how does one defend from a stiff insertion ”lethal interdiction?” … counter-mission planning … the old fashioned way …
please read as an allied topic, this article preceding, if you have not already.-- http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2011/05/helmet-cam-on-the-shooter-a-bit-showy-eh-well-not-really-.html
everything about the assassination of osama bin laden has proved fascinating. not the least of it is the command structure of the jsoc itself, and the intimacy it has with the very top of the command chain, the office of the president of the united states and his cabinet, including the secretary of state and the head of the central intelligence agency & other intel apparatus.
have you ever heard of the praetorian guard?
what if this part of the military apparatus were to become so intertwined with the chief executive as to become something of a praetorian guard, and were to evolve into a tool of domestic oppression should the president of the united states face serious opposition?
what if you were part of that opposition? how would you defend against a stiff insertion "lethal interdiction" such as put an end to osama bin laden? make no mistake about it, osama bin laden rots in hell as his just desserts? but, pray consider that someday someone may view you are equally deserving? it all depends, as friend rickie c. kimbrough is wont to say, on who’s ox is being gored, … , or, put another way, you may view the matter differently if you are being lethally interdicted with a stiff insertion.
i digress & diverge, to make a point.—
yesterday i toured the b reactor at the h.e.w., hanford engineering works, wherein was produced the plutonium for the united states nuclear programs from 1945 to 1968. now, this nuclear reactor was not at all what i expected: the absence of digital control, e.g., computers was not a surprise particularly, nor was the presence of all mechanical and analog instrumentation. the bomb was built, after all, before the full advent of such things.
nope, what was astounding to me was the total absence of any sort of reactor ”containment vessel” in which the production of plutonium took place, and the utter simplicity in a mechanical sense of the production technique of the plutonium.
the production of plutonium, u-239, took place in a large block of graphite through which ran approximately 2” tubes of aluminum, about 36” long were inserted, and into which isotope of uranium u-235 was shoved in one end, ”cooked” for several months in the constant bath of neutrons set free by the near critical mass of the stuff, and shoved out the other end into a bath of water as u-239. yes, it ”cooked” faster in the middle.
in a mechanical sense, utter butt wipe simplicity. oh, i grant you, you would have to know a little bit about nuclear physics to conceive such a thing, … , for instance, you could shove sintered steel into one end & out the other for millenia, and not produce any plutonium, mechanical simplicity be damned.
and, the japanese succeeded in shutting down production of the stuff, but rocks taken from the columbia river bed foiled the attempt.
you didn’t know that, did you? well, the japanese sent explosive laden balloons toward the united states, launching them into the jet stream. one was found in southern oregon, and killed several people investigating it. and, one of those balloons landed in an electrical sub-station at the hanford works while the b reactor was busily cooking away, and cut electrical power to the b reactor.
not to worry. the loss of electricity shut off a magnetic switch holding three very large metal tanks of river rock in the air, allowing them to settle to the concrete floor below. those rocks powered a mechanism which caused the insertion of 9 boron shafts into the interior of the graphite reactor core, shutting down the reactor entirely, as the boron absorbed the chain reaction of neutrons inside the core.
river rocks in metal tubs, essentially, averted the melt down of the plutonium producing b reactor which might otherwise have been caused wholly inadvertently by the japanese balloons.
butt wipe simple, all that. k.i.s.s. keep it simple, stupid.
huh?—
the first thing you do if you want to protect from hostile, "lethal interdiction" stiff insertion, is to hire guys who can stay away on sentry duty. this means you maintain discipline and vigilance.
the second thing is, you stay mobile. you do not become fixed to one spot, for two long. and, the as a corollary to this, you maintain your skedaddle capacity, no matter what. now, osama bin laden got fixed to a point, as surely as a butterfly on a specimen board. and, he lost his ”bug out” ability, big time. two or three minutes of distance between his compound and the arrival of the seal team might have saved his scraggly butt. he would have been inserted into unfriendly water, but, then again, he might have again reached safe haven, rather than being killed in his own bedroom.
the third thing you do is defend against the likely method of attack. if you can reasonably anticipate that attack will come by helicopter because that is the only way they can reach you before you skedaddle, then it damn well behooves you to be able to defend against helicopters.
