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No Brasil eles acabaram de adquirir isto:

  http://www.cubic.com/Defense-Applicatio ... Experience

É pena...

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1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (1RRF) conduct Company level attacks in purpose built villages scattered across Salisbury Plain Training Area.The enemy was played by 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment. (1YORKS).
Images by Cpl Si Longworth; Crown copyright

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Lessons Learned In Combat

Please note that the purpose of this article is not to "blame" the Marine Corps for my injury, or to whine about my circumstances, but instead to impact in a positive manner all of those who go in harms way both on foreign soil (Military and Private Military Contractors) and here at home (Law Enforcement Officers and civilian sheepdogs).

I am a Wounded Warrior. I served as a Marine Rifleman during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq some 7 years ago, and was severely wounded while engaging the enemy in a gunfight on April 12, 2003 in the city of Al Tarmiyah, a small suburb just northwest of Baghdad.

I just got back into shooting again a little more than a year ago now, and several months ago I attended a Trident Concepts Combative Carbine 1 course instructed by Jeff Gonzales. Prior to attending Jeff’s class I thought I was already extremely competent and deadly with the carbine, but I was very wrong. After completing that 3-day course I can now say with complete confidence that had I somehow been able to attend a Trident Concepts, EAG Tactical, Gunsite, or MagPul Dynamics carbine course (or similar training offered by a quality instructor) before I deployed to war back in 2003, and had been able to learn and put into practice all of the things taught in the carbine courses they offer, I would NOT have been shot in the manner in which I was on that Sunday afternoon in Iraq.

That's not to say I wouldn't have been wounded or killed later on in my deployment or in a subsequent deployment, but I would not have been shot that day and wouldn't be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of my life, which ultimately means I would’ve been able to continue taking the fight to the enemy for at least a little while longer… possibly even still to this day. For the Military and Law Enforcement Officer readers, and those who are planning on enlisting in either of those fields sometime in the future, please take a minute to let that sink in a bit.

The reason for this belief of mine is fairly simple: When I was engaged in combat the day I was wounded, I made several critical mistakes resulting either from training scars or from simply not being trained how to manipulate and fight with my rifle in the proper manner. I’m well aware that the training, tactics and procedures (TTPs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have been greatly improved over the past 7 years since I was wounded, but I guarantee that they are still lacking and could continue to be improved upon. There are some things that can truly only be learned through actual combat, but in my opinion and experience there is a lot of enhanced weapons training widely available in the private sector that is simply going to waste and not being implemented in a unit's training and work-up, and should definitely be included as the "standard" in which all abide by. I believe that it will save lives and prevent a lot of men and women from being needlessly wounded or killed. However, once these skills are attained they absolutely have to be practiced on a routine basis, as gunfighting is most definitely a perishable skill.

Below is a summary of the events that I strongly feel led to my being shot that day and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. This is not an "official" After Action Review (AAR) of the entire firefight that my platoon was involved in, but rather a small look at only a few moments of combat involving just myself.


On April 12, 2003, my platoon was involved in a very well executed ambush (the receiving end, unfortunately) in the Iraqi town of Al Tarmiyah. The firefight that ensued would last an astounding 3 hours, which even today is rather uncommon. The firefight was basically my platoon -around 55 Marines- versus roughly 150+ Fedayeen Saddam Fighters, or so I was told several months afterwards. I was also later informed that we killed around 100 of the bastards that day. Thankfully we suffered no Killed In Actions (KIAs), but had several Wounded In Actions (WIAs), mostly from shrapnel from RPGs and hand grenades, with mine being the most severe injury of the day. It was because of engagements such as these that the enemy adapted and quickly learned not to go head-to-head with American forces... or suffer the consequences. Soon thereafter the insurgency began and they started using guerilla tactics, such as performing hit-and-run ambushes and placing Improvised Explosive Devices on the country's roadways to inflict casualties on our side without the grave consequences of head-to-head engagements against us.

