This is a series based on the "Rules of Recon" made by Blake Flannery many years ago and used as part of his initial counseling to his teams and platoons. He also handed out the "Rules of Recon" to many of his students as a Basic Reconnaissance Course instructor. The "Rules" are expressions, sayings, and principles that guided his very first team in Force Recon but never put them in writing.
“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.” — Miyamoto Musashi, “The Book of Five Rings”
If you want to be dangerous, you gotta earn it.
1. Always Look Cool
Caveat: you have to be GOOD at your job, seek education, pursue excellence in conduct and proficiency, be a good leader and a good follower, be professional, and just all around be a good person.
Trying to put lipstick on a pig makes you look more foolish. Expensive kit and tools that you cannot use make you look foolish. And you can never kiss enough ass and actually look cool; you might fool a few folks temporarily, but you’re going to screw up (because you lack true professionalism and proficiency) and then all the warning signs they ignored will be glaring.
Rule 2: Never get lost
However, it’s okay to need a map check from time to time.
This is again literal and figurative. Of course we should have the soft skill of navigation well practiced and be able to get around without constant map checks, GPS, and Siri. But from time to time literal map checks are required, so do them before you take the patrol off route or drive past your destination.
In the figurative sense, this was meant to highlight to members that they are expected to seek understanding, whether that be in practicing a certain skill, new knowledge, or why a working party was necessary. The whining and moaning normally highlights ignorance, and ignorance becomes a real problem when you keep yourself there out of obstinance.
Rule 3: Swift, silent, deadly is not just some cool slogan.
It is a mantra to be lived in all aspects of life.
This one was difficult to try and boil down into one minute. Many are likely familiar with the expression of “swift, silent, deadly”. It has long been the slogan for Reconnaissance Marines, and because these “rules” were meant for Recondos, it felt it fitting to address this.
Many think of this in the tactical aspect, as though it only refers to how to conduct yourself in the bush hunting the enemy. Though it certainly applies; there is more to it.
Knowing the difference between the silent and the quiet professional. Knowing the wise speak only when they have something to say, and fools speak because they have to say something. Knowing that your actions carry consequences, and thus uninformed and rash actions will yield negative consequence for yourself, team, and family.
It’s about humility, silent pride, resourcefulness, heart, and wit. Thinking, deciding, acting and speaking quickly, and knowing when to hold your tongue and take a tactical pause to listen and observe. Knowing when to fan the flames and when to just let the fire burn itself out.
We are only as good as our last patrol, so what can we do today to maintain our reputation?
Rule 4: Tomorrow starts Today.
This is fairly straightforward: be prepared. You can’t hydrate for a ruck march an hour before hand, you have to hydrate days before and maintain it. Then during the hike, you have to replenish so you’re PREPARED to meet what will come at the end of that movement.
You cannot learn to gunfight when you’re already being shot at. You have to train your marksmanship, manual of arms, and tactics well before you even put yourself in a position to be in a fight.
Do your prep and set the conditions in your favor, so whether it’s just running an errand to the grocery store, a call out, deployment, or sporting event; you’re not only prepared for it, you’re positioned to THRIVE.
Rule 5: Keep your weapons & equipment clean, kit loaded, and ruck packed.
Like many of the rules, this is far more literal than figurative or philosophical. When we get done with an operation, inevitably you’re hungry, tired, and dirty and want to remedy these things. Horse, saddle, rider; take care of your equipment and effectively post-op all of it. That includes refilling mags, replacing grenades and munitions used, building charges, sharpening knives, lubricating weapons, maintenance on optics and communication equipment, and even packing chow back into your ruck. Clean any clothing that needs it and pack that back into your ruck as applicable.
Don’t waste time setting up your gear when the warning order drops, use that time to plan. Go over maps and imagery, understand the mission and intent, make sure your logistics are in order.
And do your rehearsals.
Rule 6: Logistics carry the day.
Bring only what is needed and have redundant material backups.
Endeavor a near ridiculous level of logistical planning. From paying close attention to exactly what is packed out; where, when, if, and how we can sustain off the land; and having resupply bundles prepped with lists and SOPs for what goes into a resupply bundle, and having fixed and fluid timelines for their delivery. Bluntly, do not fuck about with logistics.