if osama bin laden and crew had possessed a couple of heavy machine guns, or rockets, or even rocket propelled grenades to use as the copters came in close over his compound, this whole thing might have turned out very much differently. now, a dozen big ma deuces up his sleeve would not have availed osama bin laden and his men of hench one iota, had the preferred method of attack been high level delivery of explosives, or had the seals been content to stand off with missile attack copters.
you cannot anticipate or defend against everything, after all. even a jet stream air balloon will get to you now and again. but, you take the precautions and measures that you can, given your reasonable assessment of the dangers likely to present themselves. and, if you get caught in the bath tub or the sack with your favorite no. 4 wife, you make sure you have your rocks in the buckets.
the fourth thing you do, keep your lines of communications open. in his comment to my blog piece, virgil caine observes that the locals probably had their communications lines interdicted and suppressed, by a big friendly bird flying above. now, it is one thing to jam radio communications, it is quite another to jam the use of localized hard wired telephone lines, or to suppress the use of signal flares and the like, in case the cavalry is to be called. (or, for that matter, as in osama’s case, one might have wished to summon calvary. hat tip, jewish odysseus.)
and, the fifth thing you do, if help is needed, is to have some help handy who are ready and willing to fight. if this is not possible, it is not possible. if the above avails you nothing, then be prepared to kiss your ass good bye, on such terms as you find acceptable, and on such terms as will allow you to make a fight of it before your inevitable demise.
in his letter to me, virgil caine observed that it would have done osama bin laden little good to have summoned help, as u.s. forces could have interdicted them, and wiped them out. of all of virgil’s comment, i find this less than compelling.
for one thing, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. all kinds of little things can happen which can put an adversary off schedule, or expose him to risk of not be able to do a proper extraction of his forces, or upset the coordination of his attack. and, might induce an adversary, even though he is able to inflict harm, to call off an attack before it achieves it objectives.
what virgil did not say in his letter, but you can rest assured that he would have considered it had he been in charge of planning this assault, is what level of casualties the u.s. would have been willing to inflict upon paki forces had they come to osama bin laden’s aid. i have no doubt that the united states would have inflicted that level of damage & casualties upon paki forces necessary to extract the seal team, or any other assets that might have been casualties themselves, and q_d help us if i am wrong in that assessment. but, i very seriously doubt that the united states would have been willing to shoot the living hell out of pakistani military forces just in order to have kept the assault alive long enough to kill osama bin laden. i don’t think that obama bin laden would have been willing to accept the political fall out resulting from such an eventuality, and the likely loss of a considerable number of seals (they are not, after all, bullet proof), just to get osama bin laden.
keep these matters in mind, lest you anticipate becoming the object lesson of the day of a vengeful chief executive/tyrant bent on wiping out your resistance to totalitarian rule. and, understand, that if such a chief executive has at his disposal the weapons brought to bear on osama bin laden (hey, we didn’t even discuss real time satellite visual observation and electronic surveillance, did we?) in this j.s.o.c. assault, you may not be able to do very much at all to prevent being located, and being attacked.
even at that, even assuming fast flyers overhead, and c-130 gunships and all the other contingencies in depth as may be brought against you, … , by the use of a few simple expediencies to be brought to bear in your defense at the point of attack, you can make the likely cost so dear as to rob a tyrant of the political expediency lent by an attack upon you.
randy weaver and the branch davidians illustrate the peril of becoming fixed in a location, no matter how isolated. or, put another way, they illustrate that isolation is no defense if you are discovered, and if you have no way of maintaining your skedaddle capacity or discovering an attack before it has closed upon you.
this is the key thing, isn’t it. if you have not discovered that you are being assaulted until the tip of the spear is poised above your ribs, then you have little recourse except to surrender or go down fighting. and, you better anticipate the latter, as your adversary is likely not to be in any mood to accept surrender.
in the end, this was osama bin laden’s major failing. either his intel assets failed to detect the raid, or he failed to heed the warning signals. in any event, he was caught on the board and pinned, just like the butterfly.
consider your own situation. would you consider a cabin in the deep woods a good place to hunker down, or would an urban neighborhood with friends around you be the better place? consider the case of the fire breathing imam preaching attack on the united states:
it is one thing to do if from a mosque in amascus, quite another from a mosque in brooklyn, new york. if your mosque were in brooklyn, would you reside in a lake side cabin in the catskills, or would you take an apartment building in brooklyn, in a neighborhood with shopkeepers who know and befriend you, and dozens of children and teenagers on the street extending many blocks away, keeping a weather eye out for operatives w/ buzz cuts and shoes and slacks that don’t look right. and, would you have in the basement of the mosque the stores to defend yourself, and eager young lads to rise & rally to your defense should attack be imminent?