We were initially ambushed by Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and small arms fire from enemy fighters to both our north and south, while dismounted from our Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs) and pulling security in a T-shaped intersection. Soon thereafter my platoon split up and punched outward from the kill zone to take the fight to the enemy in both directions. The bad guys weren't expecting us to be so aggressive. But we were Marine Infantrymen, and they had just pissed us off. We were already aggravated as hell that all of the Abrams tanks and Cobra gunships, which were always positioned just in front of us in our column of vehicles during the march to Baghdad (for obvious reasons), had been "stealing" our kills ever since we’d crossed the border several weeks earlier, so we had literally been hoping that some bad guys would poke us with a stick and pick a fight with us.

About an hour and a half into the fight, I found myself in the backyard of a two-story residence. Five to eight enemy fighters had fled the house after our 0351 Assaultmen fired a Shoulder launched Multi-purpose Assault Weapon (SMAW) rocket into it. About five of them were using an adobe style guesthouse/storage building in the backyard as a makeshift bunker, while other fighters were positioned outside of it. When I entered the backyard, my hasty “plan” was to either find something to use as cover while I engaged the bunker, or to make entry inside the house and shoot out of a window or door. I just knew that I needed to find some cover so I could kill some of the bastards from relative safety.

As I rounded the corner of the house and entered the backyard, I immediately spotted an enemy fighter roughly 20 yards away at my 11 o'clock, low-crawling away from the bunker and dragging an AK47 with him. I assumed he was doing exactly what I was doing: trying to get into a better position to kill his enemy.

I stopped moving immediately and began engaging him. I fired at least 15 rounds at him, with most of the bullets impacting his body. Each time I scored a hit, his body let me know it by violently thrashing around. My adrenaline was pumping like crazy, which is why I continued to pummel him with rounds. I had never engaged an enemy that close before, and this was the very first time I could actually see my bullets impacting another human being's flesh. It was just such a shock to my psyche and I didn't know what else to do other than completely annihilate the threat in front of me. The only reason I quit firing is because another fighter stepped halfway out of the doorway to the bunker at my 1 o'clock and began firing wildly at me. I responded by shifting my fire over to him. I fired only 5-7 rounds at him before my bolt locked to the rear on an empty magazine. I scored 1 hit somewhere on his torso, though I have no idea where. He fell backwards into the bunker's doorway and out of my sight.

I assumed that I had taken him out of the fight for good, either by killing him or wounding him badly. However this assumption would prove to be a huge error in judgment on my part.

Since my M16A2 was “dry” and I needed to reload, I moved about 10 feet to my right. I knew that I wasn't behind any cover and was just concealed, but I thought that if anyone else came out of the bunker’s doorway they wouldn't be able to see me. Besides, I was just going to quickly reload my rifle and get back into the fight, right? Wrong.

The Marine Corps had shown me in boot camp how to reload my M16 on the rifle range, but speed reloads and tactical reloads were simply never taught. There was one instance during a training exercise before we deployed where a British Royal Marine, who was part of a team doing a training evaluation on my unit, demonstrated how to reload our rifles quickly and put the empty magazine in our cargo pocket so that we wouldn't waste time trying to put it back into our super-tight standard-issue mag pouches. Not to mention that you never want to re-insert an empty magazine into the same pouch that you are going to instinctively index your fresh magazines from. But we never once went over that or practiced it afterwards, so I didn’t retain it and my body never memorized the motions of that technique. We actually never went over or practiced doing ANY kind of reloads; it was just something you were expected to know how to do: when your weapon runs dry, you stick another magazine in it. That sounds simple, but I've discovered that it's a lot more complicated than that... especially when doing it under stress.

So, what did I do when it was time for me to reload my M16 that fateful day? I pressed the magazine release, pulled the empty magazine out of the mag well and inserted the empty magazine back into one of my mag pouches. This took a couple extra seconds to do, especially considering I was inserting it into a pretty tight pouch that already had a magazine in it. The fresh magazine in the pouch was positioned bullets-up as well, because way too many rounds would fall out of it when I tried carrying bullets down in the pouch. I'm guessing that's because the feed lips on the magazine were worn, but I knew nothing about what constituted a bad magazine back then and especially didn't know that magazines were a disposable component. After indexing a fresh magazine, I shoved it into the mag well until it seated and then finally, after at least 8 seconds, pressed the bolt release and sent another round flying into the chamber.