The same applies to any given “operation”, whether that’s an attack, or a trip to the store. In the attack, you need full kit and resupply setup. Going to the store, you need appropriate clothing, your carry pistol, knowing where gas stations are and which ones are optimal based on my route, price, and how busy they might be.
These are examples that hopefully drive home the point: logistics. We tend to not give it the attention it deserves because it’s lumped in with administration towards the back of an order. But it’s as important as your Coordinating Instructions.
Rule 7: Two is one, one is none; three is a crowd.
The first part of this rule should be familiar to many regardless of military service. However, many of us go overboard an start packing backups to the backups. If you’re packing items “just in case” for equipment you already have backups for (and backups are “just in case” gear & material) then either you need to make some repairs, get replacements, and/ or analyze if that item even needs to come out.
Trying to carry too much wears your down faster and reduces your mobility. Not all of your batteries need to be on your body, they can and should be spread load between your levels of kit. You don’t need 5qts of water to clear an objective, but you will need upwards of 12 quarts overall to sustain you for days without resupply.
Sustainment Load: shelter, layers, bulk of water, chow, batteries, munitions to resupply assault or fighting load. Materials to keep you in the field and in fighting shape for up to 120 hours without external resupply.
The above are guidelines to be used with critical analysis for your individual mission. Your Fighting & Assault loads can change based on the task and mission at hand. Don’t overburden any one level, and especially don’t try to carry everything on your fighting load. Have your primary, have a backup, and make those work. Smarter, not harder.
Rule 8: If it only has one use, and it doesn’t shoot, transmit, or stop bleeding then you probably don’t need it
Weapons, comms, medical, water, and chow are all essential in conducting operations. We’ve already looked at our logistics and reapply to keep those things stocked, and we know not to overpack them things we think are essential. One way to ensure we don’t overpack is to only bring things that serve multiple functions.
Don't pack binoculars out because if you already have laser range finding binoculars, mil reticle spotting scope and magnified optics on your guns. So not only is there already a redundancy in observation equipment, but it was the least versatile and useful. So it should be left in the rear.
Field stripping MREs to remove any bits that that isn't needed. Ditching the packs that water bladders are issued in and sliding them into cutoff pant legs for lightweight protection.
Don't pack sleeping bags or bivy bags unless you're going to be in freezing temperatures and/ or cold and wet environments because they give me only one function and, if you can, have a poncho with liner that can keep me warm as a blanket, be set up as shelter, or worn as a shell.
Tubular nylon over sling ropes because it has more uses and stays stronger when wet. A multi tool over a folding knife, because it has multiple functions. You have to look at everything you’re going to pack out, and see how many uses or functions you can get out of it. If it serves only one purpose then make your analysis and if it does not perform a mission essential or life sustaining task, it’s just extra or superfluous.
If it seems like some of the rules are redundant, it’s because they are. With a hint of irony the redundancy drives home the overarching principle, in the case of Rule 6-8: pack smart, plan smarter.
Rule 9: Be in a hurry, not a rush.
Often, things need to happen fast. Sometimes it’s because of a critically important task, sometimes because of compressed timelines, and sometimes because there’s a “leader” in a rush and those in their charge are bearing the brunt.
Be in a hurry to get these tasks done, and done well. Do things sooner and you get there faster. Just trying to do them fast alone means you’re going to start rushing it and make mistakes. Mistakes need to be corrected, which prolongs the task and it’s accomplishment.
This isn’t about avoiding mistakes, it’s about mitigating them. We are going to make mistakes, and if we’re rushing we won’t see the mistake until we’re feeling it’s effects. If we’re in a hurry we can see the mistake and correct it before we feel it’s ultimate consequences. We learn more from mistakes made in a hurry.
Being in a hurry means gaining momentum and maintaining it, but knowing when to take that tactical pause. Being in a rush is gaining the momentum and then outrunning your own momentum and finding your ass in the wind ahead of your support.
Being in a hurry is gaining fire superiority before initiating maneuver; being in a rush is charging ahead before the base of fire is in place.
