EOW skirmish combat 4: firing first

O.k. so we are in the middle of our apocalypse-in-progress novel:  for the third time.  The zombies are toast, but our ex-neighbors who have become a little hungry.  It's cannibal time!

Now, again, if it just you and a little boy pushing around a shopping cart, there is not much room for "tactics."  You are a maneuver element of one, and it's point and shot time.  I suppose if I could give any advise to that situation, I would say, get out of The Road: find a safer, happier novel.

O.k., so your stuck in The Road.  All the character spots in safer novels were taken.  This likely means your a cannibal, and have a group of cannibal friends.  But we will say this is a little early in the disaster, and there are groups of you with a variety of weapons.  What real-world techniques might you use to see that you come out ahead.

And here we come to an odd one.  It makes a certain amount of sense, but is stated in a more generalistic way than I would have thought warranted.  However, given the people in question, what I would have thought, is somewhat beside the point.

In the chaos and confusion which most combat situations quickly become, if they don't start off that way, if in doubt you want to be on the side that starts shooting first.

Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Military Vounteer Military
Sam C. Sarkesian, Editor, Sage Publications, London, 1980.

In a more recent case of specific case of a specific reaction to painful experience, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli analysts focused on the gap between plans and reality in the turmoil of combat. In a system under attack, only a fraction of the information flowing is dependable, Amnon Sella argued. (citation). The best approach, in his view is to achieve maximum volume and speed of fire, in keeping with the old French adage "audace, audace, toujours audace," [audacity, audacity, always audacity [from Danton)] and with Rommel's observation that, in meeting engagements on the unit level, the side that opens fire first usually wins (citation) page 29.

Note, that Rommel went so far as to have his units firing as they advance.  He did this during the German conquest of France, where he was one of the lead units, and did so latter in the desert.

On a similar note:

The Human Face of War
John Storr, Birmingham War Studies, London, 2009

Almost any lethal object impacting or passing near an individual will reduce participation temporarily. This will be exacerbated by the weight, signature and reputation of the source of the fire. The effect is markedly temporary - it passes soon after the fire stops.  Thus "winning the fire fight' is tangible.  Lietenant-Colonel Lionel Wigram remarked in Sicily in 1943 that either British Bren Guns or German MG42s [medium maching guns] were heard in battle, but never both together (citation) p. 89.

When we  were discussing casualties earlier, we noted how few people actually hit what they are aiming for.  But winning the fire fight makes a difference.  You are firing, and your enemy is diving for cover.

Firepower of course interacts with surprise.  Originally I was going to put the following within the surprise section that is coming up, but it seemed to be more pertinent here.

Has there been bioterrorism?

The Eucalyptus is primarily grown in California as a ornamental shade tree. It grows very fast and needs little water. But not everyone in California loves the tree. Some people don’t like the smell, and in an areas where wildfires have become a concern, it is highly combustible. Some varieties can get out of hand in wet swampy areas, and force out indigenous plant species.

Karen Winters' rendition of a Eucalyptus (from her artistic site)

Native only to Australia, a number of predatory bugs that specialize in using the Eucalyptus as a food source have arrived in wave. Some note that air traffic has increased from Southern California to Australia, and believe that this is the cause of the pests.

Others have become suspicious and are crying foul. Timothy Paine is one of the few researches in the State who has been active in combating all these foreign pests. He has published his suspicions.

California’s Bioterror Mystery

Written by Zoë Corbyn, Failure Magazine, June 2012 (hat tip: NC)

Paine [with Jocelyn Millar and Kent Daane] finally published the paper, Accumulation of Pest Insects on Eucalyptus in California: Random Process or Smoking Gun, in the Journal of Economic Entomology…

Paine outlines the patterns. First, the introductions, which his team traced to between 1983 and 2008, were all—bar one—first detected in southern California, either in Los Angeles County or Orange County. If it was accidental—through the movement of goods or people—we would have expected more in the northern part of the state, says Paine. The Port of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the busiest container shipping ports in the country, rivaling the Port of Long Beach near Los Angeles. And while San Francisco’s international airport is smaller than Los Angeles International, it is also a large entry point for passengers and air cargo.

Second, the introductions have occurred in bunches: year-long periods of time when up to four insects would appear followed by lulls of several years before another wave. It’s a pattern that would be consistent with a villain making periodic trips to Australia to gather pests. Paine identifies four distinct periods of multiple species arriving: 1983-84 saw three; 1990-91 saw two; another four arrived in 1994-95; followed by three in 1998-99. The clusters then peter out with a single species in 2000, one in 2003, and two more in 2008.

Grouping the pests by their native range in Australia shows those in each cluster could all have come from the same east coast state, conceivably facilitating easier collection. Pests in the first cluster all occur together in Queensland, pests in the second in New South Wales and South Australia, pests in the third across all three of those states, while pests in the fourth bunch occur together only in New South Wales.

