TACTICAL TUESDAY: Counterattack, Spoiling, Feinting

We have to hit the reset button and create a true culture of preparedness, starting at a very young age and filtering all. The way up. Last week, we talked about modern-day tactics for ambushes and raids and how that kind of stuff might go down in a modern sense. When we left off last week, we were talking about conducting an area ambush, point ambushes, raids, operational considerations, task organization, the conduct of a raid, exactly how that stuff goes down, platoon raids, and so on. So I figured this week we might talk more about offensive tasks, you know, tactical tasks in that vein, but we might also talk a little bit about counterattacks, feints, maybe spoiling attacks, things like that. What are these, Dane? What do they mean? What are we talking about, okay? Almost everyone knows what a counterattack is. Everybody knows what that means, or pretty much everybody knows what a counterattack is, okay? But for those of you that don't know what the military viewpoint is on a counterattack, what the military doctrine says about counterattack, basically it says that a counterattack is a form of attack by force, part of the friendly forces or all of the friendly forces that are defending against an enemy attacking force. The general objective of a counterattack is to deny the enemy his goal of attacking them. Hopefully you guys are following this. That attack, by defensive elements, regains the initiative or denies the enemy success with his attack. The platoon may conduct a counterattack as a lightly committed element within a company or as the battalion reserve. So counterattacks afford the friendly defender the opportunity to create favorable conditions for the commitment of combat power. So basically, if you have a smaller element or the entire friendly defending force decides to go for a counterattack, they're trying to regain the initiative. If you watch any kind of war movies or you pay attention to any of the stuff that you see on TV, like you might watch the Warfighters on the History Channel, any of the SEAL Team documentaries, anything like that, you'll see that the insurgents and things like that, bad guys, they like to counter-attack our guys all the time over in Iraq. You know, they like to, even during World War II, you know, the Nazis were very fond of counter-attacking. The Russians, even more so during World War II, were very fond of the counter-attack. And if you want to read about some really crazy stuff, look at how counter-attacks and even just regular attacks were done during World War I in the height of the trench warfare. Oh my gosh. That stuff was insane. So, one thing that they need to keep in mind, though, is the platoon leader needs to synchronize the execution of the counterattack within the overall defensive effort. Okay, so the counterattack can't just be something hanging out there in the wind. It needs to be coordinated. Just like every attack, just like every ambush, just like everything when it comes to fighting. You need to coordinate with the people around you. Now, they say that the platoon should rehearse counterattacks and prepare the ground to be traversed. They should be paying close attention to where their friendly units are located. Any kind of obstacles or engagement areas they might come across on the map. Anything they may come across as they're traversing the area and getting ready to counterattack. So let's say you're moving across an open field. You need to be aware of that before you go on that counterattack. You need to be sending scouts out there to say, hey, there's a big wide open field. They could have machine gun emplacements set up there that will just cut our guys down. Or conversely, if there is an open area, but it's got hills on both sides, and multiple rocks and all kinds of small hills and embankments and stuff like that that your guys can hide behind and use bounding fire, covering fire, and so on, well, that needs to be taken into consideration. Or maybe there's trees. Maybe it's a massive forest. Maybe you'll have something like World War II and they have the Battle of the Bulge. So there's all kinds of stuff that needs to be taken into account by the platoon and, of course, the platoon leader, all right? So, something else that we can talk about here, a spoiling attack, okay? In layman's terms, a spoiling attack is a form of attack that you guys get to, the platoon leader and the platoon gets to before the enemy attack. So you're basically trying to spoil the attack they're about to perform, okay? But you will be attacking the enemy first. while they're in the process of planning or preparing to attack you. One of the things that you will see in something like this is, some people call it a raid, but technically it's a spoiling attack. So you're trying to prevent them from building up their force and their momentum. So you get in there and hit them where it hurts as fast as possible. The purpose of the spoiling attack, on top of all that, right, is to disrupt the enemy's offensive capability and timelines. You want to destroy the personnel, you want to destroy the equipment, and you want to gain as much additional time for defending your own elements as possible. You want to give your own elements as much time to prepare their positions for defense as you possibly can. You're not trying to secure any terrain, You're not trying to grab any kind of objectives. You're not trying to do any of that. It is purely destructive and to buy time. Okay? That's all you're coming down to with that. So, for example, a commander, company, battalion, the commander may direct a platoon to conduct a spoiling attack during friendly defensive preparations against to strike the enemy while he is in assembly areas, or he might instruct them to attack positions where he is preparing offensive operations. So if your commander, if the friendly commander sees that the enemy is preparing offensive operations, he may go, go, spoiling attack on those guys right now. So the platoon leader has to plan for the spoiling attack, as he does for any other kind of attack too, though. You can't just go out there willy-nilly. That has to be planned for as well. Just like we were talking about the counterattack. You need to know the area. You need to look at that MET-TC. Remember last time we talked about MET-TC. And now, we return to the. Whoopsie. Sorry about that. My thumb hit that. Anyways, remember last time we talked about MET-TC. That is Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops, Time, and Civilian Considerations. Okay? Met TC. So keep that in mind when you're looking at spoiling attacks and so on. Alright? Next up, you have something called a feint. Okay? F-E-I-N-T. Feint. Okay? Not the same as, oh, I feinted. Right? Completely different thing. Alright? So, what