A Few Not-So-Random Thoughts

Like ants at a picnic, when I write a thoughtful post, oh, the derp.
(Not naming names or pointing fingers; just check to make sure you didn't roll in it, or wipe yourself off, if it applies. If not, drive on.)

There are doubtless an uncounted number of well meaning folks (along with some not-so-bright), who want to "get on" with "getting it on", despite some rather conspicuous lack of necessities on Team Freedom's side of the ledger.


So for the two hundredth time, a few reminders:

I) It ain't time to switch from ballots to bullets. Yet.

II) When it is time, you won't need me (or anyone else) to clue you in to that reality.
(If someone does need that, come the day, they're too many decks below the hole in the hull to save. Walk away with a clear conscience. If anyone floats to the surface afterwards, you can circle back and pick them out of the water.)

III) If you're not in combat, you're improving your position.
Dig, wire, mine, train.
This is why the indispensable personal sidearm for 3000 years of military history has been the personal shovel.

Too metaphorical for some folks?
Let's break it down for you then.

1) Are your teeth all fixed?
2) What's your best time for a three mile run? How many push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups can you do? Could you max a military PFT/PRT? Why TF not?
3) How much can you ruck?
4) How far?
5) How fast?
6) What's the BZO on your primary weapon?
7) How many pairs of broken-in boots do you have? And how many pairs of extra socks?
8) Got your spare eyeglasses and prescription meds sorted out?
9) Are your will, finances, and legal affairs in pristine order? Got a cash stash? Work may be scarce for a few years...
10) How much medical training do you have in your head (the only place it'll do you any good), and how much equipment and expendable supplies do you have handy to support your potential needs? E.g.: you have four limbs and two lungs, and bullets frequently both enter and exit in different places: so how many tourniquets do you have, and how many chest seals, and how many battle dressings?
11) Got a real no-$#!^ gas mask handy (not some relic from the flea market)?
12) Got Kevlar? Plates? Phone books and floor tiles duct-taped together? Something??
13) We've talked about bandaids. What's the status on your beans?
14) Bullets?
15) Got comms?
16) Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency?
17)  How's your Tier One gear plan looking?
18) Tier Two?
19) Tier Three?
20) What's the status on Fort Apache?
21) What's your actual Convoy Plan to get from wherever you are, to there, if you need to?
22) What IPB (look it up - wait, let me help you out) have you done?
23) Who's the enemy in your area? Not generically, I want names, Order of Battle, organization, maps, plans, the whole effing enchilada, or else you don't know.
{Hint: it's probably enemies, as in multi-focal free-for-all, not a binary Us/Them game. Got Area Study?. [Second Hint: You want Appendix G there.] WTF not?? You can't tell the players without a program.}
24) Okay troop, you're barely deployable at this point, but tell me, what are those above twenty-three answers for the rest of your people? Do you have them locked-on too??
25) You do have people, plural, underlined, right? You didn't think you were going to be An Army Of One??

And that's a bare-bones skeletonized pre-inspection deployment checklist.
The detailed version looks like twenty seven company-grade officers and SNCOs crawling in your mouth and walking through all the way to the other end of your alimentary canal, to literally make sure you've got your $#!^ squared away.

Everything from your extra socks and underwear, to no holes in your sleeping bag, spare parts for the armory and cleaning kits for every rifle, a f**kton of spare batteries, and heaven knows how many cans of gas, tubes of toothpaste, and rolls of toilet paper, the supplies for the first re-supply wave, the second, the third, who to call when the tire's flat, where the spare is, and how many extra spark plugs and radiator caps you'll bring in case you lose one. And that's the most cursory glimpse of what we're talking about.

Hence the phrase, written in blood,

Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics.

The master plan for D-Day looked like the 2016 Federal register stacked in a pile.
the sub-unit plans were another pile, each.

And even with all that, it damned near turned into a total $#!^-show, and Ike was ready to cancel it, then ready to accept responsibility for it failing, then it worked anyways and a million and one things STILL went wrong.

What...you thought you were just going to grab a rifle and a bandolier and head out the front door?

Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta your butt, that might work.

It's nice if, after nailing that down, you can manage a coherent four-man patrol, because you know the Five Paragraph Order format cold. (It might help, at that point, to have three other guys. Just saying.)
But what are they going to eat on Day Two?
Where will they crap on the first night?
And if you forgot that, who's going to treat their dysentery on Day Three?
Where's your log train, your medical evac, and twenty-seven million other things you didn't think about, plan for, or lock down cold, as if this stuff hadn't been a thing since before the Babylonians, except you never learned that, because you never served, or never made it (mentally) above PFC, and you're just a literal babe in the woods?

If, God forbid - and I mean that sincerely and literally - things go from grim to actually Sporty, in your lifetime, on your home turf, exactly what army are you planning to pull whole right out of your fourth point of contact to deal with things then?

I get around, I talk to people, and the internet is everywhere.
I not only haven't seen anyone with the 101st effing Airborne Division anyplace, I haven't even seen Easy Company. I doubt most folks could scrape up even a fully-manned two-man foxhole, most days.

A thousand, even a million, or even (in your wildest fantasies) ten million individuals are not an army.
They're not even a coherent flash mob.

Now see if you can figure out why, along with PT, weapons skills, and tactics, some of those good folks in the upper right column are constantly on about reconnaissance, intelligence, organization, auxiliary, underground, and logistics, Logistics, LOGISTICS!!

If you can't shoot and move and communicate, in coherent groups, you can't operate, and you won't be a mobility kill, you'll be a stupidity kill.

"The Defense Department regrets to inform you that

your sons are dead because they were STUPID!"

 

Have that classic movie line put on a dogtag, and carry it on your neck chain with the real one, so when they nail together the little cross to mark your final resting space, you have an epitaph all ready for the occasion.

 

If we're anywhere like as close to things getting serious as some people evidently lust for, isn't it time for you to get serious about getting ready for that day?

 

Or did you just figure you'll just order a bucket of Dehydrated Airborne Division from Wise Company after the balloon goes up? Y'know, like you can now.

 

yeah, that'll work...NOT!

A little less enthusiasm, and a helluva lot more preparation, might be indicated at this point in the discussion.

 

I went through a CG inspection, two floats, and three deployments - two of them intercontinental, and four major training exercises with stone-cold professionals, who've been doing this stuff for eighty friggin' years, and it was still an unmitigated clusterf**k much of the time, every time.

 

And you think you're just going to free-lance that on the fly, and out of your tailpipe?

A line frequently uttered by those who were there in reference to A-stan and the Sandbox comes to mind:

 

"Yeah, we saw a lot of that at the beginning. The stupid ones died early, and fast."

 

Try not to let that be the summation of your life at the wake.