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Guerilla tactics. The bane of every professional army since the beginning of time. Blend in with the populace, learn the enemies tactics, learn their habits, their reactions to certain circumstances, learn their dependencies. Never ever, ever fight on their terms or on their ground. Only attack when you can win and when the target is either valuable enough to be worth the risk or to cause general disruption of their comfort. It is depressing to have to explain this as this country was mostly won using guerilla tactics against the most powerful army in the world at the time. It's when we went toe-to-toe with them on their ground, on their terms, and fought as they fought we got our shit pushed in. Ambush, ambush, ambush, hit-and-run, targeting officers, burning crops and slashing throats in the middle of the night. We often hate the al-queda and tali for fighting this way, but against a standing professional army like ours, what idiot wouldn't fight the same way? View Quote |
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In order decide how to best utilize a (the) militia, there needs to be at least some common understanding of certain expectations and limitations of such a force. The militia in the United States primarily having access to a relatively restricted set of arms by military standards necessitates that it is put to use with consideration of the limitations inherent to it. I propose that a first step would be trying to identify and define the composition and makeup of a very basic building block- the rifle squad. The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver or to repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. Can we realistic expect most militia forces, likely put together ad hoc in today's age, to be assigned the same mission statement? I greatly doubt it. Does anyone have ideas on what an appropriate mission statement (Not to be confused with a tasking statement) for a militia rifle squad in the US should be? |
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Cite? I'm pretty sure we only started winning after a certain Prussian drilled the Continental Army into a professional fighting force. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Guerilla tactics. The bane of every professional army since the beginning of time. Blend in with the populace, learn the enemies tactics, learn their habits, their reactions to certain circumstances, learn their dependencies. Never ever, ever fight on their terms or on their ground. Only attack when you can win and when the target is either valuable enough to be worth the risk or to cause general disruption of their comfort. It is depressing to have to explain this as this country was mostly won using guerilla tactics against the most powerful army in the world at the time. It's when we went toe-to-toe with them on their ground, on their terms, and fought as they fought we got our shit pushed in. Ambush, ambush, ambush, hit-and-run, targeting officers, burning crops and slashing throats in the middle of the night. We often hate the al-queda and tali for fighting this way, but against a standing professional army like ours, what idiot wouldn't fight the same way? I'm pretty sure we only started winning after a certain Prussian drilled the Continental Army into a professional fighting force. |
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Historical examples should provide a solid organizational basis, with updates and scalability applied for modern times/doctrine. As mentioned earlier, different purpose-based branches and units would probably be required: Roger's rangers VietCong French Resistance The real question would be, who would you be fighting, and what technologies/doctrine/ethics/morality/belief-system do they adhere to? View Quote |
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One question I have is how to operate within an environment in which the opposition have UAVs for surveillance and targeting. View Quote |
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The guys who have fantasies of being the Right Hand of God and slaying the enemy wholesale just crack me up. Combat’s tough enough with a fit, organized and well trained military. Go ahead Bubba, start flinging rounds down range without understanding small unit tactics, logistical support or CAS/arty/mortars, and reinforcements and see how long till you catch a bullet. View Quote |
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Squad is too much. Security is compromised. 12 yahoos running around? Huge footprint. The 3 man team is the core. As for the misison; "The mission of the team is to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy while minimizing risk to the team and community by means of harassment, ambush and decentralized action." View Quote |
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Squad is too much. Security is compromised. 12 yahoos running around? Huge footprint. The 3 man team is the core. As for the misison; "The mission of the team is to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy while minimizing risk to the team and community by means of harassment, ambush and decentralized action." View Quote |
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everything depends on whom the opponent is.
a few stoned ANTIFA no problem local police are a concern but getting outflanked by a wheeled infantry platoon is a real killer you must realize you have about 5 seconds to gain fire superiority. if it is not accomplished you need to scoot. don't ask questions because mortars are inbound. no matter what you have try to look bigger badder & more mobile than you are. use terrain to your advantage |
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Lots of folks in this thread seem to be fixated on scenarios of foreign invasion (unlikely, without nukes flying both ways) or "Gummint Takeover" (unlikely*, without corresponding collapse of government integrity as parts of it rebel/work at cross purposes...and, in any case, is more effectively fought with strikes and civil disobedience than running about murdering people).