in short, would you depend upon a neighborhood of like minded souls to give you intel in depth at the point of attack, that would provide your defense, and would act to preserve your skedaddle from the point of an attack as we are considering herein?
now, in considering such things, you cannot rule out betrayal and discovery. it cannot be done. the fellows at guantanamo could not have conceived that upon their capture osama bin laden would not have accounted for their telling the u.s. intelligence interrogators certain things, after exhausting interrogation, and would not have taken measures accounting for this.
eight years later, he employed the same two brothers as couriers? who could have conceived of such a thing?
account for it.
account for the fact that you will never have spy satellites capable of real time surveillance, and quite likely you will not have electronic counter measures to scramble them, or send them tumbling off into space. account for the fact that you will never have at your disposal a squad of f-16’s to fly overhead cover, not a c-130 electronics counter measure bird to flying along with another c-130 ”puff the magic dragon” to provide local artillery support. and, don’t bother that you cannot radio in the cavalry.
take care of what you can account for, and worry over that, in planning counter-mission planning, in avoiding a stiff ”lethal interdiction” insertion. if you don’t want a butt fucking, then take care of what you can take care of, and think it out thoroughly.
even in a neighborhood, be mobile. do not become a fixed target.
stay mobile.
and, if you are able to make the choice between fighting and going down with the ship, or running away so that you may fight another day, for g_d’s sake, maintain your skedaddle capability. be able to exit on a moment’s notice, even if you have to break from the arms of your no. 4 wife, and to beat cleats.
and, have a safe lily pad upon which to scoot to, and upon which to land, and from which you can make your longer term exit. and, scoot to it.
and, have some place to go. with money, and provisions, and arms and ammo.
now, if you will stay and fight.—
give some thought to the mode of the attack that will be launched against you. accept that if it is to be a 500 lb smart bomb, there is not much you can do about it, except to be right with your maker at all times, and your will in order with a trusted attorney.
but, if you face helicopter born assault, consider how you may prepare for it with the proper weapons. not being an islamic jihadist terrorist bastard, you are not going to be able to come up with a brace of ma deuces, in all likelihood. but, you can acquire a couple .375 h&h magnums, and i can assert without fear of contradiction, that if you can get a pill or two from one of those babies into the turbine of a helicopter, it is not going to do its motivation any good. try and plan to put the helicopters on the ground before they want to, or to be able to damage them in order to upset the schedule of the attack. do anything you can do to brunt an anticipate attack, to keep the attack at a distance, for as long as you can. you might take a look at the barret arms web site.
do you face urban assault by someone dumb enough to try and use heavy tanks and/or troop carriers? gasoline and mason jars, if advance planning and preparation are available to you, are pretty good palliatives for the anxiety brought on by such things. this is why, friend, that armies do not like street to street fighting, because it negates the power of the modern army.
if you are an urban dweller, assault brought against you by a governmental force is likely to come foot borne. if it is brought against you by conventional forces, it will be conventional, and you will have time to exploit it. get some field manuals, understand the doctrine and the habits of the persons who are going to attack you, and prepare for it yourself. it will be an exercise just like chess. the point of the whole thing is, to try and preserve as many options in defense and exit, as you can.
the point of the whole thing is, to try and preserve as many options in defense and exit, as you can.
if you are an urban dweller, and assault brought against you by a governmental force is to be carried out by seals, or marine recon or army rangers, it will come swiftly, and you likely will not detect it until the point of the spear is poised above you.
so, be prepared to initiate your defense when your adversary is upon you, in which case, keep it simple, stupid.
be vigilant, and be on guard, and be sure as hell that you are awake, for the attack will likely come in the dark, when you are drowsy and disoriented upon awakening. so, be awake, e.g., make sure you have a sentry or two, and that they are awake and on guard. and, if you can have intel which is awake, and giving you several blocks of cover, trust them, and react to what they tell you, every time.
understand and have figured out the available routes of attack to your lair, and have that defended, and sighted in. have the weapons to be used in your defense at hand, and have them loaded.
and, pick weapons to use that are heavy enough to inflict damage. if you have nothing but 7.62x39mm or 5.56mm nato at your disposal, well, something is better than nothing at all, i suppose. better that you have a rifled weapon in the 7.62x51mm nato class, at a very minimum, and lots of ammo.
