Staff Sgt. Jerry Shriver (Mad Dog), U.S. Army 5th Special Forces, Detachment A-502, on patrol in Republic of Viet Nam 1966 (jwy) Early this morning Jerry was alert and kept us from being ambushed. He fired on the ambushers as they were moving into their positions. His reward was three hats and some blood trails. The weapons and bodies were removed quickly. Later in the morning Jerry killed a Viet Cong while on point.
Rifle/Carbine Tips, cont'd
- Forget about shooting center-of-mass on a standard silhouette and for CQB. Yes, you should still shoot for the center of the largest piece of a concealed enemy that shows, but if you can see the torso, aim for the hips and the head. Bad guys (of all persuasions) wear body armor and rifle plates. A hip shot, contrary to what some instructors were once teaching, is not a fight-ender. A few rounds to the hips WILL put a dude on his ass however, severely limiting his mobility. This makes it MUCH easier to make head shots that will end the fight, right-the-fuck-now. "Hips and heads, kids. Hips and heads." Instructors that are not teaching this need to re-think their paradigms.
- Paint your fucking weapons! Black items stick out in pretty much every single operational environment I've ever experienced. It's not a financial investment. If it is, you're reading the wrong fucking blog and have your head in the sand. It's a fighting tool designed to help you kill bad people more efficiently (as a retired LEO said to me recently, "God created guns, because we suck at throwing bullets!"). So, let it help you kill them more efficiently by reducing the chances that it will be the thing that gets you killed. You can Dura-Coat it, or whatever. It really doesn't matter. I use Krylon. It costs a whopping $4-5 at China-Mart, and I generally use most of two cans to completely paint a rifle (I use a base coat of tan, with highlights of green, since I live in the high-desert. If I lived in a more densely forested region, I'd probably reverse that....maybe).
- Practice shooting while you are moving. This is an issue subject to a lot of disagreement amongst seriously professional and extremely experienced gunfighters. My take is: Inside of twenty meters with a rifle, and inside ten meters with a handgun, it is possible to get solid, well-placed aimed shots to the vital targeting areas of a moving hostile (I can make solid hits at 100+meters while moving, on a stationary, so....). If you're that close to a guy who is shooting at you, and not solidly behind cover, you BETTER be fucking moving! Past that, pause for the half-step moment it takes to plant a solid hit on the dude, then keep on moving. In the meantime though, master the ability to make solid hits to the vitals ("Hips and heads, kids! Hips and heads!"), while you are sprinting from cover to cover.
- In the comments on the previous article, someone asked me my thoughts on the AR platform versus the AK, since I've never hidden my preference for the AR-15/M4 family. It takes more than a paragraph to completely describe my thoughts on that, so I'll save it for a follow-on article.
Patrolling Operational Tips
(Regardless of what your SHTF scenario predictions are, the need to conduct patrolling operations, from retreat defense security reconnaissance patrols, to raiding and ambush combat patrols, will be a necessity. Thinking otherwise is foolish.)
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