There are other patterns too. The blue gum and the red gum, the two eucalyptus species regarded as invasive, are particularly susceptible to the pests. Indicating the introductions are from Australia, most of the pests also seem to appear in California first before spreading to eucalyptus in other parts of the world. Seven are found only in the two locations.

The nursery-landscaping trade, the main users of the tree, raise them locally from seed, so they are an unlikely source of infestation. You can see in the comment sections, that some people have suspected local eco-nativists of sabotaging the ornamental plants in the San Francisco area.

The warning is not particularly that we will lose our imported ornamental trees. I have my own list of ornamental trees that are so common as to be weed-like, and very hard to get rid of once they get hold.

The warning is that it is easy. You do need to know a little bit about what you are doing, but it doesn’t take an expert. Probably reading the periodicals about eradicating the pest in its native range would be sufficient education as to how to import many of them.

If food crops were to become involved, accidentally or otherwise, the results could be disastrous. One of the earlier post-war successful apocalyptic-catastrophe novels, did not involve humans: it involved plants: John Christopher's No Blade of Grass.

Chinese Ghost Fleet

　

We will pause our current round of posts for the weekend. 

I have had numerous reports of ghost towns: Chinese, Japanese, United States, Mexico, and others . But this is the first time what has been described as a "ghost fleet" has been spotted.

A mysterious fleet of vessels has appeared out of the fog of the Chinese Sea. Previously these old, local shippers were not seen outside of their coastal waters as they tended to do a lot of short haul work.

It is as if a local moving van company, or the delivery truck for you lumber yard company was all the sudden showing up at truck stops half-way across country hauling dry goods.

Hit at home, China's ghost fleet sails high seas
Jacqueline Cowhig, Reuters, 5 July 2012 (hat tip: Macrobusiness via NC)

China's huge fleet of coastal ships, usually confined to plying the Chinese seaboard, has sailed out of the shadows to seek international business in yet another sign that China's economy is slowing.

The fleet, previously unnoticed by the global market, is suffering from a slowdown in China's coastal trade amid weaker domestic demand from utilities and steel mills and a growing glut in Chinese coal and iron ore stockpiles.

The vessels are now being forced to seek new business such as in the Indonesian coal trade, dealing a further blow to the depressed global dry bulk shipping market.

"There are many more ships lying idle at Chinese ports now - the environment for making money is not so good," said a source at one of the big five coastal shippers, who asked not to be identified.

The slowdown of the Chinese economy has been among the main worries for global markets in general and commodities markets in particular...

The troubles on the Chinese shores have pushed its coastal fleet further afield in a development that has generated more pain for the already depressed shipping industry.

"We've seen these Chinese vessels in the market, attacking the Indonesian coal business and undercutting everybody," said an Asia-based shipbroker with RS Platou.

The Chinese involvement in Indonesis, the world's biggest thermal coal exporter, happened at the worst possible time as rival shipping companies were betting on coal to help replace the lost nickel ore volumes from Indonesia.

The total number of vessels involved in China's coastal trade is estimated at 1,500-2,000 with deadweight ranging between 10,000 and 50,000 metric tons. Many of the 20,000-tonnes or smaller ships are unregistered and unclassified anywhere.

"These smaller ships don't get released into the spot market, they're often very old and only fit to hug the coast," said one shipping source.

Two-thirds of the fleet are up to 20 years old but it is the remaining third which worries industry players as they are newer, bigger and more fuel-efficient vessels.

Those Supramax and Handymax vessels with deadweight of 50,000-60,000 and 40,000-50,000 metric tons are mainly owned by large Chinese firms such as China Shipping CNSHI.UL, COSCO COSCO.UL, Fujian Guohang Ocean Group, DeQin Group Corporation and Sinotrans Ltd.

"It's not a tiny ghost fleet. They can have a massive impact on the international freight market," said a senior shipping source.

A commentor at the post had this to say:

I hope they get a taste of their own medicine!!!! Even the best ships with the best maintenance and the best crew get detained in China for stupid reasons if they are foreign owned or foreign flagged, costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions in damages per every case. Meanwhile, their own rust buckets under Chinese flag and Zulu Charlie registry get away with SHOCKING deficiencies without even a warning. Am sick and tired of the authorities holding a foreign vessel for a king’s ransom, and not being able to take them to any international court as they claim ‘Chinese waters, Chinese Law’. Hope these dregs of the Sea are detained at the first foreign port they trade, and never allowed to leave as they present a SERIOUS threat to not only the environment and people working on board, but to the Global Shipping Community as well.

Sounds like a rather personal dispute.