but, understand something. if you are assaulted by a latter day praetorian guard, and they are intent on killing you with a ”lethal insertion,” and you stay to fight, quite likely they are going to kill you and relatively quickly, unless you are tenacious, prepared, and armed enough to inflict casualty and death upon them. and, to keep them at a distance, if you can.
and, if you do get some of them, it is not going to be many. so, if you intend to fight, get the .308 with armor piercing military ball ammo, or even better, a .30-06 with armor piercing slugs, so that you can defeat the body armor & helmets of your attackers. i would propose a bolt action rifle, scoped and nigh vision capable.
try and get some sure kills before you are killed. paradoxically enough, this silly sounding statement may be your salvation. it may slow the attack, or stop it, not because of military considerations, because when these elite troops have their blood up, and they see the red of battle, they will come for you until they get you, … , unless their handlers call them off for political considerations.
it is best to avoid battle with such elite soldiers, because they will not be dissuaded. but, if it happens, be aware you can only dissuade the handlers, who watch on the other end. if you do battle with an eye to survive it, it is best to understand who you really fight, and the measures necessary to take in order to come out the other end alive, and a piece of u-239, cooked and hardened in the reactor. you have to influence the handlers to break off the attack, before you are killed: you will not stop the seals, even if you hurt them.
you have to be able to kill enough of your attackers to take the taste of battle from the handlers, because you will not be able to defeat the tip of the spear, you have to break the will of the haft, e.g., the handlers, for the fight.
in order to do that, you have to be able to kill, and to kill surely. this means aimed fire in order to disable or induce those things bringing the troops to battle to fail, and if battle is close upon you, you have to be able to deliver aimed fire sufficient to beat body armor, and sufficient to kill your attackers.
”pray and spray” ain’t gonna do it, and neither will popguns. don’t worry about expending a bunch of ammo, you are not going to live long enough to do that anyway, if that were your only goal. if you only shoot six shots, but each is telling, you will have gone a long way towards surviving. ten shots, if killing shots, would be quite wonderful, within the context we are discussing.
but, keep it simple, stupid. follow the basic rule. stay alert. don’t get tied to one position. be able to run to safety, on a moment’s notice. and, if you do not want to die, be able to run like a damned bunny rabbit.
if you must fight, pick on people that you can kill, and avoid fights, because you will get killed in fair fights, almost every time. if you must fight, plan them like the seals did with osama bin laden, plan a fight you can win, and when you have done it, when you have won it, don’t gloat in public, but withdraw to the next fight.
if you are to ”win” fights with the seals and the rangers and the marine recon, and even your local national guard, then you must emulate the seals who carried the fight to osama bin laden, and strike and withdraw.
if you emulate osama bin laden, you will suffer bin laden’s fate. a double tap, right to the eye ball. but, if you get caught, your only hope is to keep it simple, inflict casualties until you are killed, and hope that by doing so you can force the elite fighter’s handlers to call it off, because it is too damaging to their political aims to dig you out of your burrow, this day.
so, it makes pretty good sense to maintain your ability to skedaddle, even after a fight, doesn’t it? just in case a very slim chance exists to save your sorry hide.
john jay @ 05.05.2011
p.s. be reminded, that every self respecting squirrel has several emergency exits, in case the grizzly or the snake come in the front door.
update:
and, now they say they did not watch osama bin laden take the bullet in the eye on live t.v., and that authority was there to kill or capture. from http://www.theblaze.com/blog/ , this article trying to explain the back peddling of leon panetta, the director of the cia, in the room while the raid was going down, about whether the shooting of osama bin laden was watched live by the president and his coterie. the gang that could shoot straight in charge of "the gang that couldn't shoot straight," if their lives depended upon it. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cia-director-there-was-no-live-video-of-obl-raid/ . it must be very embarrassing for such warriors to be "led" by such twits. i learned of this at atlas shrugs, "navy seals, not the president, made the decision to kill bin laden." http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/navy-seals-not-the-president-made-the-decision-to-kill-bin-laden.html
for what it is worth, leon panetta insists that there was "kill or capture" authority given to the seals conducting the mission. consider this in light of the detailed discussion on this point by "virgil caine" in the comments at the preceding article, http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2011/05/helmet-cam-on-the-shooter-a-bit-showy-eh-well-not-really-.html .