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Showing posts from 2013

December Training Dates

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I am going to go ahead and open up December 6-8 for classes in the NW. I have had requests for T3C/Off-Grid Medicine, Combat Pistol, SUT and E&E. I won't be able to do them all this time so if you are interested in one, email me so I can lock down the appropriate subject and locale. Pick your poison and push the go button....

Things that make you go Hmmmm...

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Thought I would post these items up as their relevance, I believe, could be important... Chinese Troops in US - Not A Conspiracy Theory This is to coincide with the upcoming GridEx2 exercise being spearheaded by the fine folks over at DHS/FEMA. Also worth noting.... Communications Down Might want to spend some time on your commo plan. Maybe get familiar with these items as well..... The QBZ-95 and variants (top picture) is the standard issue assault rifle for the PLA. Manufactured by Norinco (remember, all those cheap import AK and M1A clones back in the 90's?) it fires the 5.8x42mm cartridge..... they also have a variant that fires the 5.56 NATO cartridge, the QBZ-97. Below that is the M99 anti-material rifle which fires a 12.7x108mm cartridge.....this also has a variant that fires the US .50BMG cartridge. See a pattern here?

Understanding the Intelligence Cycle

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S2Company A good read on understanding the Intelligence building cycle. The questions you need to ask yourself as you read this are: 1) How can an enemy use this process against me? 2) How can I use this process against an enemy? 3) How would I need to modify the process to make it a useful tool in my unit's current configuration? ****  "The enemy has a reserve which can be used to counterattack into either Objective BOB or Objective JOHN.    The initial CCIR was "Where will the enemy counterattack with his reserve?".     During your IPB you might identify the details about that reserve (it's the 1-23 Tank Battalion, etc), but you won't know WHERE it will attack until it actually starts to move.   During the wargame the staff realizes that the effect of this enemy action is significant enough that it will require the commander to make a decision on the use of attack helicopters.    This   becomes a Decision Point, and the CCIR is transformed i

Auxiliary Blues...

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Continuation (part 3) of the ongoing "learning through fiction" series. Part 1       Part 2 John shifted uncomfortably as he pulled the scratchy, surplus wool blanket to his side to plug an annoying draft. He forced his eyes closed and tried to focus on the vibrations the big locomotive was producing....anything to quiet his mind from replaying the events of the last twelve hours. The adrenaline had finally subsided, but while his endocrine system may have adjusted to his current situation, his brain refused to be so accommodating. He started to stand from his curled up position in the corner of the cab behind the engineer. He was not quite erect before the engineer growled at him to keep out of sight or he would kick him out right here and now. John sunk back down, not wishing to be ejected into a pine tree at 50 some odd miles an hour. The events from hours earlier began their mental replay again - after he had squeezed out of the tiny café

Rhodesians, Masada, von Trapp and ham-hocks...

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In the last piece we read about the conditions the Rhodesian farmers had to exist under and some of the techniques they used to try and mitigate the dangers they faced. I would now like to look at another aspect of the homestead security problem, specifically, avoiding the siege scenario. History has shown that sieges rarely end well for the people tucked inside the walls. From the stone fortress of Masada, to the massively fortified city of Sevastopol, to the wood framed building at Waco – history begs us to take note of the lessons.....and have a viable exit strategy on hand. Dealing with small groups of bandits, looters and marauders in a SHTF scenario could in fact be a manageable problem dependent on your manpower, level of combat expertise and fortifications, but dealing with an antagonistic state level group (or even a well funded/equipped private entity) is a whole different animal as demonstrated in the three afore mentioned examples. What can make this especial

Home hardening in a real SHTF scenario...

