 |
Fred's
Columns
In This 2,819th Month of American Independence, Pick a Year...
(The 2nd in a 3-part series in response to the UN’s announced “Small Arms Destruction Day” on July 9 with bonfires of piled rifles, some, at least, on US soil. If you think those guys are kidding, you don’t need to read this. Simply turn the page, and enjoy your guns while you can. For the rest of you, time to start thinking about the future. What do you need? A bullet in the forehead to wake you up? Hopefully, not. Hopefully, you are already worried.)
....any year, so long as it is in the future. You could pick 2005, but let’s pick 2015, so all the ‘over 50’ crowd can breathe a sigh of relief (they think they’ll be too old), and ask the question, “How would 1775 replay - in 2015?” Just hypothetically, because those that do not remember history are in danger of repeating it.
We set the stage by keeping as close as possible to the actual 1775 scenario, pointing up modern differences as they occur.
It begins when individuals in a small community perceive a threat to liberty and begin to prepare themselves for it by training in the rifle arts and militia skills. Unlike in ‘75, town governments will not be involved. Nope, it will be a individuals who see the threat and organize to meet it. You could argue it is a reversion to the America of the past - individual initiative and enterprise - like those highly successful privateers who so enraged the British a “couple of hundert” years ago.
Further assume that under pressure from the “world community”, more repressive gun laws are passed, with high-profile raids with casualties - a series of Wacos, if you will - which gets both sides in an alert, ‘fighting’ mode, with the ever lovely “tolerance and diversity” boys in the media hysterically whipping on the government to do something about lawless right-wing gun nuts. Then a hysterical and panicked “Jimmy Carter”-type president will call on the UN for assistance in controlling the ‘trafficking in small arms’. (Maybe not likely - but the last presidential election was not likely, either.)
So the preparations in this small community come to the attention of the authorities in Boston, and the decision is made: another raid to send yet another message.
Now we have to peel away two likely scenarios and leave them for future consideration. One being that the diffuse nature of the target will lead to simultaneous surprise raids by unmarked vehicles, or even simultaneous heliborne descents - the ‘other side’ not being as simple-minded as the ‘bloody’ British were in ‘75. The other would be if their intel notes rifleman skills, whereby the raids may be planned under cover of darkness with night vision, prepared to use chemical agents like CS and pepper spray. Surprise, speed, and brute force will carry the day, just as it did in Miami a year ago. [Yet “carrying the day” - that day - will only make the ‘next’ raid tougher, as the warning is heeded - analyzed and acted on - by the free forces. They won’t let that scenario happen again, if I know riflemen.]
To get to the narrow question at hand “How would it replay today?” also assume a ground expedition 17 miles out of Boston, against an alert countryside, just like in ‘75.
Let’s further provide an initial ‘dust up’ that warns everyone that the die is cast, and assume a minor skirmish with casualties, such as happened at Lexington, to set the stage for the encounter at Concord, and The Day.
With all that done, we are ready to proceed with our thought experiment.
You are part of a 3-man team which has been preparing for six months to defend freedom [just as in ‘75]. Say your community has 5 of these teams, and there are several more in surrounding neighboring towns which should arrive within hours of the encounter.
Remember the principles of your 21st-century team. Avoid becoming casualties while inflicting maximum casualties on the other side. Use your 500-yard marksmanship ability to keep out of their effective [300 yards, or less] range. If time permits, choose and prepare the encounter location with roadblocks, mapping out fields of fire and ranges to potential target locations. Act in coordination with other teams for maximum confusion on the other side with corresponding reduced casualties on your own, along with increased effectiveness on the target.
With a well-trained 3-man team 300- to 500-yards from the convoy, it may not matter much if the convoy has air assets, either recon or support (although a capability of dropping special teams in your vicinity would definitely be a problem). You are going to be too spread out and too well-camouflaged for aerial detection. Likewise, any air support will be of limited usefulness because 1) you will not be visible to either air or ground, and 2) three scattered men on the ground are not a ‘target rich’ environment suitable for air attack. Of course, they can get ‘lucky’...