I was also looking down at my weapon and gear the entire time I was reloading. Thus, when I was finally done reloading and looked back in the direction of the enemy bunker only 20 yards away from me, the very same enemy fighter who I'd just shot and assumed that I had permanently put down was now standing at my 11 o’clock, at the corner of the bunker, and aiming directly at me with his AK47 assault rifle.

While I had been performing my slow and nasty reload, the Iraqi had gotten back up to his feet and stepped out of the doorway of the bunker in order to search for the American asshole who just greased his comrade and shot him too. When he didn't immediately see me in my previous location, he moved down the wall of the bunker until he spotted me standing there performing my abortion of a reload, while staring down at my weapon and gear. I had basically allowed... no, invited the bastard to get the drop on me.

It is also worth noting that I was standing in the classic “known distance” rifle range bladed stance as well, exposing the unprotected left side of my chest to the enemy. At that time the Marine Corps never taught us to square up to the target and take full advantage of our ballistic Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) plates. The only "standing" position that I knew of was the bladed one taught to me by my Primary Marksmanship Instructor back in boot camp, which of course is only worth a damn on the “one way range” when qualifying with the rifle during training, definitely not for use on the “two way range” in combat when wearing body armor to protect your vital organs and spinal cord. It should also be known that I was a "double-award" Expert rifleman, which means jack shit in combat.

To make matters worse, my rifle was in the Low Ready position as well, instead of keeping it pointed downrange and up in my “workspace” the entire time I was reloading. So once I sent the bolt flying home and chambered another round, I actually had to raise my rifle up in order to engage the enemy, instead of my rifle already being raised and at the Ready, pointing downrange and ready to rock following my reload.

So when I finally looked up and saw him aiming at me with his AK47, I began to raise my rifle in an attempt to put him down for good. But it was already too late. The last thing I saw was a bright muzzle flash from his AK47 as it fired a short burst of 7.62mm projectiles at me. One of those bullets impacted me just under my left armpit, in the exposed area that isn't protected by the ballistic SAPI plates, and tumbled downward through my body. After shredding my spleen (which had to be removed), puncturing and collapsing my left lung, lacerating my stomach and left kidney, and blowing out a large chunk of my vertebrae, the bullet severed my spinal cord at the T12/L1 level, which instantly and completely paralyzed me from the waist down.

There's a lot more to this story obviously, but this small piece is all that's relevant in this particular article.

The point of this story is that muscle memory obtained through repetition can be a great thing when the tactics, techniques and procedures that you're ingraining are good and effective ones. But it works both ways, meaning that, for example, if you handle certain scenarios during training in a relaxed and "administrative" fashion, then you can damn near guarantee that you will handle those scenarios in combat the same way.

For a quick summary, here are the mistakes I made in combat that I believe led to my severe injury and permanent disability:

Assuming I killed the bad guy with one shot to the torso area
Performing such a slow reload
Retaining my empty magazine during the middle of such an intense gunfight
Stowing an empty magazine in the same location as my fresh magazines
Looking down at my weapon while reloading instead of downrange in the direction of the threat(s)
Having my rifle in the Low Ready while reloading
Standing bladed and not taking advantage of the protection that my ballistic plates offered


If you are currently in the military, a law enforcement officer, a Private Military Contractor or even just a civilian sheepdog, I strongly believe it would behoove you to get some advanced weapons training outside of your unit or department. Everything I learned in just the first day of the Trident Concepts Combative Carbine 1 course easily could've helped to prevent the wound that I needlessly sustained... I say that with complete and utter confidence.

If you do decide to attend a weapons training course, be sure to take lots of notes and pictures at your class so that you can go back to your unit or department and spread the knowledge to your fellow brothers-in-arms. If you are a squad leader, you have an obligation to ensure that your young Marines or Soldiers can perform speed reloads quickly, know when and where not to retain, how and when to perform a tactical reload, etc. Practice these things until they become second nature and fluid movements; part of that good ol' muscle memory.

When you attend good courses given by quality companies like those mentioned earlier, these things are taught to you, and they are taught for a reason. These tactics, techniques and procedures are taught this way in order to prevent deaths and injuries like mine. So pay attention and learn in class so that you don't get schooled in the middle of a gunfight instead, like I did.

Oh and just so you know, the oxygen thief who shot me, along with all of his Fedayeen buddies inside the bunker, was obliterated shortly thereafter with lots of 5.56, a few 40mm High Explosive grenades and fragmentation grenades, and last but not least, one of their very own RPGs that they kindly left behind for us to use against them.