Being in a hurry is understanding implied tasks and predicting problems, then finding solutions and implementing them without explicit command. It’s initiative based.
Being in a rush is only seeing the explicit task, getting it “out of the way” and putting off other tasks; not seeing the forest through the trees until you’re off azimuth and lost (better go back to Rule 2).
Rule 10: Your radio is your most powerful weapon; know it, use it.
Know what your radios are capable of, know what spectrum they can transmit and receive in, know how to program them and then troubleshoot when something isn’t working right. Know HOW and WHEN to key in and talk. Use succinct verbiage, instead of saying “Alpha this is Bravo interrogative what’s your situation” you can say “Alpha from Bravo, status”. Keeping transmissions short is important REGARDLESS of whether fighting an enemy that can direction find or listen in. Even when you are on encrypted nets, use BREVITY CODES as much as possible.
Learn how to coordinate supporting arms. Call For Fire isn’t a difficult task, if Private First Class Flannery could learn it so can you. Practice “talk ons” with your peers, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to communicate something you see instead of saying “over there”.
I really can’t stress this enough. Learn, train, become proficient in the use of your communications equipment.
Rule 11: Mindset, marksmanship, manual of arms: the gunfighter’s trifecta.
Master these and you will be a gunfighter. Fail at one of them and you are a liability.
If that seems harsh, consider being in a place far from home, surrounded by people who want to kill you; you have a small group of like minded individuals that together you must triumph against all foes to return home. As it was said by Charlie Beckwith, “I’d rather go down the river with seven studs than a hundred shitheads.” It’s up to you to be a stud or a shithead, and folks are left back in the rear when they were liabilities.
Mindset: win. It’s really that simple. You can draw it out and make it poetic and philosophical, but in the end it’s winning. Winning is learning, winning is becoming more capable with each day, winning is bringing your people with you on the journey, winning is turning a shithead into a stud. Winning is listening to a video and reading a caption, performing some critical thought before firing off an emotional response because a piece of kit or an idea was challenged.
Marksmanship is the fundamentals. Isolate them, then add them together, and test them constantly. Increase the challenge in your training and be able to apply the fundamentals regardless of your situation. There is no advanced marksmanship, there is only advanced thinking.
Manual of arms. Just like marksmanship, isolate skills and then add them together. Be able to step back and remediate and refresh. Constantly seek education for new and more efficient means of moving, manipulating, and using your weapons. Reloads aren’t marksmanship. Shouldering the gun isn’t marksmanship. Those are movements, those are manual of arms and we can perform those things lightning quick through efficiency to give ourselves more time for marksmanship when it counts.
Brilliance in the basics.
Rule 12: Remember everything you see. But in case you forget, write it down, take pictures, and disseminate.
Reconnaissance & Surveillance (R&S) is a difficult task. Through painstaking effort you avoid detection while hauling enough fighting load to get yourself through a fighting withdrawal and lots of observation and communication equipment. No, it isn’t about putting on a chest rig and a boonie hat.
You’re out there to collect INFORMATION. In order for that INFORMATION to be aggregated into INTELLIGENCE it needs to be pushed to the analysts. The raw info in itself is very useful in building situational awareness and establishing patterns of life, and the supported unit (the people you are reporting to) can make much out of the raw info. Once aggregated, actionable and valuable intelligence can be garnered to support the unit and beyond. But it requires objective, thorough, and real time reporting.
The first part is really sarcasm, as no one can perfectly recall an entire mission of observations and actions. Details will be lost, and your brain will fill in the gaps with inaccuracies. So before fatigue and sleep deprivation take their toll, write down what you see in your patrol logs. Keep logs of radio communications including antennas used. And keep a basic observation log that will rotate through OP teams.
Disseminating amongst the team is just as important, as the team is more immediately vulnerable to changes in the situation. So spread the word, and let folks see what you’re sending to higher to maintain that SA.
Rule 13: Mission has priority. Always.
Screw your beauty sleep, screw your macro tracking, screw your workout split and what your girlfriend or boyfriend thinks about the job; we have one to do.
None of this is to say that it’s not important to take care of yourself and your family. Sometimes that is the mission. However, when it’s time to go to work, there is only one course of action: GET. AFTER. IT.