Now, your weapons are going to be much different than ‘75. Accurate hits on targets 500 yards away every two seconds is a far cry from the musket boys.
On the other hand, those APCs are a tougher target, with .50s and the heavy punch of automatic grenade launchers [forget about the popguns of the troops - they at least will never touch you].
If you have advance warning, you can make the decision to move closer for the initial contact - say 300 yards, where you should be able to increase your rate of accurate fire as much as 50%, so you can force them to ‘button up’, limiting their fighting effectiveness. With the road blocked, the vehicles stopped, and the exposed targets knocked off or dropping within the vehicles, a ‘close in’ team 100- to 200- yards away opens up on vulnerable points - antennas, vision ports, and weapons ports - with AP [or ball], while an assault team just off the road fires ‘em up with Molotov cocktails. [You try not to put any riflemen on this team, because this is dangerous work, although made less dangerous if the riflemen can keep those weapons and vision ports under direct fire. That’s another reason to get qualified as a rifleman, so you can put your skills to use at ‘stand off’ distances.]
If they use US Army convoy drill as doctrine, you can expect vehicles in the kill zone to stop, the personnel to dismount and take cover, and return fire. [See STP 21-1 p. 297] If so, you are lucky, because it suggests that your SOP of dumping a mag each on the convoy, followed by a move to the next position, will give the other side time to relax, start moving around, take care of casualties, etc., so that by the time you are ready to open up again, you have ‘targets in the open’. For maximum delay and damage to the convoy, you can repeat the process - everytime they get up to move around, you cut loose - until the convoy surrenders, breaks out, or is reinforced...
You may even find that the first burning APCs may convince the others to give up, especially if you have blocked their rear, and then the real fight begins - dividing up the spoils! And, of course, the obligatory photo of your victorious battle-blackened teams posing on top of a burnt-out APC holding an unfurled, bullet-holed UN flag.
With five teams, you may have one in a ‘reverse blocking’ position, to catch/prevent any runaways, and another team downstream, to catch any that break through. In other words, like your ancestors in 1775, you try to put them in a ‘ring of fire’.
As a baptism of fire, it may be great, tempered by whatever casualties you take. But be somber about it, because the next time they will come prepared, maybe behind a screen of snipers, or ready with “quick reaction” heliborne insertions behind and around you. If they can get you in a close-in fight, they win. Every man you lose is almost irreplaceable as a rifleman in the cause of freedom, whereas they can commit special forces or common cannon fodder by the bushel.
Any soft-skinned vehicles in the convoy you are definitely going to stop, and, however the encounter develops, will remain for ‘picking over’ afterwards.
By the way, the actions of the convoy at the road block are critical, and the team SOP should be quite specific: when the convoy stops, all teams hold fire to give convoy personnel a chance to debark to look over the road block. Then the far team opens fire, the signal for all teams to open fire to catch maximum targets exposed. [The far team does it because they should have the best overall view, and the ‘crack’ of their bullets over the nearer teams is a clear - and positive - signal to ‘fire!’] If no one dismounts, only the far team opens fire, and the closer team allows the far team to complete firing, then targets antennas, vision ports, and firing ports on the vehicles to prep for the ‘grenadiers’. It’ll take some practice beforehand to get coordination to the point where someone doesn’t get ‘buck fever’ and let a round go off prematurely.
If the convoy does not stop, but slows down and is able to push past the roadblock, all teams open fire, the signal being the far team firing first. The ‘grenadiers’ attempt to fire bomb the moving vehicles.
One tough task is to decide how to block the rear of the convoy, since you don’t know exactly where it will wind up stopping. And yet you really need to block it, assuming you have a team which can take on the job. If soft-skin vehicles, you can ‘stop by fire’ and let the last one or two vehicles in line, typically armored, get away.
So, the battle field ‘density’ - at least on our side - is going to be FAR less than in ‘75. Both sides will be fighting somewhat smarter than in ‘75, mainly because of the increased lethality of the weapons involved. You’ll have to fight smarter to survive.
