Bullet-Proof Sniper Insurgents!
I was reflecting on what I recently wrote in the “Comments on the Small Kill Team (SKT)” post. Generally, I see across the Patriot blogosphere what I consider to be false notions:
- That ballistic plates need not be worn, based on the idea of moving fast and being ‘insurgent like’, and
- That a notional “Patriot” insurgency would be able to outrange security forces with weapon systems i.e. be long range snipers.
There is, of course, potential truth in these notions. But it seems to be an overall false notion for the wrong reasons. What are those reasons? I will try and boil it down, although it is complex subject and without a specific scenario (i.e. the METT-TC of it), it’s hard to pin down.
The general assumption is that 1) Civil War II happens and 2) Patriot’s end up in the field fighting elements of traitorous LEO / Military commu-tards. Ok, fine, we’ll stick with that.
Firstly, ballistic plates. On a modern battlefield there will be a lot of projectiles flying about, from bullets to shrapnel. The use of ballistic plates will significantly reduce the chances of penetrating trauma to the vital organs in the torso i.e. upper chest, heart, great vessels etc. It won’t stop you getting hit elsewhere, but knowing your tactical combat care (yes?) wounds to much of the rest of the body are survivable. Maybe wear a helmet also?
However, there is a mythos out there about what a modern American insurgent may look like. He is going to have to move fast and be light. He isn’t going to wear body armor. The problem is that you are not going to be able to always set the conditions in which you may fight. It’s going to be dynamic. You may have artillery / mortars brought onto your position. Maybe drone strikes. Apaches firing 30mm rounds – this kind of goes into the ‘sniper’ aspect also, but bear with me on that.
I have written much on the MVT Fight Lite concept. I have also addressed the idea of going without body armor, and even made videos about that. I will choose in most of the cases to wear body armor. Also, you will never be ‘light’ – there is always be a load that needs carrying if you deploy out as some form of light infantry soldier – and I know that is a notion that inflames many, because they see themselves as an ‘insurgent’ and not a ‘soldier’ – but it all still applies. So the idea is that you would be as light as you can be, but that isn’t really ‘light’ because gear that you need to fight with needs carrying.
Ballistic Plates do not need to be heavy. But you need to spend decent money getting the good stuff. No steel (you wanna be a steel target? LOL). For example the ShotStop GT2 (Green Tip 2) plates weigh in at 3.8lb for the 10 x 12, for special threat plates. The newly introduced level IV HA plates weight in at 4.5lb. This is not the end of the world, and is a balance between mobility versus protection.
The bad guy in all this is the idea of doing PT, and getting your cardio (and weight) to a decent place. Oh dear, maybe I lost much of the audience! You cannot even consider combat, which is fitness based, without a decent level of cardio ability. Even for the small kill team stuff at the link above, you are going to have to bug out. And no-one can say that your lines of retreat will be clear, or that assets are not called onto your movement from the ambush point. Assets with longer range than your rifle. Perhaps the biggest level of fantasy in all of this is guys considering ‘going insurgent’ who have shite physical ability. You’ll just die exhausted breathing through your asshole from China. So quit that fantasy and go out and do some PT. And if you are fit, it is no bother to wear plates at 3.8lb each, and move in them.
I’ll take a break now and go out and do some broken mans fitness (I’m not even joking, I’ll finish this later) which I will do with my fight lite load (battle belt and plate carrier) plus a 70lb sandbag. At least the plate carrier is not as heavy as it could be, with 2 x 3.8lb GT2 plates in it.
And…back.
A couple of thoughts on the long range ‘sniper’ thing. It’s not that I think it is necessarily a bad idea, but I also think it is maybe a crutch so that “we’ll all be sniper’s’ and win the war with longer range weapons. Maybe. I wrote quite a bit on that in the “Comments on the Small Kill Team (SKT)” post. I often think back to ancient history and the conflict in Northern Ireland, which seems more relevant to what may happen here than chasing Muj around the deserts (or maybe the Ukraine? Where it looks like the Biden pretender is getting us ready for war). Did you know that as a BritMil patrol, we could not conduct a VISIBLE task (such as a VCP) that lasted for more than 20 minutes. Why? Because it only took 20 minutes, if they knew where we were, for PIRA to roll out an attack, whether that be manning a pre-positioned IED, snipe, multi-weapons shoot, pipe bomb, or whatever. That’s fast. They had the Intel on the ground.
Now do you? Will you? For a start, this isn’t long range bench shooting, but shooting from a concealed hide. So you may well be out there for days waiting for that shot if you don’t have special Intel on where the enemy may be. And like most ambushes, it won’t be sprung. It’s not like they will be moseying along dismounted just where you can get that long range shot. What will they be doing? Probably strung thin, manning FOBs, mobile convoy protection, maybe the odd TCP etc. Maybe even an assault on the neighborhood? Which would come down to close range shite. Most of these scenarios involve vehicles which will be armored. So maybe you can get a shot onto a dismounted guy, or someone visible behind a gun turret (protected as they are). They likely have the CROWS system, where they can watch a video screen INSIDE the vehicle, and slave Mark 19s, .50 Cal, 249 etc to it, which have long ranges They also know exactly where the shot came from (part of the tech), and can move the guns and lay them right onto the target. So from shooting outside the range of their personal M4s, now you have all those guns firing on your position. Mark 19s exploding around you. Not only would you benefit from a plate carrier, but you have to MOVE as soon as you send that shot.
How will you get out of there? On foot? On foot to vehicles? What is to say that a QRF is not mobilized immediately from a direction that will cut off your escape? What about Attack Aviation? Mortars or Artillery on call? I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t know what assets these notional commu-tards will bring to the fight. But it has massive potential to get ugly and CLOSE RANGE. I do know that the way it looks, nobody is going to do anything about the stolen election and the rest, which passes it down to the next generation to fight totalitarianism. They are already going to robots. So your kids will have to fight Skynet.
This whole bullet-proof sniper thing really needs some thought. It can’t be a crutch.
If you want to comment, you can do so on the forum version of this post. If you want a clue as to what a civil war may be like, read this book. It’s set in a fictional environment where an unconstitutional tyrannical regime has gone to war against the American people. Something that would never happen, right?
‘Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises.’
It’s also available directly from me. But then you have to pay realistic shipping, and Prime does not apply. It’s been hard for some people to get their heads around, where they actually have to pay non-Amazon shipping rates.
