Since we are sharing....

[winter]

In a real ambush, the TL calling out "ambush" will not be necessary.

If everybody is in the kill zone, there is a spacing issue.

During the day the point guy should be 50 yards out and team members should be at least 10 yards apart. At night you should be spaced as far as you can see.

My opinion based on 4 years of LRS.

[panzer0170]

Even if the point guy is out 50 yards, the centre two guys are caught in an ambush and that leaves either end seventy yards away from each other I totally get your point, but it's not much more beneficial than everyone being caught in it. I would take your suggestion and add to it - Everyone should be that 50 yards (Or limit of sight, whichever is the SMALLER?) apart. My thinking being this; Anyone who sees someone wandering around with a rifle, if they are half switched on, will assume that there are more rifle-wielding people.

Obviously it's flexible for varying terrain, but that's why I'm saying limit of sight (Treelines, built up areas etc...) as a maximum (with 50yards as a HARD limit).

Out of interest, that 50/10 spacing; In what terrain? I ask because as the conversation develops I realise that one of the things that we're NOT talking about is terrain, and we're all agreeing on some bits but think others are wrong. Perhaps those differences are based on terrain/prior experience in specific terrain. For example, whilst I've been to Afghanistan, most of what I know and am comfortable with soldiering? Is moreso NI/Cold War tactics, not counter-insurgency stuff. As is my experience of carrying things, fighting, and all round being vaguely agressive

[Diz]

I would say ideally, eventually I'd like some space between me and the point, BUT, to start with, training a new team, I'm thinking you're gonna want to keep everyone closer together, or end up separating and re-linking all night long! SO from the standpoint of this is a new team we're just training up, I'm gonna want the point closer in, maybe just double the interval, say 20m out front, with everyone else about 10m spacing.

Kinda sorta depends on the kill zone. I was just reading about Afghan ambushes when the Muj were fighting the Rooskis. Some of their kill zones extended 500m or more. Yes that's an extreme example. But covering a front of say 50m or so meters is not beyond the realm of possibility. Worst case scenario, with a platoon in dedicated ambush. You could have a full squad in the assault group, plus the support element, plus the security team, on either flank, shit there's 50m easy!

But yeah, you could be having spacing issues if you hit something more like a 8-10 man ambush, where only 4-5 guys are in the main assault group.

My experience, and this is not a do-all/end-all, it's just my experience, has been mostly in thickly wooded terrain. The kind where at night, you frequently need to be at touching distance to keep track of the dude in front of you. So my inclination is to keep it tight, so we're not getting separated and chasing each other down half the night. I know, I know, you guys are thinking, what a bunch of dumb-asses those guys must have been, BUT, when you go without much sleep and hump the bush for several days straight, you're exhausted, and it's pretty easy to fade out and lose track of the guy in front of you. Or forget about the guy that's supposed to be behind you. Just wait. You'll see.

In a perfect world, with a switched on team, heel yeah, terrain permitting, we'd open up the interval, send the point way out there, and bob's your uncle. But the reality of it is that will take some time to build up to. Just sayin'.

[USMC0331]

Best invention they had while I was in were cat eyes to follow.

[Diz]

True dat. If you space them right, they will just blur together past 10m. Or set your own interval as you like.

[winter]

This is a difficult topic to discuss like this.

I'll try to address a few at once with some various statements.

The better a team works together the wider their spacing can be. Terrain dictates what it should be. I've done a few all night humps following cat eyes.

You never lose the Senior Scout (point man) because if you want him, you simply stop and wait for him to come within hand and arm signal range or close enough to whisper to.

Comms between men on the same patrol are a constant thing. LRS teams don't go 5 seconds without making eye contact with the man in front and behind him, excepting the scout if he is out further. This is real easy to train. Just stop walking and see how far away the people in front of you walk before discovering you stopped.

The wide spacing keeps people alive. Take your pick, your whole unit in the kill zone or just half? That is a huge difference. The half not in the KZ become a maneuver element.

It takes awhile for a team to work well together, but, you can honestly work so well with others that discussion becomes unnecessary. Hell, even hand signals become like a shorthand.

12 overnight patrols will get you pretty damn good at it.

My terrain experience is heavy woods, mountainous, heavy brush, SE hardwoods, S Piney woods, rainforest, and subarctic.

[Diz]

All good points. I have absolutely no qualms about anything you're saying.

However, I am saying that you have to factor in the learning curve with a bunch of noobies, doing this for-real, with minimal training. If we're lucky, we will have the time to train up to a proficiency like you discuss, before contact is made. I have no doubt that after a few patrols, things will start to fall in place, especially with the motivation factor being right up there in a real scenario. But, you gotta start somewhere. These guys aren't just gonna get everything on the first pass. Stuff you take for granted is totally alien to these guys. You're gonna have to repeat yourself, constantly remind, correct mistakes, etc, until it starts to click.