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Found via a commenter at Max's place ( original post  HERE  ) "After discussing in another thread the problems with the wooden building that are so often used elsewhere in the world I thought I would post my 2 cents on how its done in Africa at many farms I have visited and read about over the years. Rhodesian Farmers Defensive Arrangements The following is a general overview: 1) Most farmers fitted hand-grenade grills to the outside of all windows and Doors leading outside were likewise security grilled. 2) Many farmers built thick sand bag walls in front and under bedroom windows to stop bullets passing through walls and providing secured firing arc's. Beds were never placed against the outside walls of a farmhouse. 3) It was usual to have a designated safe room within the farmhouse that could be defended until support arrived. Sometimes this was a central corridor that allowed the farmer to move into other rooms to attack those outside through the windo

Non Essential

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I try to avoid being a "news" type blog, as there plenty of them out there already...but I had to post up this excellent video by the always astute Bill Whittle. Enjoy....

OTP Practical Encryption Exercise

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DanMorgan76 and Mosby had an excellent post up recently regarding One Time Pad encryption.  DM76-OTP I wanted to add to that discussion by presenting another OTP method and a practical exercise for everyone to complete.....consider it a challenge. Dan explained the use of an alphabetic OTP (similar to a Vigenere square). I would like to present another method to consider in case you are struggling with the concept... In this method, you first make a key of sufficient length for your messages (receiving party needs to have a copy of the same key) using a true random number generator, or some ten-sided dice. Next we are going to convert the text of our message into numbers. The common way to achieve this is with the use of a checkerboard template. There are many to choose from if you don't want to create your own....and I should point out that the strength of our encryption does not rely upon the use of one checkerboard over another, so don't feel squeamish about usin

Update On The INTEL Backdoor Scandal

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Just an FYI for everyone regarding Intel Corporation's newer CPU's with built in hardware backdoor. Go to this link... INTEL , and look for your CPU on the list. If you find it, you have one of the "backdoor-ed" models. They claim you can disable the feature in the BIOS under the Intel ME feature.........my advice - get rid of it and go with something older or with an AMD cpu. News release here..... CPU Spying ** To find out your CPU version: - Windows = Control Panel -> System -> General  , or install CPU-Z - Linux = open a terminal, type -  cat /proc/cpuinfo , or install CPU-G - Mac = open a terminal, type - sysctl -a machdep.cpu.brand_string

A Timely Quote It Would Seem

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"Before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts. High taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that's old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way - even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. But I started looking for little signs and what some call silly-season symptoms. I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of course - but I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking way at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial - but those things are obvious; all the historie

Wilder Tactical Review

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Arctic Pilgrim has an ongoing review of Wilder Tactical's IWB holster. Check it out here.. Review Josh has been doing some great work with OWB holsters and grip texturing as well. (Full disclosure - Josh is a personal friend...but don't hold it against him)   (His new "Swiss Cheese" holster) Wilder Tactical

Regarding Living Off The Land Delusions...

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Interesting debate over at WRSA in the comments following "Living off the land delusions..." westernrifleshooters-living-off-the-land-delusions-and-misconceptions-about-hunting-and-gathering Wanted to add to that topic since I have some experience on the subject. Specifically, I want to address - - Stated requirement of 3000 calories a day - Switching from a modern diet to a more agrarian/paleo diet - Real-world calorie deprivation effects on performance As opinions on the subject are plentiful and often not based on reality I will limit my commentary to what I have experienced firsthand. I spent a ~90 day rotation in an operational setting living on a very carefully measured 1200 calories a day. I slept 7-8 hours a night, worked out ~3 hours a day, conducted range/tactical training everyday and conducted my assigned duties as well. This was in a very high altitude mountain environment. I began at a fit 210 pounds. The first two weeks were a bit difficult to adjust

...And Little Brother Too

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“ The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act allows domestic law enforcement agencies—everyone from the Federal Bureau of Investigations to your local Keystone Cops—to contact email hosts and, without a warrant, demand they turn over the full contents of all emails over 180 days old.” Take the following article for what it's worth, but it does bring up some interesting points. - http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/09/26/nsa-scandal-just-tip-government-spying-scandal So, we should toss our radios, phones and laptops right? Not so fast... In regards to the inevitable response of "only talk face to face"....that's great, but I'll have to insist that it is a rather narrow stance to take. Reality will dictate that logistics and or security will become a major impediment to meat-space-only information sharing, for what I should think would be obvious scenarios. Even if you take the popular positi

Back...