Semper Fidelis!!

-Paul



Train, Train, Train!! And never give up!









 

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Lessons Learned In Combat
...
It is also worth noting that I was standing in the classic “known distance” rifle range bladed stance as well, exposing the unprotected left side of my chest to the enemy. At that time the Marine Corps never taught us to square up to the target and take full advantage of our ballistic Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) plates. The only "standing" position that I knew of was the bladed one taught to me by my Primary Marksmanship Instructor back in boot camp, which of course is only worth a damn on the “one way range” when qualifying with the rifle during training, definitely not for use on the “two way range” in combat when wearing body armor to protect your vital organs and spinal cord.

...

For a quick summary, here are the mistakes I made in combat that I believe led to my severe injury and permanent disability:
...
Standing bladed and not taking advantage of the protection that my ballistic plates offered

O meu inglês é fraco pelo que não percebi esta situação da posição de atirador e das placas de protecção. Alguém pode explicar, please?

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Básicamente ele diz que se ficar de lado (como é ensinado nas Forças Armadas Norte-Americanas e Portuguesas), o atirador não retira proveito da vantagem de ter placas balisticas do colete.

Pessoalmente acho que ele está certo e errado ao mesmo tempo, porque dúvido que a maior parte dos coletes balisticos sejam capazes de suportar o impacto de um simples 5.56mm a média/curta distância, quanto mais a de uma 7.62x39, mas há vantagens de se posicionar mais frontalmente como por exemplo o facto de a possibilidade de o atirador ter os dois [plu]pulmões perfurados ao mesmo tempo diminui muito consideravelmente.

Eu nunca adotei a completamente de lado que muitos instrutores tentavam passar aos instruendos como a mais correcta, nem de frente que está tão em voga nos "states", digamos que ficava a meio caminho e a coronha fica sempre mais para dentro do que é a norma, para dar estabilidade. Enfim, manhas/pancas/vicios que apanhei do meu avô nas nossas sessões só para homens de barba rija e com muita pólvora queimada!

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[saojorgexercito]

Básicamente ele diz que se ficar de lado (como é ensinado nas Forças Armadas Norte-Americanas e Portuguesas), o atirador não retira proveito da vantagem de ter placas balisticas do colete.

Pessoalmente acho que ele está certo e errado ao mesmo tempo, porque dúvido que a maior parte dos coletes balisticos sejam capazes de suportar o impacto de um simples 5.56mm a média/curta distância, quanto mais a de uma 7.62x39, mas há vantagens de se posicionar mais frontalmente como por exemplo o facto de a possibilidade de o atirador ter os dois [plu]pulmões perfurados ao mesmo tempo diminui muito consideravelmente.

Eu nunca adotei a completamente de lado que muitos instrutores tentavam passar aos instruendos como a mais correcta, nem de frente que está tão em voga nos "states", digamos que ficava a meio caminho e a coronha fica sempre mais para dentro do que é a norma, para dar estabilidade. Enfim, manhas/pancas/vicios que apanhei do meu avô nas nossas sessões só para homens de barba rija e com muita pólvora queimada!

Obrigado!

Deve haver algo que não estou a apanhar. Eu nunca aprendi, não vi ensinar, nem ensinei posições de tiro em que o tronco do atirador fica em linha ou ligeiramente diagonal com a linha atirador-alvo. Para além das questão das placas, a justificação relaciona-se com outros factores como o coefeciente de absorção pelo corpo do recuo da arma e da deriva lateral do cano no momento após o disparo.  Aliás este detalhe era alvo de correcções constantes. A regra universal (entre outras) em todas as posições de tiro era que a linha dos ombros era (o mais possivel, claro) perpendicular à linha atirador-alvo. Mas enfim, aceito que entretanto tenham surgido instrutores a inventar coisas estranhas.

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Rescuing Hostages

Terrorism has evolved, and so has the IDF's counterterrorism unit - Lotar. Or Heller joined the unit for a training exercise and conducted a special interview with a senior officer in the unit

Three o'clock in the morning at the Ono Academic College in Kiryat-Ono. Throughout the daytime, students study here to become lawyers and business executives, but at night, the people here deal with something entirely different: rescuing hostages who have the barrels of AK assault rifles pressed to their heads and explosive vests strapped to their bodies. The buildings of the college become a makeshift training ground for the IDF Counterterrorism unit, Lotar.