In only one aspect will you be like your brothers in ‘75 - by the time 2015 rolls around, few of you will have bayonet lugs on your rifles.
Afteraction: When the event is over, you sit down and do a ‘lessons-learned’, along with running some of their options from their probable ‘lessons-learned’. You gotta stay a jump ahead of them, and never use the same tactics twice in succession, cause they will come prepared to counter them, and nail you. You don’t want to be nailed. You want to nail them. So learn, and anticipate, and catch them with their pants down, next time, too.
Other considerations: For this to be a success, you need heavy individual camouflage, trained and intelligent team members who know how to move and shoot, and SOPs so that minimum communications are needed between teams, and time to prepare the encounter location with a hasty roadblock. Radios will be used only after the first shots [they’ll be listening], and then one-word codes only, but basically commo will be the sound of gunshots from the various teams. Shots from one direction? “That’s team 2, in the down-stream blocking position. Some Threat must have gotten through, and we are done here. Let’s go help them.” Initiative!
Remember your SOP regarding team coordination. When one team empties a mag apiece, another team in a different location opens with a mag each, while the first team moves. In the above scenario, we have modified it slightly by raising the ante with the assault team - somebody’s taken the decision that we’re really serious about stopping those SOBs, not simply harassing them.
Your team enters this fight with your battle rifle and at most, a team or two with home-made gasoline ‘cocktails’ to serve up to the Threat. With luck, you will exit with some additional ordnance which should give you more options in the next encounter.
Several questions are resolved by team SOP, such as fire distribution, and how you handle it if they clear your roadblock and some or all vehicles pass through. (Your downstream team will have something to say about it, but your team SOP may be to plan the initial encounter location where you can move out quickest to a downstream position for another crack at the convoy, maybe cutting cross country to do it.
Your SOPs will also guide you in handling smoke/badvisibility/rain/darkness which will sharply limit your marksmanship - and you can bet such opportunities will not be missed by the other side. If you have to get closer, the consolation is that your fire becomes far more effective. At 100 yards, a rifleman can put a hit on a vision port nearly every second!
They aren’t going to give up the fight easily, and the first day is just that, the first day, in what is likely to be a years-long conflict.
Next time they come, they come prepared, and you’ll have to be prepared, because you’re gonna lose people. All those lost chances to vote, to run good people for office, are going to be remembered, talked about, and sharply regretted, and there are going to be some resolutions made that, after all this is over, ‘never again’.
All this is, of course, a mere intellectual exercise, sort of a thought experiment, and would in practice be quickly modified by the actual experience. The second attempt at a convoy could be much different, depending on the ‘afteraction’ quarterbacking of your first experiment. But never forget that the other side will also be ‘quarterbacking’, so the next time they will probably not repeat the same procedures. One thing your team should definitely be prepared for is something different - a surprise. And be prepared always with a surprise or two of your own.
If you are 36 now, you will be 50 in 2015, getting near the upper limit for militia age group, complaining about your eyesight, and sore muscles and joints. But a 76-yr old took out two Brits on the Concord road on that spring day in ‘75, and a 79-yr old Boer farmer ‘mausered’ the British at 1200 yards, so maybe you won’t be ‘over the hill’. A 62-year old in RGC holds the rapid fire record on a popup at 300 yards with a Garand (16 hits/30 secs).
All the same, sitting down and writing a few ‘one minute’ letters to your representatives, which may avoid that whole scenario, does seem to be a pretty attractive alternative option. If you persist on the political front, educating your reps, talking to your discouraged friends, bucking them up, getting that new generation shooting, proud of the Bill of Rights, getting good people elected, you might just be able to spend Saturdays down at the range, having fun, and not dodging bullets. Be nice, wouldn’t it?
But, just as a precaution, you might want to acquire the skills now, while you have the time - and think about what you might be able to do - might have to do - on The Day.
On the same topic:
Hi Fred,
My name is Bob, and a few years ago I was a regular at RGC with an M1 and FN-LAR. Won once, too. I hang out with some other folks you know, too, so you can see that I might follow your column a bit. I rather enjoy it, even when my opinion differs...