This also doesn’t mean put your head down, run through all Leroy Jenkins and hope to come out the other side. Hope and luck are not plans and they are not skills. Capability is what will get you through a fight, a tough situation. If not yours, then someone else is picking up your slack and that endangers everyone involved that much more. Be smart, train well and be CAPABLE. Capable wins the fight sooner, and puts you in a position to get in those missed hours of sleep, get that meal, makeup the workout, and mend things with your significant other.
Then those things become the mission, and they take priority; they take the same care and effort you put into the job. And then when the job comes back around: get after it.
Rule 14: If it feels wrong, it is wrong: move.
We’ve all been someplace where what we’re doing doesn’t feel right. You may not be able to place your finger on it, but it just doesn’t feel right. When that happens, you need to improve your position. Whether that’s literally improve by taking up a better position or reinforcing; more figuratively by changing course in your current task.
Sometimes, these are the moments to take that tactical pause and see more when your position is fine but you’ve begun to move faster than you can process.
Sometimes “move” means stop moving because you’re just trying to force a situation that isn’t going to happen, or you’re forcing a poor outcome.
Rule 15: Keep to high ground as often as able, go low when the situation warrants.
High ground gives you a tactical advantage by offering good observation and fields of fire. An enemy that engages you from a lower position will have greater difficulty maneuvering up slope against you, while you will have an easier time breaking contact over the ridge and placing solid terrain between you. You are also afforded plunging fires against that enemy, and can maneuver more easily down slope against them if warranted.
If the enemy attempts to maneuver against you from the other side of that terrain it is more likely they will audibly compromise themselves as they close. They will be forced to skyline as they crest the terrain and your patrol will be in a reverse slope defense. Though an uphill assault, the distance (traveling on the military crest) is negligible. And when deciding to break contact you’ll have the outs of either slope or the ridge line to use.
However, if we use the afforded observation and ID an enemy force along the route, it can be a much better idea to give up that high ground for greater concealment in lower terrain. Keeping in mind that lower terrain often means flowing water, which means higher density of animals and people. The thicker vegetation offering better concealment may also serve to hinder movement. A sound tactical decision must be made to give up high ground.
Rule 16: Always bring a knife to a gunfight, but also bring your gun.
Overall, very few train in combatives or martial arts in general. This is folly, not only for the responsible citizen but especially for the military & tactical professionals.
Even if you never need to use your skills in a “real world” scenario, knowing you CAN makes you more confident. Having exercised those skills in dynamic and high stress environments, and been successful makes you more confident. Confident people make better decisions. People who know how to be dangerous, and the consequences of those actions take more appropriate action in a given situation.
Train in your service combatives/ martial arts program. Look outside the service into BJJ, Muay Thai, and Filipino martial arts. Train, spar, exercise your skills in increasingly difficult and complex scenarios.
“You should be a monster. An absolute monster. And then you should learn how to control it.” — Jordan B. Peterson.
Rule 17: Shoot, move, communicate, repeat.
These principles create fire and movement and facilitate fire and maneuver. Fire and maneuver will destroy the enemy.
Shoot isn’t just firing your weapon, it’s firing your weapon well. It’s employing the best weapon for the particular target whether that’s a rifle or a rocket, a grenade or call for fire. We need fires of all kinds: combined arms. Make it happen and not only will you be successful, you will be GOOD.
Move is how we move ourselves through the battlefield, how we organize and lead our units and facilitate the movement and maneuver of the leaders appointed over us in their intent. And ensuring as those leaders the intent is driven clearly. It’s using initiative based tactics to see problems and solve them, sometimes before they can even manifest.
Communicate is verbal, non-verbal, signals, radios. Knowing which one is the best to use in the situation, knowing when one will get you highlighted and killed and when not using one will do the same. Never doubt the power of non-verbal communication, and that’s not talking about pyro or hand and arm. If the fire team leader picks up and shifts left, so should the rest of the team on their next bounds. If a team meme er turns and begins firing at the flank, then someone is trying to maneuver against us. If your buddy drops into position and starts firing: he’s set and it’s time for you to move; when your buddy behind you stops firing as you have commenced: he’s moving.