I'm a lot more concerned with the ability of otherwise survivable communities to secure themselves during nationwide (or at least region-wide) disasters, economic meltdowns, or other "thank you for calling 9-1-1, but all circuits are busy..." situations. Being able to close down the bridge to prevent the meth heads over in Jonesville from rolling in to loot, put guards on the local food stocks, back up the half-dozen sheriff's deputies, contain/deflect refugee columns, and make sure the local farms and hospital are able to operate.....is much, much more important than all the wannabe Viet Cong stuff. *-the US Government can barely administer the country on a normal day (and we did a fairly poor job running a nation the size of California with effectively zero rules, all the firepower we could stuff into it, and a decade)....they aren't suddenly going to become sharply more competent if the Gun-Grabbers and 666-Antichrist-Clinton-[insert ethnic/social group we don't like] takes over. |
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If you're thinking in terms of militias, squads and so on, and not cells, you've already lost. View Quote Rifle squads are a concept that evolved primarily due to the advent of the man-portable machine-gun in warfare. Rifle companies are the previous norm, controlled by a Company Commander who answered to a Battalion Commander. They are an obsolete structure intended to fight The Great War more efficiently, used in WWII to the present, but not as much as one would think. Platoons have been the focus for most dismounted combat operations since Vietnam during COIN. A modern effective cell network needs to have viable information collection capabilities, needs to know the lay of the area regarding communication nets, and how to operate in that environment, assuming aerial and cyber surveillance methods being used to target it. Some ECM, IRCM, and ECCM would be more effective than firearms, for example. |
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The overall mission of a militia squad (and of the militia as a whole) should be to protect their fellow citizens against enemies foreign and domestic, and to preserve or restore the Constitutional order of our Republic. That's kind of vague though so a few intermediate steps are needed before we can figure out the best "composition and makeup" of a militia rifle squad. Thinking about more specific mission sets for militia units:
That means there's a role both for hardcore trigger pullers (to do the trigger pulling), and for little old ladies (who can "do their part" in intel, propaganda, medical/quartermaster support, etc.). However, there will be varying levels of capability (determined mainly by recruiting, training, equipping, experience and leadership), so not every squad will be able to take on every squad-level mission, and most militia members (and thus most squads) will be on the lower end of the capability spectrum. Another line of thought: since there's a good chance that the militia will form up in an environment dominated by uncertainty (if not chaos) and, in case of resisting foreign invasion or a tyrannical government, will likely face a better-equipped and better-coordinated adversary (at least initially), it is important that militia squads can operate in a decentralized manner, clandestinely, using hit-and-run tactics, and without having to rely on a lot of regular outside support or even communications with higher headquarters. Like others have mentioned, guerilla style rather than "regular" military style. That means having key capabilities (especially on the support side) organic to the squad or at least attached, rather than at higher headquarters or some faraway log base. So too much specialization isn't good; while, for example, there will be a difference between an offense/defense-oriented "rifle squad" and a non-kinetic "propaganda squad", the rifle squad should also be able to produce and disseminate propaganda, and the propaganda squad has to be able to at least defend itself. At the same time, if the enemy has good ISR capabilities, a militia unit should not get too big since that makes it harder to blend into their environment (whether urban or rural). So there is a balance to strike. And requiring militia members to be jacks-of-all-trades is a formidable recruiting challenge... On the other hand, if the militia is called out to deal with localized issues like unrest, or if enemy capabilities have degraded, militia squads also need to be prepared to act as part of a larger formation, and may even have to tie in to "regular" forces, e.g. to help their city police force put down a riot, or secure the perimeter (outer cordon) during a SWAT/SOF raid. Finally, on the practical side, the smallest element of a militia unit should probably not be the two-man buddy team as in our current military, but better a three-man team. This way they can do 8 hour shifts for guard/support/sleep, and if one gets hit there are two to carry him. Plus it's better for deliberative decisionmaking since there's never a tie. And a four-man fire team might lead to the squad becoming too large... All that being said, going back to the militia rifle squad, if we assume something similar in size to a traditional squad, how about 12 or 15 people, divided as follows so that they can do both their main mission (kinetic offense/defense, from assassinations and small-scale raids to joining in larger operations) but also support themselves to a degree, and cover other parts of the militia's mission set:
Ideally, each team would have their own vehicle - another advantage of the three-man concept since most cars will accommodate three people plus a lot of gear. But as outlined above, a well-regulated militia also needs additional types of squads, including much smaller ones (three geeks producing propaganda videos, a handful of nurses running an aid station, etc.). But that's for another day - this has already gotten much longer than I thought it would be... Thoughts and comments? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted:
In order decide how to best utilize a (the) militia, there needs to be at least some common understanding of certain expectations and limitations of such a force. The militia in the United States primarily having access to a relatively restricted set of arms by military standards necessitates that it is put to use with consideration of the limitations inherent to it. I propose that a first step would be trying to identify and define the composition and makeup of a very basic building block- the rifle squad. The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver or to repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. Can we realistic expect most militia forces, likely put together ad hoc in today's age, to be assigned the same mission statement? I greatly doubt it. Does anyone have ideas on what an appropriate mission statement (Not to be confused with a tasking statement) for a militia rifle squad in the US should be? Thinking about more specific mission sets for militia units:
That means there's a role both for hardcore trigger pullers (to do the trigger pulling), and for little old ladies (who can "do their part" in intel, propaganda, medical/quartermaster support, etc.). However, there will be varying levels of capability (determined mainly by recruiting, training, equipping, experience and leadership), so not every squad will be able to take on every squad-level mission, and most militia members (and thus most squads) will be on the lower end of the capability spectrum. Another line of thought: since there's a good chance that the militia will form up in an environment dominated by uncertainty (if not chaos) and, in case of resisting foreign invasion or a tyrannical government, will likely face a better-equipped and better-coordinated adversary (at least initially), it is important that militia squads can operate in a decentralized manner, clandestinely, using hit-and-run tactics, and without having to rely on a lot of regular outside support or even communications with higher headquarters. Like others have mentioned, guerilla style rather than "regular" military style. That means having key capabilities (especially on the support side) organic to the squad or at least attached, rather than at higher headquarters or some faraway log base. So too much specialization isn't good; while, for example, there will be a difference between an offense/defense-oriented "rifle squad" and a non-kinetic "propaganda squad", the rifle squad should also be able to produce and disseminate propaganda, and the propaganda squad has to be able to at least defend itself. At the same time, if the enemy has good ISR capabilities, a militia unit should not get too big since that makes it harder to blend into their environment (whether urban or rural). So there is a balance to strike. And requiring militia members to be jacks-of-all-trades is a formidable recruiting challenge... On the other hand, if the militia is called out to deal with localized issues like unrest, or if enemy capabilities have degraded, militia squads also need to be prepared to act as part of a larger formation, and may even have to tie in to "regular" forces, e.g. to help their city police force put down a riot, or secure the perimeter (outer cordon) during a SWAT/SOF raid. Finally, on the practical side, the smallest element of a militia unit should probably not be the two-man buddy team as in our current military, but better a three-man team. This way they can do 8 hour shifts for guard/support/sleep, and if one gets hit there are two to carry him. Plus it's better for deliberative decisionmaking since there's never a tie. And a four-man fire team might lead to the squad becoming too large... All that being said, going back to the militia rifle squad, if we assume something similar in size to a traditional squad, how about 12 or 15 people, divided as follows so that they can do both their main mission (kinetic offense/defense, from assassinations and small-scale raids to joining in larger operations) but also support themselves to a degree, and cover other parts of the militia's mission set:
Ideally, each team would have their own vehicle - another advantage of the three-man concept since most cars will accommodate three people plus a lot of gear. But as outlined above, a well-regulated militia also needs additional types of squads, including much smaller ones (three geeks producing propaganda videos, a handful of nurses running an aid station, etc.). But that's for another day - this has already gotten much longer than I thought it would be... Thoughts and comments? Even if you miraculously assembled such a force of civilians, maybe 2% of them would be physically fit enough to draw these weapons from their storage and put them into action on the range, let along a dynamic environment. |
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@madcap72 Should we assume that a militia, squad, etc cannot also operate as cells? Are the two truly exclusive of each other? Units and organizations that effectively conduct asymmetric warfare still typically must have some sort of common operational and organizational understanding if they want to make it to an achievable end state do they not? This reaches back to the question of whether the mission drives the organization, or vice versa. There is also the question of whether, being utilized for limited support of conventional forces, such as a state guard or national guard unit, or regular military, the militia ought to be organized and have some general doctrinal understanding that enables them to be tasked properly. Ie: guarding a power plant, dam, or other infrastructure as in the world wars. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Madcap72
If you're thinking in terms of militias, squads and so on, and not cells, you've already lost. Should we assume that a militia, squad, etc cannot also operate as cells? Are the two truly exclusive of each other? Units and organizations that effectively conduct asymmetric warfare still typically must have some sort of common operational and organizational understanding if they want to make it to an achievable end state do they not? This reaches back to the question of whether the mission drives the organization, or vice versa. There is also the question of whether, being utilized for limited support of conventional forces, such as a state guard or national guard unit, or regular military, the militia ought to be organized and have some general doctrinal understanding that enables them to be tasked properly. Ie: guarding a power plant, dam, or other infrastructure as in the world wars. |
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Madcap72
If you're thinking in terms of militias, squads and so on, and not cells, you've already lost. Should we assume that a militia, squad, etc cannot also operate as cells? Are the two truly exclusive of each other? Units and organizations that effectively conduct asymmetric warfare still typically must have some sort of common operational and organizational understanding if they want to make it to an achievable end state do they not? This reaches back to the question of whether the mission drives the organization, or vice versa. There is also the question of whether, being utilized for limited support of conventional forces, such as a state guard or national guard unit, or regular military, the militia ought to be organized and have some general doctrinal understanding that enables them to be tasked properly. Ie: guarding a power plant, dam, or other infrastructure as in the world wars. |
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Quoted: What do you suppose would prevent them from doing so? View Quote the whole point of the counter insurgent is to keep the insurgent from mobilizing large enough elements to inflict real damage. The whole point of the insurgent is to operate without detection to avoid the counter insurgent's superior firepower. I would guess 90% of the casualties inflicted in Afghanistan by the Taliban were from teams of 3-8. I would also guess 90% of the casualties inflicted ON the Taliban have been when they went bigger than that. |
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It’s all about defense.
No charging pill boxes like the Marines... |
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The mission statement for the militia already exists. It is "To secure a free state."