is a feint, Dane? What are we talking about here? Well, in the terms of hand-to-hand combat... or something of that nature, a feint is basically a fake-out, okay? So, let's say that, you know, you're kickboxing, right? And you are fighting someone that you know might have superior skill to you, and you know that you have to end that fight quite quickly. You're probably going to use a lot of feints to end that fight quickly, okay? Bruce Lee, in his famous book, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, he talks about using feints to win a fight. OK, so I'll give you a simple example of a feint. OK, if any of you out there know anything about Muay Thai kickboxing or even just, you know, regular American kickboxing. okay I myself did Muay Thai that's what I preferred but some people prefer American kickboxing that's perfectly fine no big deal um both Muay Thai more so but obviously both have a lot of kicks Muay Thai has basically specialized leg kicks okay um you could, as an example, you could, you've got your hands up, you're ready to throw, okay? And you're looking down low, you're looking up high, you're moving all around, and you kind of throw your leg down at their leg like you're going to do a leg kick, right? But instead, you pull your leg back just before you make contact, right? And after you pull your leg back, you plant the one that you just threw and you throw a punch. Because at that point, They're thinking, oh, here comes a kick, and they're getting ready to defend that kick, right? But instead, you hit them. Okay? Same thing. You can do the same exact thing. You can get ready to throw a punch or an elbow, anything like that. They're getting ready. Oh, okay, he's about to throw a punch. So they're getting their hands up, getting ready to defend themselves. And instead, you throw a massive, massive leg kick to their thigh, and they fall. Because I don't know about you, but if you've ever been kicked in the thigh by someone who knows how to do it Holy crap. That is going to drop you. Okay. Two, three, four kicks. It's over. It's over. And I know what you're thinking. Oh, a street fight. Oh, you know, this guy, that guy, whatever, whatever. If someone knows what they're doing, leg kicks, leg kicks alone can end that fight. Email me if you know what I'm talking about. Gunmetalarmory at gmail.com. Gunmetalarmory at gmail.com. Email me if you know what I'm talking about. Okay. Moving back to where we were talking about feint as far as a military operation goes. A feint, as far as a military operation goes, is a form of attack used to deceive the enemy. They're using it to deceive the enemy, just like we were talking about. Faking a punch, using a kick. Faking a kick, using a punch. So on and so forth. In military terms, you're using a feint to deceive the enemy... as to the location and time of the actual operation. Feints attempt to induce the enemy to move reserves and shift his fire support to a location where they cannot immediately impact the actual operation. So, a really good, really, really good example of a military feint was what happened on D-Day. If you remember, if you were taught history, the American and British forces were using the Ghost Army, had convinced Hitler and his henchmen that the actual attack that was coming across the English Channel was actually going to come across the Port de Calais, the smallest or the shortest path across the English Channel. If you look at a map, you'll see the Port de Calais is actually the smallest, the thinnest part of that English Channel. So, They started setting up, the American and British forces started setting up inflatable tanks and inflatable planes, bridges, you know, started playing fake troop movement sounds, all kinds of stuff. So it would look like they were massing their troops on that side over there by the Port de Calais. And of course, Hitler took the bait. He started massing his troops over there by the Port de Calais. Okay? Okay? Whereas now we know that that's not where it happened. It happened on the beaches of Normandy. It did not happen up there. So that is a freaking stellar example of a feint. The British and American forces made them believe that they were going to attack up there when in fact they attacked down there. It's hard to do this as a podcast because I'm pointing and you guys can't see me point. So, anyways, okay, so, when directed to conduct a feint, the platoon seeks direct fire or contact with the enemy but avoids a decisive engagement. The commander will assign the platoon an objective in limited size or scope. The planning, prep, and execution considerations are all the same as for other forms of attack. The enemy must be convinced that That the feint is the actual attack. Just like the Port de Calais. Just like World War II. The actual attack is coming over here. We need to put all our forces over there. And what happened? That's not at all where the attack came through. Okay? So, we should definitely be keeping feints in mind. Because in my opinion... Now, I'm no military genius or anything, not by any long stretch or short stretch even of the imagination. But in my humble opinion, when it comes to fighting, you know, fighting military tactics and things like that, the master of the faint is the master of the battlefield. If you can make your enemy go somewhere else thinking that that's where you're attacking, dude. Huh. You've won that fight. You've already won that fight. There's no way around that. You've already won. You know? So, it's just like, same thing. Sun Tzu says, know your enemy and know yourself and you'll win a thousand battles. Okay? All of this stuff makes a difference. So, because of the weather here, I think I am going to stop here. I did want to get a little bit more into offensive tactical tasks, like seizing specific ground, why you would use a force to seize specific ground, and things of that nature. I wanted to get into clearing operations, what if you have restrictive terrain, and so on. General terrain considerations, things of that nature. But clearance operations... And even enemy analysis is extremely important to go through piece by piece, okay? We also have suppressing operations, support by fire. There's just so much that we need to go into. But again, you know, the weather here is a little bit right now. So I'm going to wait until the weather is not so bad. But I did want to get something out for you guys today because... I do appreciate each and every one of you, okay? So until next week, I will wait for then, and we will talk about offensive tactical tasks such as seizing and more, okay? Until next week, I appreciate each and every one of you guys, and we'll see you next time as we go deeper inside the Gun Metal Armory. Good night, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time on The Gun Metal Armory.