill you a new way.”
-Will Rogers

The postmodern battlefield is radically different from the battlefields of the Second World War or even those of the Global War on Terror. It brings with it unique and specialized threats that riflemen should be keenly aware of in order to avoid meeting an untimely end. While a number of the threats that are encountered in the battlespace today are the same as they were 100 years ago, the tactics used by the threat actor and those countering it have changed. Snipers, IEDs, ISR assets, and landmines have all adapted to the 21st century in various ways while threats such as peers using NVGs and thermal observation equipment and drones are relatively new to the western battlespace.

It should be noted that this is not a be-all-end-all guide to identify and mitigate these threats perfectly. There are entire books dedicated to each subject. The goal is to familiarize yourself with them and understand the basics of them. Not everyone is going to encounter the same threats and some may never encounter any of them. Having a basic understanding, at the very least, puts you in a space that allows you to more proactively approach situations where they may be present or react to them in a more level headed way. Every threat encountered in the battlespace is unique in its own way and not every strategy is perfect to engage it, use common sense and discretion in the field.

Obstacles don’t stop you. Poor planning does.

Breaching is more than door kicking. It’s a battlefield art. Here’s how real fighters clear the way under fire.🧵 Breaching and SOSRA

Breaching is the act of creating lanes through enemy obstacles to allow assault forces to pass. In the zeitgeist, breaching is just when tier 1 guys blow up doors with C2 charges, but breaching is a very broad action and the drill of breaching a mined wire obstacle is actually one of the 14 primary drills taught by the US Army for infantry to be competent in the performance of. Breaching can be conducted on minefields, razor wire fields, walls and roofs of buildings, vehicle based obstacles like dragon’s teeth and tank ditches, and even the clearing of trees or crossing rivers. Breaching at its core follows the doctrinal sequence of SOSRA, where no matter what the application may be, the team can follow the steps and achieve a positive outcome when performing breaching tasks.

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.

If you think night fighting is just ‘buy NVGs and you’re good,’ you’re setting yourself up for a bad surprise.

Night ops are discipline, navigation, ID, and control. Gear is secondary. 🧵 Squad Night Operations

While fighting during the day is something that is well documented, covered, and explained by not only myself but many other people, night fighting is often neglected. While many of the same tactics carry over, owning the night is much more than just wearing NODs or buying LAMs. There are counters to every tactic and not knowing how to respond to threats is what gets good men killed. In this piece, night fighting will be covered from both the perspective of units with NODs and units without them.

If you think ‘bugging out’ means hiking all day and sleeping wherever you collapse, you’re missing a critical skill.

Patrol bases are how people actually operate when they need to stay hidden and functional. 🧵 Patrol Bases – An Introduction

When platoon sized elements or smaller (roughly under 50 personnel) need to temporarily stop while operating in the field, whether it be to rest, reorganize after an engagement, hide during a long reconnaissance mission, perform maintenance on equipment, or run a basic base for planning and executing their next operations, a Patrol Base (PB) is formed. The PB exists as a concealed and secure location for units to rest, resupply, and perform mission planning. The PB exists for less than 24 hours and the area is never reused by the same unit twice. The strength of these bases lies in their stealth and mobility. The unit is concealed and is never truly hunkered down, so they can leave at a moment’s notice.

From Vietnam onward, one of the hardest problems for modern militaries has been sustained low level disruption.

Harassing operations are how that pressure is applied. 🧵 Harassing Operations.

Harassing operations are the bread and butter of guerilla armies or for any force that benefits from utilizing small-scale attacks to disrupt hostile morale, logistics, or effectiveness in the field.

They are tools for longer-term conflicts where it may be more strategically advantageous to save manpower and focus on exhausting the enemy. The general goals of harassing operations are:

Exhaust the enemy psychologically and physically - preventing enemy forces from resting, recuperating, or generally maintain a well mental state due to a constant state of hyper arousal and worry as well as preventing them from organizing effective offensive strategies.

Force the enemy to overcommit resources towards defense – drawing resources away from the hostile force’s primary operational objectives, further wasting their resources.

Reduce their operational tempo from interference – by forcing their command structure to waste time, resources, and manpower redirecting efforts towards countering the harassing operations.

Disrupt their supply lines – logistics interdiction reduces hostile force sustainment capabilities as well as further wasting their resources.

Disruption of their communications and command structures – eliminating key positions and personnel to create disorder amongst the ranks, further hurting their collective psyche.

Impose disproportionate costs on the enemy relative to your force – self explanatory.

If we were to summarize these objectives into a single sentence it would be that it aims to “prolong the enemy’s suffering, reduce his strength over time, and prevent him from consolidating his gains,” as written by Mao Zedong in “On Guerrilla Warfare.”

