TDG 14: Personnel Recovery
A TDG is a Tactical Decision Game, a mental wargaming exercise designed to get you practice making tactically sound decisions in a hypothetical scenario. The ability to make sound and timely decisions based off incomplete and imperfect information is a critical skill to have, especially as a team leader.
You will be given a scenario, confronted with a tactical problem, and given a time limit to think about and write out your answer. The time limit is to simulate the pressure of a real-world tactical decision, where you must quickly assess the information you are given and come up with the best answer you can. Then comment below with your answer so you can discuss each others’ solutions.
TDG 14: Personnel Recovery
Week 6 into WROL. You and your MAG have been living peacefully at your homestead, but last week “Kelly,” the wife of one of your MAG members was kidnapped when she left the homestead alone to check on her sister’s house. Local sources and your own reconnaissance have led you to the farmhouse where she is being held in the basement, guarded by a small garrison of thugs. Your MAG has enlisted the help of a nearby Neighborhood Protection Team (NPT) to raid the compound to recover Kelly.
Your MAG has a 6-man squad and the NPT has committed their 10-man QRF to support you. Since none of you have night vision, you have decided to conduct the raid in daylight. YOU are the leader of your 6-man squad, which is acting as the assault element. The NPT is acting as your support-by-fire element for the raid. You estimate the enemy strength at around 8-12 thugs guarding the compound, with at least 3 awake on guard duty at any given time.
You do not have radios, so you plan to synchronize your actions to a time. The plan is for the NPT to open fire from the North at 0700 while your squad closes on the farmhouse following the treeline from the East. After two minutes, the NPT will cease fire while your squad closes the last 50m to the farmhouse to clear it and rescue Kelly. “Just make sure you’re in position on time,” the NPT squad leader tells you. “If you’re not in position by the time we cease firing, your approach will be uncovered and very dangerous.”
At 0500 you begin the foot patrol towards your objective. When you get to the objective rally point (ORP) at 0630 your groups split up and begin their final movement into attack positions. You’re moving very slowly to avoid making noise. About halfway to your assault position your pointman throws up a the hand/arm signal for “FREEZE!” and points up. You look and notice a small quadcopter drone flying North to South over the objective. Cautiously, you lead your patrol a little further into the treeline to evade the drone.
You make it to your assault position and everyone gets into the prone to wait for 0700. So far you have only observed 1 enemy outside the building on guard. At 0655 you hear a high-pitched whine and look up. The drone is back, but this time it’s hovering about 200ft above you. Does it see you? So far you don’t notice any change in behavior from the guard or any activity from the house. What do you do?
In a time limit of 5 minutes, decide how you will handle this situation. Write down any special instructions you would give to your men and explain why you chose to do what you did.
Grid squares represent 100m. Map created using Hawg-Ops.com
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GUNS N GEAR
No time for this right now, gotta go to work. Will be looking forward to all replies later. Thanks, Mike!
Options:
1) Assume we are compromised; abort mission.
2) Assume we are compromised; assault immediately.
3) Assume we are compromised; stay on mission.
4) Not compromised; stay on mission.
Actions
The situation sucks. Aborting is the worse option (pun intended). An immediate assault with NPT covering fire just means a bunch of my guys get shot. Options 3 and 4 are really the same. If we are compromised, then the thugs will probably come out and start shooting, in which case the NPT will probably activate. If it is too much, we’ll go back the the ORP, but the preference is to win the firefight. With the NPT’s support, we may be able to bound / assault up to the objective; but, the team leader (aka me) will have to make that call. Otherwise, it is defensive fire until the situation becomes clearer. If it sounds like the NPT pulled back or does not engage, then we pull back to the ORP (sorry Kelly). If we are not compromised, then we sit tight until 0700 and execute the mission as designed. We’ll know if we are spotted in 5 min i.e. if we are in Option 3 or Option 4. If Option 4, not compromised, the NPT will engage and the drone will most likely spin off north.
Edit: An immediate assault WITHOUT NPT covering fire
Two choices- Abort- although you have no idea what the NPT is going to do, or continue on as if nothing has changed. Since the guard hasn’t changed his “attitude” and it’s only 5 minutes to “go time”, I’m going to stick to the original plan with one caveat below-
We don’t know what the drones capabilities are. It may not even have a live camera on it, it could be just “for show”, the operator may not be all that good and our camo may keep us concealed….or it may have a thermal camera with real time ability and a trained operator on it. Could go either way. It could simply be on a fixed flight plan- geofenced etc…No idea…
One possibility is that the NPT sees something we don’t- so IF their fire doesn’t come as planned, then we definitely abort because 1. Likely we are compromised 2. Making that dash without cover is nearly suicidal vs. a prepared enemy. As a small, “family team” no loss is “acceptable” in achieving our objective, can’t do it.
