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.

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.

🧵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...

🧵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.

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.

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.

🧵Most people think a “Modern Minuteman” means expensive gear and night vision, missing the entire point

The original Minutemen weren’t defined by equipment.

They were citizens trained to respond and coordinate immediately.

That’s a tradition worth reclaiming. The "Army of One" is a fantasy.

Minutemen were citizens drilled to be a quick reaction force, an integral part of the "well-regulated militia".

My new book, "Modern Minuteman," is a primer for those who want to be an asset, not a liability, with over 400 pages of knowledge!

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.

You’ve seen it in Heat. Val Kilmer sprints, drops, and covers De Niro in the middle of a firefight. That’s not Hollywood flash, it’s real doctrine. 🧵

"I’m up, he sees me, I’m down."

IMT explained. Individual Movement Techniques (IMT)

Individual movement is the most basic foundational block for all unit tactics. Whether it be raids, patrolling, bounding, or any movement done in the field, IMT is the baseline that everything else is built upon. IMT at face value seems like a silly topic to cover, you may tell yourself that “I already know how to do an army crawl and I know how to run!” but IMT, and training it, is what allows individuals to properly move under fire and resist freezing, overreacting, or in a worst case: standing straight up. IMT drills are done to prevent this and inoculate against fear responses.

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.

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.