It’s not just some slogan to throw out there. Understand what it means, and that it applies to every action you take against the enemy.
In combat, there are no points for being polite. When you have PID (Positive IDentification) of a threat and have made the decision to engage with whatever you have deemed to be the best weapon: destroy that enemy. The surest way to prevent an enemy from making it back into rotation is to ensure they don’t get back up, or that piece of equipment can never be repaired.
This rule is very straightforward. If you’re gonna fight, finish that fight. Get it done and move on to the next.
If this seems harsh or violent: it is, and it it’s meant to be; and you have not been in combat.
Rule 19: Only shoot as fast as you can accurately; move as fast as you can process.
Shooting fast means nothing if you miss. Hits are great but if you aren’t fast enough to engage the enemy as he presents himself for limited moments from windows, corners, and other cover and defilade you aren’t scoring those hits fast enough to be a contributor to the fight. You and Mr. Missalot are just making noise.
Work your marksmanship and manual of arms HARD through dry practice. Use live fire to confirm your hard work and identify discrepancies to fix in dry practice. Do things sooner, and do them well to become faster; then shoot that fast in a fight.
Processing speeds are very obvious in CQB. It can be easy to hide a slow mind in more open environments when things aren’t as dynamic. But when the chips are down and chaos is swirling, those slow minds stick out like sore thumbs. You cannot actually train your brain to process faster. What you can absolutely do is work your TTPs, and use certain brain exercises to help with memory, concentration, and focus.
Difficult training in both force on force and exercises requiring a lot of problem solving cannot be understated in their value. If you wait for a real world, dynamic and high-risk/ high-stress situation you will falter. We don’t rise to the occasion with skill, we rise to the occasion with courage. You will “fall back” to your level of training. So train smart and train well.
Sooner and well, make faster.
Rule 20: Fire without movement is a waste of ammo, and movement without fire is suicide.
This who have served in combat arms should be very familiar with this saying and understand it. And as important as it is to harp on the fire & movement, this rule is about setting conditions.
We set conditions both in our planning before a mission and with the actions we take while on mission. I know I need the Support By Fire to suppress and provide fire superiority so I can maneuver, and I need mortars to suppress so SBF can occupy. Can I get the mortars into position with the ammo they need? Am I maintaining security and communications? Every explicit task has implied tasks that must be accomplished alongside and before the explicit task to make it happen.
Every goal you set is an explicit task. Even if that goal is going to the grocery store. That task has supporting actions required to make it happen, implied tasks like making a grocery list, driving to the store, getting a cart, and so on. If we understand this and see these things we can have a plan and execute that plan. And it doesn’t have to be a five paragraph order.
And understanding the ORDER in which the implied, or supporting tasks need to happen ensures we have a flow in our actions. What happens when you forget the cart? Gotta put stuff down, go back to the front, and then get back to your stuff and start over. Conditions were not met before trying to move on towards the explicit task. So understand the flow, set conditions to continue accomplishing your goal.
Rule 21: Never put a man where you can put a bullet, and never put a bullet where you can put a bomb.
Manage your resources well. When it comes to action against the enemy, use the concept of combined arms to destroy and reduce the enemy as much as possible before you put one of your people in the line of fire.
Avoid wasting time. Your people are a finite resource in every sense. If you waste time with pointless tasks or standing around, you are not only failing to achieve tangible results in training you are loosing their attention and motivation. If you have white space on the schedule either fill it with purposeful training or cut them from work early.
Don’t waste time in the fight either. Tactical pauses are needed, but if we lose momentum we begin to turn the battle over to the enemy. Quickly regain the initiative and keep your momentum up to keep the enemy reacting and unable to be proactive.
Use and manage your resources wisely, and your people are the most important. Invest in them so they will use the resources you provide wisely.
Rule 22: The best battlefield medicine is fire superiority.
Win the fight. If you change your focus and forget your mission, you will incur more casualties. At no point does the mission ever become about medicine.
There will be no-go criteria, and if a unit suffers enough casualties they cannot continue on original mission. The mission is still not medicine, it is now withdrawal and the fight must still be won. Even if the method of injury is IED blast that takes out a few vehicles, the scene must be secured and maintained. To only focus inward is to invite further tragedy.