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Sorry folks, been crazy busy with life and all that. Here are a couple sources to brush up on while I work my next piece.... 1. Good series from a few years back...   Dark Arts 2. Gathering of info on the tech front.... Prism Break Wrap your gray matter around that for a bit..... Be back...

Improve Your Pistolcraft...

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Between the rifle and the pistol, I will generally spend more training time on the pistol. There are a couple reasons for this... 1) All things being equal, it takes more skill to be consistently accurate with a pistol than with a rifle - the rifle having the benefit of a longer sight radius (or optics) and the inherent stability that comes with a stocked firearm. (Not to mention the weight-to-trigger pull ratio disparity with a pistol). 2) Unless you are a rifleman deployed on the battlefield, you are going to spend the lion's share of your time armed with a pistol. Walking through the local supermarket with a rifle slung across your chest tends to get the locals excited. 3) Pistols fire a relatively weak projectile compared to rifles in general and thusly, may require more follow-on hits to get the job done; making recoil management, sight tracking and reload skills a must. Here are some of the key training factors I always try to hit on every time I train: 1

More On Privacy...

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WRSA provided a link to an excellent whitepaper on encryption and privacy setups. encryption-works I strongly encourage all to read it. This is some of the material that we cover in our "Groundrod" course. Looking at an early September class date - possibly in Idaho. More to follow..... (Sorry for the light posting, been busy...)

Survivalblog Info

FYI.... JWR's Survivalblog site has been down for a few days......his backup server can be reached here..... http://64.92.111.122

Re take Your Privacy and Communication Security

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(New site can be found here  http://combatstudiesgroup.weebly.com/index.html ) With the recent revelations pertaining to government spying on it's own citizens (does this really surprise anyone?), I wanted to offer a quick primer on regaining some of your electronic security. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a number of things you can start doing right now. (I also offer a course on this subject that covers it in great detail.) One caveat I need to point out before we go further is this - While any and all of the following tips will offer a high level of privacy, most of them are rendered potentially useless if they are employed on the Windows or Mac operating systems. Why? Because Microsoft and Apple have entered into complicit agreements with government bodies in the form of secret backdoor access to your system and no anti-virus or malware  program will save you from it as it is a "legitimate" part of the operating system's code. Where does tha

After Action Report - May Courses

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  (Note: I am testing out a new website at  CombatStudiesGroup.weebly  as i am hoping to abandon all things Google in the near future - feel free to check it out.) *** This is a much belated AAR for the May Gunfight Carbine and Secure Comms courses. Once again I would like to thank Matt from Liberty Handgun Training for facilitating the courses. He put in a lot of legwork to make these classes happen. We had a full class for the carbine course and everyone pushed themselves hard for 11 hours of rain drenched training. Some of the participants were former students of Mosby (http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/) and had only good things to say about him. It also served to demonstrate the point that, while tactics and techniques may vary between instructors/operators, they will (or should) share the same core fundamental principals. The students were kind enough to send in some reviews, one of which is below (you can find the rest on the Reviews page).... "I wan

Upcoming Courses

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We will be having a Combat Carbine course on May 18 and a Secure Communications course on the 19th. Both courses will be sponsored by Liberty Handgun Training  and will be held in Eugene Oregon. The carbine course is almost full, but we still have open seats for the communications class. Details as follows........... Gunfight Concepts Carbine - May 18th, 8am-5pm The purpose of this course is to push the carbine shooter to the next level and help ensure that they prevail in a lethal encounter. I follow a template of enhancing the students ability to master - - Marksmanship - Manipulation - Maintenance We will examine the pros/cons of the different battle zeros and which one may suit your situation best. We will perform several drills designed to enhance your accuracy at various ranges and examine the application of the speed/accuracy paradigm. We will cover reload techniques designed to get you back in the fight faster. We will also study deal

Standard Modus Operandi

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In light of current events, I believe a little history on the Hegelian Dialectic is in order... ........................................................... "...the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.' " Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Georg Hegel in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144) In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are h