This is a tough choice, the lane of approach looks like it offers little in the way of cover and concealment. So if we haven’t been spotted by the drone, we will be if we force the attack early. There is no communication with the NPT but at that close distance and well within earshot they should know the plans have changed if we open fire. Either way it is our mission to get Kelly back, they are just there to back us up. For those reasons I would stick to the plan and watch and observe for the next five minutes. If they send out a patrol or move on us to attack then it’s on and I would communicate that to my squad. I could be completely wrong here, but it’s my decision. I’d imagine having seen the drone earlier that I’d have instructed my squad to hide from any overhead surveillance, so even hovering at 200ft we would not be visible, thermals are another thing to consider. If the drone moves on we’re fine (maybe), if it remains on station we’re most likely found and have to fight earlier than planned. My other considerations are the actual extraction of Kelly. I have no way of knowing if she is still in the basement, either way my squad has to enter that farmhouse immediately for her safe recovery. If we get bogged down can we smoke them out or burn them out? If this doesn’t happen fast what are the chances that this becomes a gun to her head true hostage situation (I have to act under the impression that it already is, without any hostage situation training).
First thought was, “How good is the Intel? Is this a setup?”. If kidnapping crew is not already on alert they either are 1) on your schedule 2) haven’t seen you via drone 3) completely unrelated (don’t have Kelly but someone else wants to use you against them).
Figuring that the 2 minutes of fire will be ineffective against people in the basement, drawing them out might work by signalling the drone. Have your least well camouflaged or most distant teammate flash a light at the drone @0657. If the drone stays in place and no reaction for the kidnappers then consider that the “FIX” is in on your team. If the bad guys swarm out within two minutes of being alerted then hold your plan.
A member of the squad should have some drone jamming gear and skills.
Is it forward observing only?
Most aircraft are forward observing only and once read a story about a diamond thief burglar who evaded PD helicopter by hiding in a potentially gator infested swamp in FLA.
If you don’t even have radio comms, nobody has drone jamming capability.
Tactical pondering aside. There’s probably only one reason they kidnapped Kelly. And she’s probably going through hell. If you back off and retreat it’s only a matter of time before they come of your wife or your daughter, after Kelly is traded off to the next group for a little bit of food or booze.. It’s do or die and no prisoners.
Don’t be so sure of that. Six weeks into “The Pandemic” or a deployment and we’ve all seen some people show different colors. “Our” team has 6, no nv, no radio, no drone. There’s been a lot of women who have bailed out on a husband for loosing a job when they have greener pastures in sight.
If she thinks her husband traded a can of food for some other girl’s favors…. You (and all your stuff) might be in her divorce settlement.
Abort mission. It sucks to possibly lose Kelly. It would suck worse to lose most of our fighting age men in a foolish attack, since all of our women and children will then be at the mercy of these bastards.
The likelihood that a drone is coincidentally hovering directly over us – just as we’re about to launch an attack – is about as high as whale dung in the Marianas Trench.
We’re already on the ragged edge of this being a suicide mission. It’s daylight, we have no radios, we don’t outnumber the enemy by much (if at all), the enemy’s defending a structure from concealment (and probably from cover), we don’t know what weapons or training they have, we’re about to attack over a flat and clear field of fire that might be booby trapped, we don’t know whether the enemy has a QRF or other support available, we don’t know for certain that Kelly is in the basement or in the house at all … hell, we don’t even know if she’s alive.
Rather than try to play the shitty hand we’ve been dealt, we should back off and hit these jackasses when we’re able to play by our own rules. Rushing headlong into a fight here and now makes it far too likely that we’ll lose a lot of our guys. We have responsibilities to our own families, and we do them no good if we get slaughtered here today.
At 0659, we should all shoot at the drone. Once we knock it down, we’ll grab it and head home for intel exploitation. Hopefully our action will prompt one or more of the enemy to rush out of the building in time to catch a fusillade at 0700 from our buddies north of the house.