This is the final exercise of the counterterrorism NCO course. The knowledge they had gained on the rescuing of hostages will be passed on, to the IDF takeover and intervention units, special operations forces and elite commando units.
Having received detailed and accurate intelligence regarding the building where the hostages are kept, the counterterrorism specialists begin planning the operation and divide into several forces. The "monkeys" – a nickname for the rappelling specialists who break into the objective through windows and other unexpected openings with ropes - climb up to the roof. Other teams prepare their breaching kits and ladders of various heights.

The snipers, carrying their newly issued rifles with an effective range of 1,200 meters, take up positions opposite windows through which the terrorists may become visible. And then, in a second, everything explodes. The fighters break into the two-story building through every possible opening after a specialist from the bomb disposal team of the Yahalom unit of the IDF Combat Engineering Corps has neutralized an explosive charge planted by the terrorists. Everything is over very quickly. The "kidnappers" lie flat on the ground. The "hostages" are being interrogated, to verify that there are no disguised terrorists among them, and the explosive charges strapped to their bodies are neutralized.

Commanding this entire activity is Lt. Col. Lior Keinan, commander of the IDF Counterterrorism Unit, Lotar – which serves as the IDF's central counterterrorism school. The school is located at the Adam training facility in the central region, and is charged with the task of training the IDF elite units in particular, and units of the entire defense establishment generally, for hostage rescue missions and other scenarios terrorists might create.

Israel's two primary hostage rescue units are the Israel Police's Specialist Counterterrorism Unit, Yamam, and Sayeret Matkal – the elite reconnaissance and special operations unit of the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Other units such as the IDF Naval Commandos, the IAF 669th Airborne Rescue and Evacuation Unit, the IAF special operations unit Shaldag, et al, also possess counterterrorism capabilities. All of these units practice breaking into aircraft, buses and schools, as well as a recent addition: a scenario of a passenger train hijacked by terrorists and rescued in a night takeover operation.

"Whereas Israel Railways do not have excess coaches, we conduct our training activities onboard real trains, during the night, at the railway station in the town of Lod, when no one is around. The train scenario is a highly relevant scenario," says a senior officer in the unit, but it is not the only means of transportation that could become the objective of passenger kidnapping. "We also practice hostage rescuing from a bus, an aircraft and a ship".

The officer admits, however, that although everything works fine in practice, it may not work so well in the real world: "the reference threat in the world of counterterrorism at this time is mainly that of a killing spree. Ten terrorists entering Israel, God forbid, would be a much more severe situation than any of the hostage negotiation situations we experienced in the past. For example, just a few months ago, Islamic Jihad terrorists entered an industrial plant in Algiers, taking between 300 and 400 of the local employees as hostages. In the southern part of the country (opposite the Egyptian border in the Sinai) as well as in the north (opposite the Syrian Golan Heights), there are currently Islamic Jihad members, taking advantage of the weakening of the central regime."


Counterterrorism Knowledge Center

Lt. Col. Keinan started out as a trooper with the IDF K-9 unit, Oketz, subsequently climbing through the ranks of that unit to the position of deputy unit commander. Soon, he will compete for the position of commander of the Oketz unit or the IDF Dignitary Protection Unit. He hails from Kfar-Aza and currently resides in the town of Rehovot. The IDF Counterterrorism School was established in the 1970s, against the background of the Sabena airliner hijacking of 1972 and the Maalot schoolchildren massacre of 1974. The idea was to establish an element that would concentrate and coordinate all training and instruction activities associated with counterterrorism. All of the special operations and commando units of the IDF come to the school to receive special training in four primary fields: marksmanship and sniping, personal security, breaching techniques and 'monkeys' – rappelling techniques, as well as camouflage training. The unit draws practical lessons from each and every terrorist attack taking place anywhere in the world, and these lessons are taught to the elite units of the IDF. In line with this policy, they have recently analyzed the elimination of Osama Bin Laden by the US Navy Seals – the American equivalent of the IDF Naval Commandos, 13th Navy Squadron.