Some..."police actions" are likely to occur in the US, primarily because the US will have to try to look like it bows to the international will, and is not above international law. [Spot on!] Obviously, the international movement to ban small arms has a great desire to use the US as its test case for mass disarmament. We gunowners are a rich and rewarding target for this effort, which would simultaneously disarm us, make us subject to international law, and remove any means of effectively opposing the process. They know that if they can "do" us, they can do anybody.
Here's the rub: the conflict that would result here from application of the foregoing would be a civil war in which the government and the majority would hunt down the minority (militant gunowners) and kill or jail them. [Sorry, but I believe you are wrong when you say ‘majority’. The ‘actives’ on the other side will be a minority, with a large mass of apathetics in the center, just like in the War for Independence.] Militant gunowners would lack the greatest asset of the guerrilla fighter, the presence of a sympathetic population to provide shelter and support.[See above comment - we’ll have more than you think sympathizing w/us.]
If you've read this far, here are my conclusions: 1) The freedom fighter will be regarded as a criminal and cannot expect any succor or aid from the general public. [Possibly, but not by the people that count - the other freedom-fighters] 2) He will have to act largely alone or will have to belong to a "cell" structure to limit damage when a cell is penetrated. [A good strategy] 3) His movements will have to be surreptitious in the extreme, he will have to travel light and move fast. [Good tactics, all] 4) He will have to use a variety of weapons to accomplish his mission. These may be pistols, knives, gasoline or explosives, as the situation dictates. 5) He will face a daunting array of sophisticated surveillance devices, night vision equipment, thermal viewers, etc, and will have to devise strategies to defeat or mitigate these threats if he is to be successful. [Only for Round One. After-wards, we’ll use the standard guerrilla option: take them from the enemy] I sincerely doubt that the [UN] is going to give any freedom fighter a "stand-up" battle. If they do, it will be only once, as it will cost too much. [Agreed: riflemen are a potent enemy]
I believe that if you are going to teach the practice of armed resistance to tyranny, you have to start with a thorough analysis of the tactical and strategic venue of the conflict. While I too find it satisfying to contemplate shooting-up a UN convoy for cause, in defense of the Constitution of course, I doubt that they'll ever give me the satisfaction. [How are they going to stop you?]
So, in conclusion, every weapon has its place. The AK, M16, and the UZI in entry/ meeting engagements, the rifle in sniping encounters, etc. I think that the US would be like Afghanistan was under the Soviets: at night the Soviets controlled less than in the day. [With NVDs and high-tech, they should own the night. With rifleman skills, we should own the day.]
Where I really do agree with you is in the following observation: a hundred Germans, the finest soldiers of their day, armed with machine guns and inexhaustible supplies of ammunition, surrendered to a Tennessee farmboy armed with only a bolt-action rifle and skill. Too bad the world is more complex now. [But the fight for freedom is the same, one you cannot afford to lose.] -Bob
Bob, a most interesting email. the
future is a dark mirror - easy to look into, but hard to see. The “UN convoy” offers the chance to paint an illustration of how ordinary Americans can use their rifles to protect their freedoms. And do it successfully And it’s just like we did it before, in ‘75.
Besides, it’s a plausible scenario.
By necessity, any occupying force has to physically occupy, and to do this must physically move to the location. They can do it by ground, or they can do it by air, in which case you may be shooting at planes. But as a rifleman, you will not be in the same league as those North Vietnamese peasants who brought down a jet with their M1944 Mosin-Nagants. You’ll be far more effective. And sooner or later, they will have to move on the ground, if only to patrol or occupy spots without airports of size to accommodate the big transports. Of course, they could use choppers, but again, I think American riflemen can adapt to the nature of the target and hit ‘em as needed.
Remember, you can say all the discouraging words you want, point out all the problems you can think of - and you’ll be doing a service, because solutions will have to be hammered out - and it’s best to hammer them out in advance - but always remember that we have to win. The alternative is to lose Liberty. And become slaves in our own country.
Up Next: “The Parable of Happy Valley” |
|