Medicine happens AFTER the fact, so focus on the efforts that will mitigate and prevent the need for medicine.
Tactics, techniques, and procedures are your FIRST LINE in mitigating wounding. It is also by far the most important step. Well after TTPs comes PPE. Armor and plates do not prevent you from being shot, they mitigate the level of injury you will sustain if you are hit.
Having sound knowledge and practiced hands in casualty care is still vitally important, because there will be casualties. However, in the fight, focus on the fight. If you get killed trying to help your buddy, you weren’t much help were you?
Rule 23: Get your buddy off the “X” then stop the red stuff from comin’ out. If they can get shot there, you can too.
Rule 23 builds directly off of Rule 22, and if you haven’t noticed each rule builds off it’s predecessors.
This should be fairly straightforward however, the idea is make the scene safe enough for you to approach the casualty and get them away from the point of wounding.
Get yourself and the casualty to a spot GOOD ENOUGH to apply a TQ or better yet: have the casualty do it themselves while you continue to engage the enemy and win the fight.
We avoid stopping at that point to render aid for the same reasons we don’t immediately rush out to the casualty: we increase our chances of becoming part of the problem. Be an asset and not a liability, if your friend passes in the time it takes to get to them, then there wasn’t anything you were going to be able to do in the first place.
And as horrible as it sounds, it is much better for one person to get shot several times over several people getting shot one time. Now we have a whole fire team down, and it’s going to take the rest of the squad to carry them. This means we have no means of effectively carrying the fight and more likely will continue to incur casualties until the squad is wiped out. I would rather attend one funeral over five funerals, with zero being the obvious preference.
Rule 24: The welfare of the team comes before the welfare of the individual. Suck it up.
We must focus on what is best for the group rather than focusing inward on the individual. The mission is accomplished by the team, or failed by the team; not the individual. Better to attend one funeral than six.
This is triage. We aren’t just separating our casualties by category, we’re analyzing what we need to be doing and making that happen. Depending on the situation, pushing to the objective may no longer be tenable and the mission needs to change. Or the only recourse is to push through and win the day to give our casualties, our friends, brothers and sisters, a fighting chance at seeing another day. But which option is best for the group? If we manage to take the objective and there aren’t enough of us left to hold it, what was the point?
Suffer in silence. A phrase that should be familiar to many, and admittedly can be abused. Problems should be identified and remedied before they become major issues. However, we cannot expect the team and the mission to hold and wait for our comfort and sake. There’s a difference between discomfort, pain, and injury. Understand them, fight through, and take care of it when able to prevent it from becoming worse and affecting the mission.
Ultimately, we need the individuals to make the team, and we must make the efforts to ensure our success as a whole by investing in the individuals. Mission accomplishment & troop welfare go hand in hand.
Rule 25: If you’re hit, you’re not dead, and if you’re dead you don’t know it so keep fighting.
Just keep fucking going. If people aren’t afraid of you after force on force training you aren’t fighting hard enough. If people aren’t afraid to spar or grapple with you, you aren’t training hard enough. Work your ass off in training, become truly dangerous, and let it out on the battlefield.
Let it out, toe the line of ROEs & Laws of War, make the enemy afraid to come out. Then go rout them out, destroy them and their ability to wage conflict against you.
If life gives you lemons, smash some fucking fruit. Don’t stop until you’re greeted in the afterlife or you win the fight.
Rule 26: Medical supplies are more finite than bullets. Shoot and move well so we don’t need the former.
There is no such thing as a wounded tango.
Now, this was not a subtle order for no quarters and commit war crimes. This meant that shooting well equals dead bad guys instead of wounded, which makes life easier. It also meant that if they’re no longer a threat, they’re no longer a “tango”, or enemy.
I’m no fan of rendering aid to people who were trying to kill me, and have now given up or simply lost their ability to fight. I want them out of the fight, PERMANENTLY.
As I have already covered, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are the first line in mitigating combat wounding and injury. Not just from enemy action but laziness, complacency, and sheer stupidity. Be smart, fast, aggressive, and thinking and you will walk away from far more fights than you will be carried from.