We should return in two days, with radios and better contingency plans and more fighters, but this time we’ll strike at dawn. We’ll take shifts harassing them continuously with sniper fire for the next 48 hours, keeping them bottled up, awake & jumpy so we can wear them out. The assault should come from the brush in the south, with a blocking element WNW in the wood line beside the driveway. A good diversion would be a brush pile burning in the east to draw the enemy’s eyes (and remaining drones?) just before we attack.
But a lot of people seem to be comfortable slapping their teammate on the shoulder and saying “sorry buddy we got to work” Wallace wife tied to the dinner table being gang raped. There’s worse things than dying while defeating evil.
I would argue that getting a half dozen husbands/dads/protectors killed unnecessarily qualifies as worse, if the rescue mission is likely to fail.
You’re living in this world. I don’t want to deal with a god who will strike me down for being a pussy. If you can’t understand that then just go back to your tactical chalkboards
Sucks to be in your neighborhood my wife or daughter worth your ….
Reading the scenario and the parameters of the mission, the only real choice is to continue mission. Due to lack of commo and the fact that the mission is based on a time, you are essentially committed no matter what.
It seems that the team does not have an abort plan or signal. It’s literally just open fire at 0700 and then the assault element proceeds to the objective.
As the leader in this scenario, I would not send a runner because the motion judging on the terrain would be something that would attract undue attention. It may even cause friendly fire as the support by fire element may think it’s an enemy. In short, continue mission as planned. We are committed at that point. It’s dangerous as hell, but the alternatives suck equally if not more so. Since the mission parameters didn’t mention anything about challenge words or a PACE plan, I’m basing the answer on the situation as given. The mission scenario seems to be that the two teams haven’t really even worked together much if it all. All of these are something that is highly probable at first to be honest.
We don’t know whether we were spotted or not, but the caveat here is that even if we were it doesn’t mean that the support by fire element was spotted. Once they open up on the objective we may very well catch our opponent by surprise due to that fact alone. If there is a retreat, then our VIP is probably going to get murderd among other things, let’s be honest. Plus how would we coordinate that? We have no PACE plan in this scenario either!
The biggest thing about this scenario is that there must be a commo plan and PACE plan. Even if there aren’t radios, use of a signal mirror or the like could be done. Or a panel.
Even without NODS this probably should have just been done at night, but it is what it is.
Are you British or Canadian? Or just say natural culk Same same
I’m with WarPig on this one. I’d continue on mission with a caveat. Special instructions to my team is if the drone stays with us, then remain in the wood line, engage the house after NPT opens fire and then abort and withdraw via bounding over watch back to ORP..If we have been compromised it won’t hurt to engage the house with a firefight. If the drone heads North after OPT lights up, then we can assume (hope) that we are undetected and attempt our assault on the house.
Post script regret…. Should’ve taken that drone out when the fireworks started regardless.
PPPPPPP – Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. In this case it sounds like the first three weren’t done so the last three could result.
If you’ve been spotted, it’s time to initiate the festivities. If you haven’t, then you wait for the Go Time. But you don’t know. Worse case is that you have been spotted. Any delay will allow the Bad Guys (BGs) spin up their defensive to full posture.
So, initiate fire from your position and hope that the NPT catches the clue and initiates their fire. Once they do, go by the plan.
~~~~~~~
Back to the first three, the PPP that wasn’t done sufficiently. There should have been contingency planning on alternate ways to initiate the attack (other than pure timing) and to call off the attack. For important things, there should be a PACE plan. As presented above:
Primary – Generally a radio frequency, but in this case you don’t have them. You chose to go with timing.
Alternate – Generally a radio frequency, but in this case you don’t have them.
Contingency – None
Emergency – None
Just because you don’t have radios doesn’t mean that you throw PACE out the window. Do as much as you can. For Contingency – how about simple audio signals to initiate or abort the attack? One loud blast on a whistle from your position for the NPT to initiate the attack early. Two short blasts to call off the attack. Don’t have a whistle (really poor planning) then how about a car horn and a battery? Emergency – Someone on your MAG yells out “FIRE” at the top of their lungs and the NPT initiates.
Will they BGs hear these? Yes, but in the case of initiating the attack they’ll shortly be more concerned by the incoming projectiles. In the case of calling off the attack, they’ll probably hear the two whistles and have a WTF was that moment, but will likely have no idea what was planned.
Matt