Lessons Learned from the Battlefield: Tactical Integration
Seamless Lethality, Closing the Gaps Between tactics, Marksmanship and Combatives
Just a few nights before, while guarding the outside of a compound his Special Forces A-team was raiding in search of high value enemy personnel, Staff Sergeant (SSG) Rich Miranda’s job had been to prevent anyone from coming onto or leaving the objective. A shadowy figure had scurried over the perimeter wall and started to disappear into the night. With only a fleeting moment to make the decision of life or death for the fleeing figure, SSG Miranda squeezed the trigger. With solid intelligence on the enemy personnel who were on the objective, which turned out to be true, the shooting was well within the rules of engagement in place at the time. But, although the target was full of high value enemy, this particular person was not one of them and was only an unarmed teenager fleeing out of fear. Although collateral damage happens on every battlefield, it does weigh heavy on the Soldiers. This incident partially explains the actions SSG Miranda would take a couple of nights later. You simply cannot go on an objective with the attitude to “Just shoot” everyone that you encounter.
The team soon had another mission. In a dynamic takedown it is more usual to go with weapon mounted white lights and aggressive action to storm a building but it is useful, sometimes, to come in stealthily in the dark using night vision goggles and infrared laser aiming devices. That was the decision on this night.
The first house of the evening had been a dry hole thought at first it seemed they had hit pay dirt. It was full of men because of a family get together. As the team entered the second house the number one man seemed to be struggling with something as he went through the first door. The number two man, keying off of the direction taken by number one turned left, the opposite direction from number one which is the standard Close Quarters Battle (CQB) method, and the number three, SSG Miranda came in to follow number one who at this point was obviously engaged with someone. So as not to be stuck standing in the doorway, what is known in CQB as the fatal funnel because enemy fire will normally be concentrated there, Rich placed the palm of his non-firing hand on the back of number one and pushed him and the person he was tangled up with further into the room.
The enemy had a grip on the number one man’s weapon and was fighting to get control of it, although this was not clear to Miranda who was looking at the scene through the narrow green tinted view of his night vision goggles.
While struggling to gain control of his weapon, number one pulled on it as if to rip it out of enemy’s hands. This is known as the “Tug of War” technique, when an enemy has hold of your weapon by the barrel if you simply step back and pull, it will normally be pointed straight at him allowing you to shoot. In doing so he stepped slightly back and toward the center of the room.
With nothing now between him and the man number one had been struggling with, Miranda grasped him with his non-firing hand and using an advancing foot sweep tossed him easily into the center of the room.
At the same moment, with his weapon finally clear enough, number one fired a three round bust into the enemy. Unfortunately with Rich Miranda still grasping the enemy’s shirt, one of the rounds passed through his left arm before striking the enemy.
While searching the room after securing the rest of the house, an AK-47 was found at the enemy’s feet.
During the time of this incident, the Special Forces community as a whole did not have a very advanced Combatives program. The Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, where all new Special Forces Soldiers attend the Special Forces Qualification Course, taught the “Linear Involuntary Neural-override Engagement” or LINE system which had been the Marine Corps’ hand-to-hand combat system until it was replaced several years earlier. Fifth Special Forces Group, of which Miranda and has team were a part, had one of the more advanced programs at the time. John Renken, a former 101st Airborne Soldier who, after getting out of the Army, had put himself through seminary school by becoming a professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter, had been hired as the group Combatives instructor. Renken had already been down to Ft. Benning and was a key source for some of the clinch fighting curriculum we were then developing.
Miranda himself was one of the more experienced fighters in the entire Special Forces. He had been training, mostly on his own, for years and was an accomplished Judo player and kickboxer. Also, his team was one of the most combat experienced in the Special Forces. The number one man in this story had been in more than a few gun fights and had “Killed more men than cancer” as the saying goes.
The bottom line was simple: their Combatives training and their mission training were separate. The CQB doctrine when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started was that if a soldiers’ rifle malfunctioned they should either take a knee so teammates could cover their sector of fire, or transition to a sidearm. In practice neither option works inside the typical urban rooms we fought in, eight to ten feet end-to-end. When you go through that door, it isn’t a marksmanship contest. It is a fight! You shove the enemy against a wall or over furniture, wrestle for control, and then bring whatever weapon, rifle, pistol, or knife, you can to finish it.
Combatives is an inherent part of many types of missions, Close Quarters Battle in particular, and it must be treated as such. At the time, however, it was not. Doctrine and training treated Combatives as a separate, optional subject: role-players were occasionally used to simulate noncombatants, but live Combatives as a integral portion of mission training seldom if ever happened. The prevailing mindset came from leaders shaped by twenty years of peacetime habits who didn’t want to confront the realities of fighting in rooms. The doctrine they produced was weak and the soldiers who followed it were less prepared than they needed to be. Combatives and marksmanship address different ranges; without both integrated into mission training, teams were handicapped before they ever crossed the threshold.
The resistance started to fade as more and more Soldiers came to grips, literally, with the enemy. This incident and others acted as a catalyst for change. in 2008 I was brought to the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) known informally as “Swic” to help them redesign their entire Combatives program based upon the lessons we had been learning about realistic training. Soon, in the courses where Special Forces Soldiers are trained to conduct what are referred to as “Direct Action” missions, SFARTAETC (pronounced suh-far-tick) or the Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance, Target Analysis and Exploitations Techniques Course, fighting with hands on bad guys and dealing with the ambiguities of who is or isn’t a combatant became an integral part of the training.
Miranda said in his post action interview, something that we have heard from many men who have allot of Combatives experience, that one of the remarkable things about this fight was that he felt no more amped up when laying hands on the enemy than he had when about to go through the door. The techniques and nature of hand-to-hand combat were second nature to him. Although the stakes were higher, the adrenal state was the same. He also, however, noticed an obvious difference in the other men in the room with him, very experienced gun fighters all but without the time on the mat and in the ring that put him at ease.