One casualty takes at least two, if not four, to carry. That means up five guns out of the fight, unable to continue providing fire superiority. That’s not a place we want to be. Move well, shoot well; avoid becoming an enemy marksmanship trophy.
Play with fire and you will, eventually, get burned. Keep going into gunfights and you will take a hit. So we train well and hard to build our skills and capabilities within combat trauma to make the most of the supplies we have when that eventuality occurs. Best to ensure the little we have is only needed for our people, and not the other guys.
Rule 27: You are a grown as man. You should never ask for permission to kill someone if you feel they threaten you, or threaten the team.
Initiative Based Tactics (ITB) means simply seeing and solving problems without being told to do so. It means taking the measures to prevent problems from happening in the first place, without explicit instructions.
It means delegating your authority as a leader, rather than delegating your responsibilities. Empower the people in your charge to make the same level of decisions as you do, so not simply push your work off on them. If something goes wrong, that falls on your shoulders not your people. If they fail to perform to standard, you failed to train them to such. If your people aren’t proactive you haven’t empowered them with the authority to take action.
Understand a threat. Understand the best means of dealing with that threat, and eliminate it. This means training hard, not only understanding SOPs & TTPs, but being put in difficult and dynamic situations in training that force difficult problem solving.
Understanding your Rules Of Engagement (ROE) thoroughly. Sit the legal eagles down and make them explain it all and leave no grey area. If there is grey area, understand how to exploit it while keeping yourself and the team protected from bureaucrats that would have you wage war “politely”.
Don’t ask me if you can shoot. Shoot and later ask me what I think of your marksmanship.
Rule 28: Always have a plan and plan for contingencies, but nothing beats being able to think on your feet.
Fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Simply because “no plan survives first contact” you’re not excused from having a plan. And a plan created in a vacuum is as worthless as no plan.
Incorporate your people in the planning process and decision making. Being a leader doesn’t mean shutting them out, it simply means at some point you must and will put your foot down and say, “ok, here’s what we’re doing.”
Anything that can happen, will. THAT is what Murphy’s Law really says. So we have to be prepared for the most likely things that can happen. The things that go our way are the main plan, things that don’t go our way are covered in contingency plans. The more complex your plan is, the more contingencies will be likely because of multiple points of failure. Keep it simple to limit what can happen to cause your plan to go awry and ensure it’s easy to brief and understand.
But things happen. You must be able to think on your feet, seeing issues before their consequences fully manifest and mitigate or eradicate them. You need to encourage your people to do the same: Initiative Based Tactics. If you allow yourself to get bogged down with thought and decision, you will lose the momentum. Lose too much and the enemy will take it, and now you’re losing the fight.
Think fast, act fast, act violently.
Rule 29: Never ask anyone in your charge to do something you have not or would not do yourself.
Simply put, don’t pawn your work off on others. Don’t use rank, title, or authority as power to make those appointed under you perform the jobs you don’t want. Yes, sometimes as leaders we have to task our people with undesirable work. And we’ve either suffered through it ourselves or we’re in it with them taking the brunt, or both.
Just because someone wants a work detail doesn’t mean your people need to do it. I’ve found that many jobs can be handled by myself and I can set the team to go rehearse, take care of important administrative issues, or rest.
As a leader it’s your job to be a shield against the tide of BS that always rolling down hill. At the same time though, we cannot shelter them fully. Everyone has to pull their weight and when it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get dirty, bring your folks along to LEARN. Work together, play together, thrive together.
Rule 30: When all else fails, gain fire superiority, move towards the sounds of enemy guns, and destroy everything in your path.
This is a culmination of many of the rules, for when you have failed at many others.
You can give up, surrender, lay down and die. Or you can get off your ass and make shit happen. You can watch a bewildered and apprehensive leader stall action that will only serve to get good people killed, or you can follow commanders intent and destroy the enemy.
Kill your way to the LOA. Leave destruction in your wake. In the profession of arms we are in the business of dealing death, and to convince yourself otherwise is foolish.
This does not excuse you of your conduct. Intelligent and accurate delivery of violence will see you to the next day and beyond. Lack thereof will see you in the dirt or the stockade. But you can still be aggressive and protect your honor.