The Raven Report: 01 MAR 23
This is the Raven Report
From the Raven 6
As we launch the RA\/EN Report, I want to emphasize that our greatest strength as a Stryker Brigade Combat Team is our ability to communicate and see ourselves up, down, and side to side. The inaugural RA\/EN Report is one more space to share, learn, and grow as a learning organization. Please feel free to contribute to the benefit of those future Cascade Rifles destined to serve within our proud ranks.
CASCADE RIFLES!
-COL. Matthew James
Squad Level Tactics
Jake was a Team Leader in my Company. He never struck me as the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is a hell of an Infantryman. Brian, Jake’s best friend of 17 years, was also a Team Leader in my Company. Keeping these two apart and focused on leading their fire teams was like trying not to cry at the beginning of Disney’s “Up”. Damn near impossible. In vain, their Platoon leadership employed most of the usual Infantry strategies to correct their magnetic pull to be in each other’s cargo pockets. Despite our efforts, they were bonded.
My Battalion Commander was a maneuver warfare theory leader. In all aspects of his leadership approach, he sought to employ strategies and tactics that “avoided fortified defenses” and used the “indirect approach” even in his communication with others. He cherished the envelopment and was convinced that this tactic (fire, maneuver, and how we array our forces), could be performed by Divisions down to the Infantry squad. It took over two years for me to be convinced of this.
After seven months of individual and collective training, beginning with a National Training Center rotation and culminating with a multi-national combined arms live fire exercise in Poland, we were ready to reset. One of the more exceptional exercises we participated in was a free play, company force-on-force training, complete with colored armbands to distinguish teams, observers, coaches, trainers (OC/Ts), and a flexible set of rules and injects to guide the fight. Our Company had won the exercise, and we were hooked on the free-play idea.
The free-play fight significantly diverges from the stereo-typical field training exercise concept of the “lane.” You know the one; start in your assembly area, patrol 800 meters, establish your objective rally point, recon the objective, and attack the 3–5-man team that has been given careful instructions on how to simulate death. We hungered for the competitive arena of the thinking enemy, and we planned an exercise at the squad level to quell it.
First up, Jake versus Brian. They had been best friends since kindergarten, and they were now stepping into the stadium to be evaluated. They both wanted to win and finally unglued themselves from each other to develop their plan and rehearse their concepts. It warmed my heart to watch them “put their red hat on” and describe how they anticipated their opponent would fight based on 17 years of intimately knowing the other. Both leaders anticipated a frontal assault; no maneuver, no flank, just hard-headed, straight-up-the-middle gut punches. Interestingly, Jake laid the foundation with his squad for a method to counter, but Brian did not.
The leaders were each pitched a one-page squad Operations Order that instructed them to patrol an area, find the enemy, and destroy them. They were given a 1km x 1km grid square that intelligence indicated was likely to house the bad guys. After loading their Strykers, deploying to the eastern Poland training area, and emplacing their assembly areas, they were set free to fight. With the squad leaders as OC/Ts and the Platoon Leaders as exercise control, it was time to sit back and grab the popcorn.
This would be good.
Jake’s squad (Bravo 21) navigated to the grid square first. He emplaced a machine gun along a high-speed avenue of approach, observing a likely axis of advance from the opponent. He sent a fire team to recon their rear and established left and right-side security on his position. Textbook ambush set-up. Brian’s squad (Bravo 22) took the head-on approach, moving tactically through the dense woods, managing speed, using concealment, no halts until they heard blank fire or spotted Bravo 21. Within 20 minutes, the OC/Ts reported the two squads were on a collision course.
Bravo 22 appeared from the trees, moving toward the machine gun. Jake instructed the gunner to hold fire, allowing his opponent to get closer. Jake crawled to his right-side security, instructing them that upon contact, boldly flank to the rear of the opponent, placing Bravo 22 in a no-win situation. Jake moved back to the machine gun, placed a hand on the firer’s back, and told him to hold, hold, hold. Minutes passed. The discipline was impressive. Then, fire! Bravo 22 got on line facing the machine gun, and returned fire as the belt-fed rapidly grazed the field with blank fire. Simultaneously, Bravo 21’s right-side security cloverleafed a long and concealed flank maneuver to the right and then toward the rear. Jake hollered a shift fire, enabling the enveloping force to move to position and begin firing.
For as long as I live, I will never forget Brian’s face when he realized his nine-man squad was taking fire from their front, as well as from upon the route on which they had just came. Confusion first, then chaos, then ultimately, his will to fight left him. Brian shouted a long, drawn-out “Fuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk” followed by laughter that told all watching he was done and the exercise was over. He had been bested by his best friend, and my buck sergeant leader had just convinced me that an envelopment could, in-fact be conducted at the squad level.
During the after-action review, Brian shared his feelings with the group at that moment of defeat. He was overwhelmed, confused, and hopeless. He froze. His freezing compounded the problems for his squad, and they slipped into the unrecoverable quickly. The BN Commander, hearing his beloved envelopment had finally permeated to the squad level, was interested in coining the victor. Jake drew out his plan on the Commander’s whiteboard in his office, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t look just like Figure 2-1 (Envelopment) in the Infantry manual. Jake said, “I know Brian really well, and I knew he would just bulldog his way in until he found me, so I knew if I got behind him, he’d quit.”
Avoiding the bottomless intellectual exercise of identifying the differences between strategy and tactics, my conclusion is this: Jake brilliantly employed tactics. But his strategy, from analyzing his opponent to the conceptual drawing board, to the patience on the objective, to the decisive conclusion of the fight, are all things us Company and Field Grade leaders can learn from this brand-new Sergeant.
Learning to Defeat China – Five Resources on the People’s Liberation Army Army (PLAA)
When a lieutenant (LT) goes to the MIBOLC (or the MI Officer Transition Course for those who are doing branch transfer), the two Army publications he/she gets the most intimate with, among many others, are the ATP 2-01.3 (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB)) and the TC 7-100.2 (Opposing Force (OPFOR) Tactics). Once graduated, now branch-qualified LT is confident to conduct IPB against an OPFOR or Russia (Donovia).
But what if, upon arrival at the assigned unit as the S2, the BN XO tells him that the BN will be conducting a CPX against a China-based threat (Olvana)? First, he will put on a serious face and contemplate for a while – considering that no one in his entire section, including the NCOIC (SSG) and the S2 (1LT) himself, has ever received training on Chinese Tactics. He will then respectfully recommend that, given the current level of training and the time and resource available to train, it is not feasible to effectively conduct an IPB against a China-based threat.
But if the S2’s assigned unit is 3-161 IN, the Dark Rifles, the XO may point out the Dark Rifle Standing Orders #15, especially the word “FITFO”.
So, below are the five resources the Dark Rifles Intelligence Section and the staff utilized to learn about the PLAA and their tactics to prepare for a CPX, all within 7 months of IDTs.
How to Learn About the Chinese Tactics
Watch:
Come & Play: Attend the Chinese Tactics LPD with the Dark Rifles
Book of the Week
Col. Robert Leonhard’s book The Art of Maneuver goes over the principles of maneuver warfare theory. With a potential LSCO fight on the horizon, it should be on everyone’s shelf.
In Your Ears
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