Review: Squad Tactics 2024: Tom
September 2024 Squad Tactics
Having attended Heat 1 and Heat 2 in the last 16 months, the natural progression was to attend Squad Tactics. My expectation was to take what I learned in the first two Heats and use this practically with the opposition force. I had heard about Squad Tactics from prior classmates and even had some of the opposition force in prior classes so I had a feel for the intensity within squad tactics.
However, the thing that I was unaware of, was the overall comprehensive mission planning and execution that took place. Max took us through the warno and fully explained the individual pieces of the mission planning.
After this, it was up to the students to plan and lead the missions. We had varied success based upon strategies, leadership, and luck. The ability to receive an order, plan the mission, patrol out to an ORP and then execute was the perfect combination of Heats 1 and 2, as well as the books that Max has written. When you go through the drills in Heats 1 or 2 and/or read the books, you understand what’s going on, but when you’re actually performing a mission and need to either follow orders or make an audible based upon the opposition force, it’s substantially different in real time when being shot at.
That is the benefit of Squad Tactics, it takes all that you’ve learned in prior courses and books, whether at Max’s or not and puts them in a real world setting. I can’t imagine another or better way to put real life situations into practice better than this.
Squad Tactics had something for everyone, if you wanted to lead, then you could. If you wanted to just participate, then you could. Or if you showed the ability and competency, you would be selected to be a team leader.
With the recent addition of the trenches at VTC, it gave us a couple of missions that were very unique and was a different perspective from merely being in the woods.
I plan to attend Squad Tactics every year to keep these skills sharp.
Tom