"We have not experienced a 'classic' terrorist situation for many years," says the officer, "However, global terrorism is currently interconnected through an ideological bond. We need to come up with an effective solution for this. For many years we thought we would experience a terrorist attack against a school, but today we understand that the next situation would be much more complex."


How does your relationship with the special operations units you train work?
"A takeover unit should arrive on the scene of a terrorist attack within 45 minutes. We invest a lot in the cooperation between Sayeret Matkal and the Yamam, for example. We need to train their teams. We work with these units as well as with the Israeli Prison Service's Metzada as well as with Shabak and Mossad units. It is a part of the school's vision."

Where does the famous rivalry between Sayeret Matkal and the Yamam currently stand with regard to hostage rescue operations? Has this matter been resolved within the system?
"One of the most important things they did three years ago was to sort out these things between the units. The people in those units realized that the rivalry was unnecessary. Once you come out and state that there is a primary unit assigned exclusively to this task, which is the Yamam, and incidentally – in some of the things this unit is superior to the other one, and once (the people of Sayeret) Matkal realize that their primary assignment is the field of special operations, and that at the same time they will serve as the secondary unit and assist the Yamam in hostage rescue situations when required – things have been sorted out all the way."

In other words, if we experience another situation like the kidnapping of the late soldier Nachshon Wachsman in 1994, they will call on the Yamam to execute the rescue operation this time, not on Sayeret Matkal?
"Let's take a situation that is easier in terms of decision making. If a terrorist situation were to develop tomorrow morning at Azrieli Mall in Tel Aviv, they will call on the Yamam. The commanders of both units are currently working on how to allocate their forces in the event of two objects drawing forces simultaneously, namely – a split situation. Who commands it? Who is in charge? You have to explain to these units what is expected of them. Sayeret Matkal would not have to be on alert for rescuing hijacked buses all day, once you told them that this is only their secondary competence.

"To their credit, I can say that it is such a fine and capable unit, that it can do both, while the Yamam consists of people who have been doing only that for twenty and thirty years – which is an advantage in its own right."

Is it still possible today to rescue the hostages alive when the other side also draws lessons from past hostage situations and keeps getting better?
"In my view - yes. It is possible. It compels us to come up with new tricks all the time. We ha ve the IDF's GHQ negotiations unit, which we deploy in exercises and 'round table' discussions. They operate intensively, not only in military negotiating situations, and carry a decisive weight in such situations. If we were to enter through the door, in the most banal manner, we would probably fail the operation. Today we have better techniques, from explosions of various types to various techniques for approaching the objective silently. Take the Russians, for example. They have an excellent counterterrorism unit and nevertheless they had a massacre over there. They fired at one another in a rescue attempt against Chechen terrorists. Nevertheless, it is an excellent unit with substantial strength.

"A while after the 'Marmara' flotilla incident (May 2010), a Russian general came here for a visit. We presented the case study to him and he sat up, surprised, and asked 'why didn't you simply launch a missile and sank that ship?' Their approach is entirely different. "If we have a situation and we manage to strike properly, we will have a high probability of success. Even with a single hostage. It is highly dependent on various variables. If they have the hostage surrounded by four guards, all pressing the barrels of their weapons to his head, and if they have an early intelligence alerts and booby traps – it will be very, very difficult."

Yet even in the rescue attempt of the late Nachshon Wachsman in 1994, when good intelligence was available, we realized that it is difficult to impossible to rescue a hostage alive.
"Correct, but if we were to experience a situation like the Nachshon Wachsman kidnapping today, I assume the chances of success would have been better owing to the lessons we had drawn. Here I must say something in parentheses. I will be very careful about what I am saying, but I have a feeling that we sometimes glorify the capability of the enemy. We have a serious advantage over the enemy, so if we entered such a situation with sound intelligence and conducted the negotiations properly, we would be able to achieve a good result. It is possible. It is more difficult than it was in the past. Take the Munich Olympics: this is one type of situation that we would never experience again. It would no longer be a bunch of amateurs tying the door shut with a rag.

"That's where we are aiming. In all of our exercises we practice the presence of an explosive charge on the way in, or examine how to rescue the hostages without tripping another explosive charge.