Historically, the militia in the U.S. functioned in a support role for the army. Sometimes that support took the form of extra soldiers, other times operations were conducted solely by the militia. Local units with established leadership were in place, ready to be called up by the state or the nation. The militia was a tool used to avoid a large standing army. The militia's ineffectiveness during the Civil War spelled its end, together with the post-war shift of state power to the federal government. Today, we do not have a militia in the traditional U.S. sense. Modernizing the militia would begin with organizing it and "regulating" it well. I am becoming increasingly convinced that the future of the right to bears arms in this country depends upon some kind of regulation -- in the old sense -- of the militia, i.e. the collective body of fighting-age citizens. Mission or task, in my opinion, is less important initially than than regulation, i.e. organization. I do not think the right to keep and bear arms survives indefinitely without organization and purpose beyond what looks a lot on the outside like a hobby, even if the "hobbyists" internally see it differently. I do not see much point in trying to predict what the militia will do. What it will need to do is inherently unpredictable. When the militia was well-regulated, its value lied in its flexibility. It could provide local security, it could reinforce regular army, or it could conduct its own independent operations, as needs arose. As far as the Revolutionary War goes, let's dispense with the old myth that the Americans won by fighting a guerilla campaign. The militia was most important in the south. It conducted some critical operations independently and somewhat asymmetrically, like the Battle of Kings Mountain. Others times it fought in a traditional, but significant, support role, like the Battle of Cowpens. The future resembles the past more often than it looks like something never seen before. |
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Quoted: You're talking about training and tactics, like a guerilla force needs it. Destruction, fear, and chaos are the tools of a guerrilla force. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: You're talking about training and tactics, like a guerilla force needs it. Destruction, fear, and chaos are the tools of a guerrilla force. Quoted: If you don’t think the insurgents and terror groups we have been fighting for decades engage in small team tactics you are naive. It is foolish to think that even a guerilla force should not engage in the basic, shoot, move, and communicate training. Would that type of training be detrimental? No, probably not. But it is irrelevant. What works is very quick IDF and then gtfo as fast as you can before our guys triangulate where shit is coming from and vaporize/ventilate you. With that in mind, our militia's mindset and training focus needs to be on how to engage quickly when opportunities arise, not how to act as a fire-team or larger element. The fact that you don't get this is proof that you will be a pretty ineffective member of any militia and would quickly get massacred while trying to do an AAR in a goddamn group huddle or some stupid shit instead of just disappearing back into the suburbs or the crowd. Quoted: Actually, they are roles that have throughout history been engaged in by militia. In order to do what you propose they still need to be large enough, organized, trained, officered, well-equipped, disciplined, armed with more than small arms, etc. The force needs to already exist and be capable. Organizing it ad hoc once the crisis is underway is a recipe for failure; at best, it imposes many difficulties. |
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Quoted: As far as the Revolutionary War goes, let's dispense with the old myth that the Americans won by fighting a guerilla campaign. . View Quote We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. |
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Lots of folks in this thread seem to be fixated on scenarios of foreign invasion (unlikely, without nukes flying both ways) or "Gummint Takeover" (unlikely*, without corresponding collapse of government integrity as parts of it rebel/work at cross purposes...and, in any case, is more effectively fought with strikes and civil disobedience than running about murdering people). I'm a lot more concerned with the ability of otherwise survivable communities to secure themselves during nationwide (or at least region-wide) disasters, economic meltdowns, or other "thank you for calling 9-1-1, but all circuits are busy..." situations. Being able to close down the bridge to prevent the meth heads over in Jonesville from rolling in to loot, put guards on the local food stocks, back up the half-dozen sheriff's deputies, contain/deflect refugee columns, and make sure the local farms and hospital are able to operate.....is much, much more important than all the wannabe Viet Cong stuff. *-the US Government can barely administer the country on a normal day (and we did a fairly poor job running a nation the size of California with effectively zero rules, all the firepower we could stuff into it, and a decade)....they aren't suddenly going to become sharply more competent if the Gun-Grabbers and 666-Antichrist-Clinton-[insert ethnic/social group we don't like] takes over. View Quote For those people inclined to be in such a militia, they should focus on these sorts of roles. I would think a militia would be a standby group ready to augment professionals (like law enforcement, or NG) and take care of lower risk missions, which allow the better trained professional forces to focus on more pressing needs. Imagine instead of needing 12-15 law enforcement to keep a food/water distribution point under control, a local militia could augment the LEOs, and 3-4 LEOs with 15-20 militia could accomplish the same task, freeing up valuable manpower and resources for other areas. |