But that then begs the question – what are these operations and how are they conducted?

Everyone talks about assaulting. Fewer people talk about the element that makes the assault survivable.

Support by fire is that element. 🧵 Support by Fire

Mutual fire support is three words that can mean a lot of things. It encompasses any form of direct or indirect forms of fire support. It can come from artillery and mortars, naval guns, CAS, and drones. It also has another form that is less discussed, the art of support by fire (I stole that phrasing from an infantry magazine).

Support by fire is conducted by a maneuver force or unit wherein the goal is to physically observe the enemy and engage them with direct and indirect fires. For the purposes of this article, the focus will be primarily focused on direct fire as I have no knowledge of weapon systems such as javelins, Bradley IFVs, TOW missiles, or main battle tanks. Support by fire is best conducted by a separate team supporting a primary assaulting team but the battlespace can be very fluid and demanding on limited resources. Support by fire can be conducted either as a form of mutual support (elements assisting each other reciprocally) or as a standard form of support.

A support by fire mission can be a lifesaving operation for a unit that is either about to attack an enemy element or is actively defending against one.

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.

The easiest way to die in a fight is to assume you have to ‘win’ it.

Sometimes the correct move is leaving. Fast, coordinated, and on purpose. 🧵 Breaking Contact

What happens when the mission doesn’t go to plan? Intelligence thought there was only a squad-sized element in this grid square, but it’s actually a platoon-sized element and now you are in danger of being overrun, captured, or annihilated. What do you do? You break contact.

Breaking contact is when a unit identifies that their adversary is the superior force and that continuing their current engagement will not end in victory but instead almost certain defeat. Other factors that may influence a unit’s decision to break contact include unfavorable terrain that may trigger a prolonged fight or being low on ammunition or supplies. Breaking contact can also be used in a hasty plan to set up an ambush or to reposition for a counterattack. Breaking contact is often mentioned in various manuals and handbooks but isn’t explained much beyond the statement of “create a plan to break contact.” Even useful tools such as the Ranger Handbook largely condense it into a battle drill that boils down to “use movement and fire to escape.” But how is that done, exactly?

The act of breaking contact is generally a reactive decision that may be part of a contingency plan but is not something deliberately planned ahead of time as the main mission, such as a tactical withdrawal. When breaking contact, the team attempts to completely leave the engagement and move to a different and more secure location.

When forces aren’t equal, the fight doesn’t have to be either.

The ambush is how smaller units tilt the balance. 🧵 Squad Tactics – The Ambush

The ambush has been a tool utilized in combat since the dawn of time. It is particularly useful for irregular and guerrilla forces due to its ability to leverage the element of surprise against a foe with greater weapons, gear, and numbers. The ambush can be conducted with a force of any size, but for the purpose of this article, and the series it is a part of, it will be focused on a force of about 10 men, a full squad of two 5 man teams. Each team is composed of a command element, an automatic rifleman or machine gunner, and 3 riflemen (for a greater understanding of the composition of a squad, see my article outlining the basics of squads).

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.

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.

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 humans have 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.

“We’ll just go on raids when it all kicks off.”
99% of people saying this have no idea how a real raid actually works.

Here's how raids actually work.🧵 Used from the conventional to the guerilla, the raid is another tool in the toolbox of various operations that can be conducted in the field with a squad sized element. With a history that stretches back to the bronze age, the raid continues to be a strong tactic utilized in the battlespace. Raids, sometimes referred to as, “smash and grabs,” are a fast-hitting attack with an underlying objective that does not involve taking and holding any land for a long period. Raids are the bread-and-butter operation of choice of irregular forces such as guerillas, commandos, militias, and other unconventional warfare elements. The raid is centered around the objective, the objective in question can be singular or plural in nature. The objective can be as simple as supply procurement or destruction to the complex world of psychological warfare. While raids can be scaled to almost any size, this article is going to cover a squad sized element.

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.

Nobody talks about this: during the 2003 Iraq invasion, the US had Mongolia as a key partner.

Their troops rolled in with Soviet-era weapons, gear, and even helicopters.

A ton of guys who served there had no idea they were fighting alongside the descendants of Genghis Khan!


US officers often remarked that Mongolian troops were, "unshakeable under fire," "hyper-disciplined," and took perimeter security extremely seriously. MP's often said that the best way to protect a base was to "give the gate to the Mongolians"

Your rifle is only as useful as your fundamentals.
A lot of people are skipping them.
They’re relying on gear to hide bad habits.🧵

Here’s how to train the basics correctly: Basic Marksmanship

The most fundamental skill needed for any proper rifleman, automatic rifleman, DMR, minuteman, or anyone who anticipates needed to employ long guns in a defensive posture is marksmanship. One’s ability to reliably aim, fire, and correct fire at close and moderate ranges is imperative, whether they are using iron sights, red dots, or a magnified scope, the fundamentals are the same. These fundamentals should be rock solid before things such as upgraded triggers, high end grips, and expensive scopes are bought. While useful, these things can help compensate for poor fundamentals, hurting you in the long run.