"We practice very complex scenarios, based on the understanding that an unsuccessful situation could take us to a dire position as a state, on the strategic level. Such a situation, where we did not emerge as the unequivocal winners, will not be good for us."

Were any lessons drawn from the Gilad Shalit affair, despite the fact that no operational attempts were made to rescue him?
"On the practical level of the combat doctrine, no. I assume it would come eventually. This is something in which we are interested. I am not sure that what we will learn would change the unit's combat doctrines."

How did you implement the lessons of the 'Marmara' incident at the unit, in terms of what you teach the Naval Commandos and other special operations units?
"We teach the 'fast rope' method (a rappelling technique that enables fighters to slide down a rope from a helicopter, as used during the takeover of the 'Marmara' – O.H.) to the entire IDF. Only five units use the 'fast rope' technique as takeover units: the Yamam, Lotar Eilat, Sayeret Matkal, Shaldag and the Naval Commandos. The 'fast rope' element should be the second wave of the takeover operation. A part of the problem onboard the 'Marmara' was the intelligence status picture and the resistance intensity anticipated. The revision we made is that in the future, we will not use ropes where the opponent can tie down the end. A helicopter will never arrive at the objective on its own. It will arrive with an array of snipers and sharpshooters. The landing party will consist of numerous fighters and we will be able to get them down in larger groups. The ropes will no longer touch the ground.

"The terrorists can threaten with whatever they want, but it will be our choice as to how to make the initial contact. A violent contact is the easy way, and the most important thing is to arrive simultaneously. We were lucky that the Naval Commandos handled the Marmara incident. Any other unit would have sustained casualties, KIAs, in such a situation. They had hundreds of people against a handful of fighters, and as long as you do not use force – you will have a problem. We developed a few new capabilities that we cannot elaborate about.

"After the incident, we sat down with the Naval Commandos, and I salute them for the manner in which they criticized themselves. Thanks to them, unarmed combat has become a major subject at our school. In the past, we used to focus on mass. Today we focus on technique. This has substantially reduced the number of injuries during training. The Naval Commandos work very hard on their unarmed combat skills."


Operational Unit

The IDF supreme command has only recently realized that they cannot afford the luxury of keeping the Lotar unit as just a training unit, and now the unit is employed operationally when the situation escalates.

"A year ago we gave the final approval for the operative order for the unit," the senior officer says. "It was a very long process. It had begun when the previous head of the IDF Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjeman, visited the unit. He told us: 'you have two years to present me with an operative order.' In an emergency, we divide the unit into three elements: the realm of training, the operational realm, and the Adam training facility, which becomes an RCTC – Regional Command Training Center. During Operation Pillar of Defense, we accommodated seven IDF brigades per week at the school. I gave them all I have to give during the operation, and trained seven additional brigades in Ze'elim. Each one of my instructor teams included marksmanship and sniping instructors as well as breaching, fieldcraft and camouflage instructors.

"Their task was to travel to the assembly and staging areas and come into contact with the troopers. I always say that we were the big winners of Operation 'Pillar of Defense', despite the fact that no ground maneuver was executed. We trained whole brigades back into shape. The regular brigades are in good shape anyway, and suddenly we found ourselves with time on our hands for training reservist forces. We had them zeroed and handled their stoppages.

"Some of the lessons derived from the Second Lebanon war were to provide breaching capabilities not only to the special operations units, but to the regular battalions as well. The second lesson was to take the fighters I have at the Counterterrorism School and convert them into combat teams. During peacetime, I have a lot of training equipment here. During Operation 'Cast Lead' in 2009, we took our capabilities and went to the IDF Operations Division, and we did the same during the Second Lebanon war. Now we have a structured standing order. In the event that a brigade is employed and they need sniper teams, we have a tremendous potential to give them.

"During Operation 'Pillar of Defense', I dispatched takeover teams to Nahal- Oz and to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, opposite Sde-Avraham, as we had received alerts of possible offensive activity by Hamas. We deployed some excellent people down there, and if the terrorists were to initiate a killing spree or a hostage situation, they would have met some highly qualified and capable forces. For the first time, all of this is formulated in a structured order."


  http://www.israeldefense.com/?CategoryI ... cleID=2388

[HSMW]

E agora em contexto real.
Síria.