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This. A militia in the 21st century isn't standing toe to toe with any sort or conventional force with any reasonable likelihood of success. It may end up doing some scouting or other intel work for a friendly force or will be working as a resistance network. Bombs, sabotage, assassination, and the like. View Quote Tell that to the Afghanistan groups. |
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Funny you should bring that up: my partner, who teaches at the JFKSWCS, wrote a book on that very topic which is almost ready for publishing. It will be his (fourth?)published work on asymmetric warfare and insurgencies. I think that is a topic for a different thread though. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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One question I have is how to operate within an environment in which the opposition have UAVs for surveillance and targeting. If your force structure is based on mid-1900s open warfare, and ignores the primary threat nodes, what are we doing here again? |
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This appears to be a solid mission statement. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Squad is too much. Security is compromised. 12 yahoos running around? Huge footprint. The 3 man team is the core. As for the misison; "The mission of the team is to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy while minimizing risk to the team and community by means of harassment, ambush and decentralized action." The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. |
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IF a militia is ever needed again- either to repel a foreign entity or to resist a tyrannical domestic one- the fighting will not be anything like you see in movies or videogames. The enemy will have vastly superior technology and weapons to choose from. The only way to fight an enemy like that is guerilla warfare. You don't attack a hardened military installation, you follow troops home and slaughter them in their sleep. Yes its dishonorable. But thats how you win. Do you think the Brits thought we were fighting honorably back in the 1770s? Honor is a useless buzzword that is used by old farts or young dumbasses to romanticize things. But reality is ugly and uncaring. But its reality that matters, not how moving of a speech your priest says over your grave when you die. To steal a line from my favorite book series: You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.... .... So long as you continue to wage war with your hearts and not your intellect, you are doomed. first part is a direct quote, second part is paraphrased. Context, this guy is trying to convince a bunch of stick-up-their-ass knights and nobles that their way of fighting (caring bout honor) is gonna get them slaughtered by guys who don't play by the same rules. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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In order decide how to best utilize a (the) militia, there needs to be at least some common understanding of certain expectations and limitations of such a force. The militia in the United States primarily having access to a relatively restricted set of arms by military standards necessitates that it is put to use with consideration of the limitations inherent to it. I propose that a first step would be trying to identify and define the composition and makeup of a very basic building block- the rifle squad. The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver or to repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. Can we realistic expect most militia forces, likely put together ad hoc in today's age, to be assigned the same mission statement? I greatly doubt it. Does anyone have ideas on what an appropriate mission statement (Not to be confused with a tasking statement) for a militia rifle squad in the US should be? Yes its dishonorable. But thats how you win. Do you think the Brits thought we were fighting honorably back in the 1770s? Honor is a useless buzzword that is used by old farts or young dumbasses to romanticize things. But reality is ugly and uncaring. But its reality that matters, not how moving of a speech your priest says over your grave when you die. To steal a line from my favorite book series: You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.... .... So long as you continue to wage war with your hearts and not your intellect, you are doomed. first part is a direct quote, second part is paraphrased. Context, this guy is trying to convince a bunch of stick-up-their-ass knights and nobles that their way of fighting (caring bout honor) is gonna get them slaughtered by guys who don't play by the same rules. |
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It's one of the primary resources a tyrannical government will use to detect and target people that don't submit, along with cyber, so it should be central to this thread. If your force structure is based on mid-1900s open warfare, and ignores the primary threat nodes, what are we doing here again? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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One question I have is how to operate within an environment in which the opposition have UAVs for surveillance and targeting. If your force structure is based on mid-1900s open warfare, and ignores the primary threat nodes, what are we doing here again? |