I have found that just explaining something to the guys, that seems so obvious and simple to you, and then having them do it, can become a clusterfuck real fast. Partially my fault for not explaining it/demonstrating it enough, partially their fault because they're following their previous square range training and not listening to what you're saying (maybe as a default setting in the heat of the moment, dunno). For example, the first time I tried to teach a react in contact drill, I described what I wanted them to do. I got head nods like we all get it. So I had them run through it (dry fire). The leap frogging immediately broke down because guys were crossing over each others lanes because "I didn't have any cover so I went over to that big tree". I'm trying to just get them used to a 4-man fire and maneuver drill, but they're falling back on their previous training where it was stressed to get behind cover, not really thinking about how that works with 4 guys all trying to shoot. So I'm thinking this is obvious, you gotta stay in your lane, especially live fire, but they're not on the same page.

You can say, well Diz you suck as an instructor, or your guys are retards, but I'm telling ya, I think this is gonna be the norm. I hope your group does better than this and you're a shit-hot instructor, but I think you're gonna find that teaching these skills to civvies is like teaching a fish to play a piano. Most folks have very little frame of reference for stalking out in the woods. Lots of time playing "Call of Duty" or whatever but no real experience.

So nobody is questioning your experience, or my experience, or anyone else here for that matter. What I was assuming, and am trying to explain here, is that when applied to a civilian self-defense group, our T,T,P's may have to be altered some, at least initially, in order to work. That is the point to everything we are trying to do here. How does it relate to how we may have to fight, in the future, not what we did back in the day.

I have been on teams where I knew what the guy was going to do before he did. You work with someone so long you just know. When one guy stopped, we all just followed suit without much fuss. Most everyone had wrist compasses, and knew the general direction of march. You could be temporarily separated and not worry about everyone linking up again. At a danger area, things just flowed without having to say a word. After a long hump, a shared comment at a 360 security halt, and laughing without making a sound. Sharing out your last pogey bait. Being closer to these guys than family. But here's the deal. Without some shared hardship like bootcamp, or some kind of follow-on training, it's hard to establish this kind of bond with a bunch of strangers. It takes time to establish this kind of relationship and teamwork.

Maybe the imperative of protecting hearth and home will shorten the learning curve. Dunno. But I suspect it will still be no easy task.

[waffenmacht]

"You can say, well Diz you suck as an instructor, or your guys are retards"



...And I thought it was just me being told this.

[USMC0331]

Nope it happens every time. I'm still constantly reminding shooters to put their AR safety on/off when disconnecting/connecting to their sights, after weeks of training.
They get so focused on the new drill that they can't focus on the basics because the reality is that they HAVE to focus on the basics because they don't have enough reps in.

[winter]

Whoa there fellas. I was not ridiculing anybody. I do know that trying to train civvies is quite the pain in the ass if they have never been in a learning environment like the military or organized sports.

It's all part of this discussion.

I have no group. I talk to people and get full fucking retard responses like; "All I need is one round". That shit is very discouraging.

[USMC0331]

Winter , I don't think anyone felt that way, we are just stating is a fact of life and one to be remembered to KISS when training.

[winter]

That's a relief.

[panzer0170]

It's interesting to see the difference (As a newly minted Trainee Teacher here in the UK) between how things are taught in the military (The practical stuff is pretty damned good - anything with any amount of theory is usually poor) vs how things are taught in highschool. Hopefully in a couple of years I can apply my knowledge and skills from BOTH areas and be vaguely useful to someone

[Diz]

This is a non-flame zone. I only point things out to explain what we're doing here, not to bust on anyone for what they say. Opinions vary, that's OK. But I want to make sure guys don't cap on each other personally. I think each individual here brings something to the table. It's all valuable intel. The thing to remember here is how do you apply that to a civilian self-defense group, in a WROL setting? That's the key. We all have our experiences and areas of expertise. I don't want anyone to feel like that's being discounted for whatever reason.

Hard to read the "timbre" of a post written online. The same way you read facial expressions when someone is talking to you.

The point I'm trying to make is there is raw intel, such as how we all did things in the military, and then there's the application of that knowledge to the present sit. While acknowledging that all good T,T,P's are valid, we have to decide whether or not they fit our scenario. That's all I'm saying here.

[Diz]

Yeah the skill of imparting knowledge to someone else is totally separate from being able to do it yourself. I am struggling with that myself. In the military I had a "captured audience" so to speak. Nowadays, I'm competing with the internet, video games, other instructors, etc. for these guy's attention. Until someone is really motivated to learn what you're trying to teach, I guess you're gonna have to be entertaining, like Chris Costa ("AR mag, Glock mag, twinkie...").