light forces need high quality communications to coordinate decentralized efforts into a coherent whole okay so this this article was written 40 50 years ago something like that and it’s just interesting to me communications of all kinds are unreliable radios they’re all unreliable in a combat zone and if you don’t have coordination measures in effect that don’t rely on radio communications you can count on there to be problems and i’ll tell you even as our as our as our communication capabilities get better when you start talking about fighting against near-peer adversaries meaning big giant countries like ours that have big giant technological uh equipment like we have you can’t you get to a point where you can’t use radios because they have something called dfing capability have you ever heard of that direction finding capability so if you key up your radio they know where you are your radio gives off radio waves and there are ways that radi those radio waves can be detected and they can pinpoint your location so so you have to be able to operate with minimal minimal communications so i don’t like the this this particular one because it says light forces need high quality communications to coordinate decentralized efforts into a coherent hole actually i don’t i don’t like that when i tell you this is what we’re doing this is why we’re doing it i give you the commander’s intent i want you to be able to go and i don’t need to talk to you again and by the way you’ll see whatever other unit needed to do something coordinated with you you’re going to know what’s happening by what’s happening you’re going to see an explosion you’re like oh late splatoon just started their breach that means i can go like you you see what i’m saying you need to be able to coordinate things you can’t be reliant on radios you can’t there’s probably a year there’s probably a five five year time period where you where the radios were good and the enemy direction finding capability wasn’t quite there yet but that period’s over due to a general shortage of combat support light forces must do an excellent job of combining arms when they have a chance yes absolutely you got to be able to work with the other units that can support you you got to be able to light infantry forces must be masters of improvisation familiar with all kinds of weapons vehicles landing craft and so forth yes light infantry forces make use of whatever is at hand to improve their combat capability absolutely native irregular forces are often used in support of light infantry yes what does that mean that means you have to go build relationships with the local populace that’s what that means in order to do that you gotta know that that’s what you need to do because 18 year old kids with machine guns aren’t focused on building relationships they’re not they go into a country they have a machine gun they have grenades and if that what they think they’re going to do is hawk grenades and shoot machine guns so you need to educate them and make sure that they understand how the local populace is going to play a role in giving you support light infantry must remain flexible in mind and action capable of reacting quick quickly already talked about flexible plans flexible mind when a light infantryman rises from his sleep he is ready to fight i like that light infrastructure men rely on camouflage why is that because we don’t want to give away our position we don’t want to advertise what we’re doing we don’t want to advertise how we’re beating the competition we want to have camouflage against heavy enemy forces the light infantry always requires a great deal of augmentation cool you’ve gotta you gotta face the reality that you may not have the resources that are needed to defeat a bigger stronger enemy you have to be able to say that so if you’re you know that’s why that’s why there’s a lot of industries right now where you can get help inside your small business you can get it support you can get personnel support you can get engineering support you can get all this kind of support and you’ve got to recognize when you need to utilize some of that other support you might not necessarily want to build it out i had this conversation life was just telling me this when we were starting ef online and you know we started talking about building this and building that and i said hey leif we don’t want to become a software company and he was like check you know because it’s better to hire someone that does that that’s what they do for i don’t want to i don’t want to have a bunch of software engineers and programmers and i t so i don’t want to we don’t want to have all that yeah that’s a different business yeah really we don’t want to be an eye we don’t want to be a software company we want to be a leadership training company cool and he was he was like got it yeah because we had started because it’s one of those mission creep things right where you’re like you’re like well if we just add this we just build that and all of a sudden you got a proprietary system that you got to maintain and hire more people we’re not looking to do that we why we think light infantry and what you need to do is use augmentation if needed light infantry men must be able to climb crawl swim ski snowshoe repel stalk run and hide obviously echo this was written before snowboarding yes because i know you’re over there thinking for those of you that don’t know echo’s now a snowboarder isn’t it interesting to actually talk about the fact that you got to have all these different ways of getting around by using your own energy light infantry must be able marksman proficient in the use and maintenance of many weapons light forces rely on pioneer skills at all level beginning with the squad to properly exploit terrain pioneer skills does that mean you have a ralph’s card no but you better know where everything is that’s what i’m saying otherwise you get lost these foreign stores you know you can be hostile do you remember driving around yeah you do remember no g like gps is just so yeah it’s a given it’s given now yeah together how did you get around before gps do you remember off the top of your head like you’re in a new spot or you’re going to a new spot kind of far away you brought a map no you get a map yeah well i guess if i was going somewhere where there wasn’t going to be a way to live off the land and go into a convenience store and buy a map i was taking my daughter to coronado like a little while ago and so coronado is where i worked for 20 whatever years yeah and what i live now a few miles from coronado and we get in the car and i you know start pulling out my daughter’s like do you want to put in the gps yeah you’re all insulted i’m like are you serious i i said are you serious right now and she says yeah why and i go it’s coronado i worked there for 20 freaking years yeah and she’s like well i didn’t i don’t know but that’s but that’s her mentality is when you get in a car and you’re going somewhere your gps oh yeah huh because she’s just the only way it is yeah huh yeah that’s crazy oh but well because i had the exact same incident wasn’t coronado it was downtown and i used to work downtown for a number of years and go down there whatever so i know downtown i know downtown like back of my hand yeah and we’re going in same thing she puts it in sarah sir yeah puts it in the or is like she puts it in her gps in her phone and starts rattling off the directions as if i don’t know you know look at this man of the world doesn’t know um you know how to get to the place we’re going to downtown my hood yeah whatever um so yeah i don’t need that gps but the thing is sarah’s not as young as your daughter obviously but it does start to become like a habit you know i mean just so happened i knew my way around i think if i didn’t know my way around see that same thing the automatic style like i don’t even think twice about it like in back in the day i used to go um you know to places or whatever and i remember going in the either the white pages or the yellow pages or whatever they’d have the map in the front of it and then i’d write down directions that’s it i got lost before two couple times but it’s not not quite as effective as yeah i wonder what’s how much that skill is just being lost now i’m sure it feels like it’s gone straight up gone you can find one or two guys and and we could be real negative about that or we could also be well what skills have people now garnered because they don’t have to worry about that skill anymore yeah i’m not sure the next one the pertinent ranger standards of land navigation are a must for light forces gotta know where you’re going gotta know where you are yeah light infantry rarely uses roads or trails what does that mean how does that apply i’ll tell you it applies you find new ways of doing things and just because there’s a beaten path doesn’t mean you should necessarily take it doesn’t mean you can’t take it but you should think is there a better way to get this done light infantry forces left in combat theaters for long inevitably become heavier due to the acquisition of heavier weapons plus increased logistics structure what does that mean keep moving keep moving the minute you settle down now you’re going to start to now you’re going to start to grow in ways that aren’t necessarily beneficial light infantry appreciates heavy fire support when it is available but is not dependent on it physical conditioning and mental strength are absolute musts across the board
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