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You'll be under surveillance the entire time. They rewind the footage, see where you came from, and SWAT Teams will have high risk warrants for your arrest within hours, to be executed ASAP, as they seal off the area with bearcats and orders for all the well-trained public school serfs to shelter in place while they deal with you. The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Squad is too much. Security is compromised. 12 yahoos running around? Huge footprint. The 3 man team is the core. As for the misison; "The mission of the team is to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy while minimizing risk to the team and community by means of harassment, ambush and decentralized action." The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. |
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One question I have is how to operate within an environment in which the opposition have UAVs for surveillance and targeting. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
One question I have is how to operate within an environment in which the opposition have UAVs for surveillance and targeting. You waiting around for a squad sized element to show up could take hours. Thats plenty of time for whatever opportunity you were going to take advantage of to disappear, but it does present tons of time for .gov assets to get into the air and find you. And then track you home and hellfire you or send in JBT's when you're asleep. The fact that he thinks having this be some formal, legit organization shows how oblivious he is to the realities of how to actually fight an insurgency. Formality requires organization and organization requires way more record keeping and meetups all of which present opportunities for enemies to gather your info and then, bam you dead. How militia's worked in Europe/Britain before (or even after) our revolution is irrelevant. Quoted:
We crossed the Delaware to kill our enemies in their sleep on Christmas. The Crown did not consider thst gentleman like. |
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Quoted: How about we don't dispense with it. We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. View Quote |
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I can't remember who said it, but the summary is along the lines of:
"Beginners think of tactics, more experienced people think of logistics." I would think that logistics, and communication would be the first things that the local militia should consider. Then onto things like table of organization and equipment, fire team, rifle squad, tactics and so on. You fight with the equipment and people you have, not with the equipment and people you WISH you had. (again, I can't remember who said the original quotation of the preceding idea ) |
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How about we don't dispense with it. We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted: As far as the Revolutionary War goes, let's dispense with the old myth that the Americans won by fighting a guerilla campaign. . We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. |
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You need surgical strikes to target leadership too. Protracted warfare is good for depletion of the enemies morale and resources but you still need to cut off the head. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes |
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I can't remember who said it, but the summary is along the lines of: "Beginners think of tactics, more experienced people think of logistics." I would think that logistics, and communication would be the first things that the local militia should consider. Then onto things like table of organization and equipment, fire team, rifle squad, tactics and so on. You fight with the equipment and people you have, not with the equipment and people you WISH you had. (again, I can't remember who said the original quotation of the preceding idea ) View Quote |
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Guerilla tactics. The bane of every professional army since the beginning of time. Blend in with the populace, learn the enemies tactics, learn their habits, their reactions to certain circumstances, learn their dependencies. Never ever, ever fight on their terms or on their ground. Only attack when you can win and when the target is either valuable enough to be worth the risk or to cause general disruption of their comfort. It is depressing to have to explain this as this country was mostly won using guerilla tactics against the most powerful army in the world at the time. It's when we went toe-to-toe with them on their ground, on their terms, and fought as they fought we got our shit pushed in. Ambush, ambush, ambush, hit-and-run, targeting officers, burning crops and slashing throats in the middle of the night. We often hate the al-queda and tali for fighting this way, but against a standing professional army like ours, what idiot wouldn't fight the same way? View Quote |
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You'll be under surveillance the entire time. They rewind the footage, see where you came from, and SWAT Teams will have high risk warrants for your arrest within hours, to be executed ASAP, as they seal off the area with bearcats and orders for all the well-trained public school serfs to shelter in place while they deal with you. The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. View Quote |