If you don't think we live in the digital panopticon, allow me to shake you to your core. 🧵

This is the state of Minnesota, showing the first few rings of suburbs. The numbers represent publicly identified Flock brand cameras. There are likely hundreds more that have yet to be labelled.

Flock cameras are sold to police departments, state and federal agencies, and even local governments as small and minute as HOAs.

Flock cameras note licenseplates, vehicle make/models, colors, traits such as roof racks and bumper stickers, direction of travel, location, and timestamp everyone who drives past one.

That information is freely accessible to police forces because it's collected by a private agency.

That data, like every other company who participates in Big Data, sells it to other brokers. Companies like Wal Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot, and many other national brands employ them in their lots as well. This extends beyond just the state abusing your rights.

Through the various firms that spy on us, you can be identified and tracked in real time to a location and pricing can be influenced on you in real time. You likes, your dislikes, your search history, your pornographic preferences, your sexuality, your illnesses, your very location, all coalesced into one soup that anyone can access without a warrant. Companies can then exploit that produce individual price discrimination, sometimes called "individual pricing" among many other doublespeak terms. This can be done trivially and is slowly being tested.

If I told you all of this was happening in China, you would be at your wits end. When it's in your backyard and done under the false pretense of capitalism, it's fine.

(Map is deflock(dot)me) This video here shows a police officer from the Columbine Valley in Colorado who, with the use of Flock cameras, become convinced that this woman stole a $25 package.

Watch the video in full. The officer speaks likes a member of the Stasi or the SDB.

Luckily she beat the charges because she had enough data on HERSELF that she gathered, things like her own locational data, clothing worn, her vehicle's locational data and more. She sent it to the police and they dropped the charges without so much as saying a word to her.

You can’t fight alone.

You fight as a fireteam — four men acting as one.

This is where real tactics begin. 🧵 Fireteams.

After mastering the buddy team and understanding the basics of how to maneuver as a unit composed of individuals, the next logical step is the fireteam. The fireteam is composed of four to five men and makes up one half to one third of a normal squad. The fireteam is compact, easy to maneuver, and much more self-sufficient than a buddy team. The fireteam is the smallest unit that is capable of coordinated simultaneous fire and movement.

Fireteams in their most basic form are composed of a team leader (TL), a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, and a grenadier as per US military doctrine. In a more irregular context, the team may be composed of three rifleman and a TL, one automatic rifleman, a TL, and two riflemen, or even a situation where there is a TL, a rifleman, a breacher, and a medic. Generally specialized inserts are added based on the mission and tasks needed to be conducted or threats that are anticipated; at the same time manpower constraints can lead to more unique fireteam compositions.

Regardless of the composition, the functional principles are that fireteams feature firepower, command and control, flexibility, and ideally specialization. This is what allows fireteams to operate as cells within the greater body that is a squad.

Two men. One covers, one moves.

The smallest tactical unit in existence.

Before fireteams or squads, you master this: the Buddy Team. 🧵 Buddy Team Fundamentals

Before we run we must first learn to walk, prior to that we must crawl. Before jumping into working with a full squad of ten men, one must first become comfortable and fluid working with another, a buddy. Starting with duos after becoming comfortable with the basics of weapons handling and individual movements builds safety and cohesion as well as communication skills that are all transferable upwards as the number of men working together increases. Buddy teams are simple two-person units that operate as a single warfighting element, they are the building block that get us to fireteams. They are the smallest tactical element and they share in responsibility of each other, maintain mutual security of each other, communicate clearly, and move with purpose.

Buddy teams ensure that nobody fights, moves, or survives alone.

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.

You bought the gear. You read the manuals. You played the sims.

But when it comes time to move, fight, and survive, are you actually ready? 🧵

Training isn’t optional. It’s what separates a functioning unit from a group of armed civilians Training Methods for Small-Unit Preparedness

No matter how many technical manuals you read, how many times you and your buddies played SWAT 4 and Arma, or how much everyone spent on their kit; without training, everyone will be useless in the field. Luckily that isn’t the end of the story. By adhering to a training regime and sticking to common training methods, prepared citizens can become more robust in their personal skills and the skills their team brings to the field.

ALRIGHT WE GOT CONFIRMATION. TIME FOR A CONSOLIDATION THREAD 🧵

WHO IS THE MINNEAPOLIS MASS SHOOTER ROBIN WESTMAN? Robin was born with the name Robert and changed their name legally to Robert to coincide with their gender transition.