"........all that really matters is that everybody knows that the invaders have committed themselves to a raid. Then, each civilian sniper individually rolls a six sided dice. (die) If they are disciplined, and they must be to trust their fate to chance, they will attack as follows:
Die Roll | Action |
1 | Attack the target from the NW |
2 | Attack the target from the NE |
3 | Attack the target from the SW |
4 | Attack the target from the SE |
5 | Attack the nearest freeway offramp from the lef |
6 | Attack the nearest freeway offramp from the right |
========
| Jack Hinson's One-Man War, A Confederate Sniper |
As they say in the Army "that plan briefs well".
ReplyDeleteFigure out what assets you have and how to best apply them given both the enemy situations as well as the environment to apply what you want to accomplish. I have a hard time seeing the sniper dice or IED maker ouji board or the ambush wheel of chance working out better than an actual plan.
His view:
ReplyDeleteCivilian snipers attempting to defend a city from invasion have a leader only to the extent that such a person has secure lines of communication with his troops. That is to say, civilian snipers are completely leaderless. However, in any city, it is not hard to find someone who aspires to the purple. A fancy uniform, sunglasses (the darker the better) and a few rousing speeches on AM radio goes a long ways towards convincing "Fearless Leader" that he is in charge. This is actually a good thing because the opposition general (who has secure communications and, therefore, really is directing the invasion) can easily be induced into thinking that he has a counterpart.
The opposition general has spent his entire career playing war games against other officers in which both sides had perfectly secure communications (they just moved their pieces around their gameboard or computer screen) and none of their pieces (little squares of cardboard or blips on a computer screen) had any volition of their own. It is impossible for the opposition general to conceive of leaderless snipers. If he cannot identify their leader, his own propaganda people will pin that title on some whacko, just to give a face to their enemy. This is a good thing for the defenders because second guessing someone who does not exist can only lead to error on the part of the invaders.
Bevin Alexander is a good example of someone who is incapable of conceiving of a commander who does not enjoy complete control over every soldier's movements through instantaneous and perfectly secure communications. In How Wars Are Won, pp. 14-15, Alexander writes:
Instant communications combined with great mobility and high flexibility are the keys to the success of swarming tactics. The [U.S.] military calls its integrated information system C4ISR, for "command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance." If carried out properly, small units in constant communication with one another could attack an enemy on all sides simultaneously.
Frankly, this seems a bit impractical. When are they going to find time to fight if they are in constant communication with one another? And what kind of mastermind do they have leading them who can keep all of that information in his head at once? He would have to have a telephone switchboard in front of him that rivals anything that AT&T possesses. Alexander appears to be so enthralled with pilotless drones that he has started to think of every weapon system as a drone. Some weapons must be accompanied by humans because they have more nimble fingers than robots, but Alexander does not expect the humans to, like, think. That's what computers are for.
What Fearless Leader actually accomplishes in his radio speeches is to tell everybody that the invaders have raided a certain location. He may go on to spin all kinds of fanciful strategems for carrying out a counter-attack, and send hundreds of "secret" messages (using the ever popular substitution cipher) giving "orders" to his "troops,"...........