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Quoted: I agree. Washington did a masterful job of his keeping his army on the move and intact. In a score-keeping sense, America lost. But over the last two years of combat in the colonies, Britain found itself over-extended internationally, the Americans were benefiting from significant foreign aid, the British effort to start a counter-insurgency in the south failed, and then Cornwallis found himself in an untenable position at Yorktown. It was indeed time to say "fuck it," which formally happened two years after Yorktown. My point is that the common idea that we won the war by fighting like Indians and what-not is myth. The fighting was mostly conventional, and I don't think guerilla warfare describes the bulk of it well. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: I agree. Washington did a masterful job of his keeping his army on the move and intact. In a score-keeping sense, America lost. But over the last two years of combat in the colonies, Britain found itself over-extended internationally, the Americans were benefiting from significant foreign aid, the British effort to start a counter-insurgency in the south failed, and then Cornwallis found himself in an untenable position at Yorktown. It was indeed time to say "fuck it," which formally happened two years after Yorktown. My point is that the common idea that we won the war by fighting like Indians and what-not is myth. The fighting was mostly conventional, and I don't think guerilla warfare describes the bulk of it well. Quoted: How about we don't dispense with it. We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. I've said it before in this thread, but Turn: Washington's Spies is a great series that shows how asymmetrical warfare can benefit the cause and the standing army without going all FUDD "hey Joebob, lets directly engage that large force or professional troops" |
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How long did California shoot up everybody who moved looking for Dorner? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes |
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Rules, they apply until the first shot is fired then there is a new set of rules. learn to adapt quickly. In other words get the show on the road then figure out where it is going. All else is worthless talk.
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You'll be under surveillance the entire time. They rewind the footage, see where you came from, and SWAT Teams will have high risk warrants for your arrest within hours, to be executed ASAP, as they seal off the area with bearcats and orders for all the well-trained public school serfs to shelter in place while they deal with you. The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Squad is too much. Security is compromised. 12 yahoos running around? Huge footprint. The 3 man team is the core. As for the misison; "The mission of the team is to inflict maximum damage upon the enemy while minimizing risk to the team and community by means of harassment, ambush and decentralized action." The guys on the SWAT Teams actually work out and shoot regularly, run through shoot houses, and most full time teams have hundreds of warrants under their belts. Your dynamic, inflict damage on the enemy with harassment and ambush fantasy will be over within 24 hours. I can't seem to find where I suggested the modern militia is necessarily going to be engaged in conflict against an enemy that would bring a SWAT team down on them? In fact, I can't seem to recall suggesting it should not be under control of the county, at the least- though more appropriately the individual state legislatures. A modern militia can still be useful as a fighting force, though as throughout history will likely be unsuccessful or see limited success independent of support from regular (or in the case of states National Guard) forces that have tanks, arty, CAS, drones, etc. Don't make so many assumptions, and stick to the specific question at hand rather than wander into "Whatifville". |
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The militia exists to claim rank, drink beer, and talk about how effective they would be if they ever did anything. View Quote The big problem, historically, with militias is discipline. Joyce Lee Malcolm has some very interesting things to say about this in her book: To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Bear-Arms-Origins-Anglo-American/dp/0674893077/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F9WYMVAB7R4R7KNC9QPD But militias CAN be effective guerrilla forces....sometimes. Read this: For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was there, during the Spanish Civil War, and he writes about how an actual guerrilla force operates; what they can and can't do. Spoiler Alert. It ain't pretty, nor what you might expect. |
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The guys who have fantasies of being the Right Hand of God and slaying the enemy wholesale just crack me up. Combat's tough enough with a fit, organized and well trained military. Go ahead Bubba, start flinging rounds down range without understanding small unit tactics, logistical support or CAS/arty/mortars, and reinforcements and see how long till you catch a bullet. View Quote |
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Quoted: How about we don't dispense with it. We won by not losing. Which is what all insurgencies do. We became more of a PITA than we were worth. We didn't defeat the British Empire. We defeated what the British Empire was willing to invest in trying to retain control over us. Even Yorktown was just an abandonment by the Royal Navy after the French Navy spanked them hard enough to say "fuck it" It wasn't the battle of Yorktown, it was the battle in Parliament. View Quote |
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