Ghost Ship:  This is actually a Japanese one set adrift by the Tsunami (from here)

EOW skirmish combat 3: the fit and fiddle, the proud, the few

All right, once again we have been magically whisked into an apocalyptic novel and are one of the featured characters.  Maybe we are one of the people who have rallied to the cause of some little town near Asheville after an EMP strike, and the zombie Mecklenberg County hordes are advancing.  Everything is all set for the grand finale.   We are defending the town, and unlike the original novel, this one is going to be a realistic one.  Ouch!

So what happens?  Well in the real world, most of you aren't going to be nearly as effective in fighting as you think.  If there were any competent elements within the opponents ranks, you likely would be slaughtered.

However, on the plus side! The very big plus side! the bad guys who have had to hike a long way, won't be doing very well either. In fact as a real bonus, lots of them probably won't even make it through the hike from Charlotte, NC.  It is about 120 miles much of it through the North Carolina Piedmont (foothills) and Appalachian Mountains.

Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Military Volunteer Military
Sam C. Sarkesian, Editor, Sage Publications, London, 1980.

The effects of urbanization were already evident by the Boer War, and prompted Lord Baden-Powell to found the Boy Scouts to offset the ignorance of fieldcraft and open-air living among young Britons.  Changing selection criteria undoubtedly influenced the rejection in World War 2 of 2.5 million men out of 18 million screened by Selective Service on grounds of mental or emotional deficiency.  The already noted findings of S.L.A. Marshall regarding battle participation [i.e. most people don't] , the rejection of nearly half of the potential draftees of the 1960s on physical grounds, postmortems revealing increasing cholesterol deposits in young soldiers, and reports of American soldiers dying of exhaustion while trying to withdraw from hardy Chinese peasants troops in Korea - all suggest the dwindling military utility of large forces and the citizen-soldier p 50.

So, whatever remnants from the invading horde make it - remember they are walking - through the mountains to Asheville, you may need to let them rest and give them a drink of water before the fighting starts.

And then we have the other problem.  If you can get your civilian soldiers into the area of the battle, they may not listen to you.  Even during the middle of World War 2, with real soldiers, and real officers, it was often difficult to get men to obey orders they disagreed with.  Using the same source:

In World War 1, Sir John Monash, commander of the Australian Corps, noted that American and Australian officers had the same problem: an inability to use authority and formal power in the way that European armies did.  Major Mike Hoare, who as a mercenary commander in Africa in the 1960s had little formal sanction behind his authority, observed that:

At platoon, company and battalion level, I am convinced that a commanding officer must live in the pockets of his men.  He must know them intimately, their troubles, their fears, their weaknesses, their strengths, their hopes, their background, better even than their won families know them.  Thus only will he feel his command...A remote leader at this level is an absurdity p. 50.

If  a frigging mercenary commander in Africa feels the need to stress how hard it is to get men to follow orders, if regular officers cannot get enlisted, but trained, conscripts to do what they are told, do you think that an ad hoc group of civilians,  good guy militia or bad guy marauding hordes, is going to be any better?  It is going to look more like a debating team getting anyone to do anything.

True, you can go it alone.  You don't have to hang with the hordes.  But you need to understand the reality.  There will be a lot of them. The only likely non-debaters you will run into immediately, are a few criminal groups, and law enforcement.  Neither of them is real thick on the ground where I live.  Given their natural advantages, they likely will be the last to feel the need to leave home.

Even with trained units, when units actually engage, it is only a small fraction of the people who will work at full effectiveness.  Just as with fighter pilots, snipers, submarine commanders, and any of the combat trades that you can easily measure, you can expect that a tiny fraction of the people will execute most of the heavy lifting.  With the groups you can measure it is not unusual to see 90% of the kills coming from less than 5% of the combatants.  It is hard to measure individual infantryman competence in the middle of a firefight, but if you could, the results would likely be similar.  You better really hope your heroes don't get killed early.

Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Military Volunteer Military
Sam C. Sarkesian, Editor, Sage Publications, London, 1980.

Key Individuals and Their Influence

In terms of what contributes to ... combat readiness the Vietnam monograph provides some additional food for thought... [T]hese senior officers conclude that "the individual commander's ability, skill and knowledge transcended the more tangible factors" in determining the effectiveness of operations, a judgement they believed of broad enough applicability to include under the heading of overll conclusions (source).

A supportive point, extending the concept beyond just the commander to include other important individuals, has been made by J.A. Stockfisch (source (pdf)), who suggested that a fundamental factor in assessing the relative capabilities of opposing forces ... is the quality of key combat personnel. These include ... infantry squad leaders, and two additional men in each squad.

In support of the proposition he advances historical accounts of certain individuals who developed combat skills far in excess of their fellows, and who then served to alert and cue the others in ways which increased the overall combat effectiveness,...p.74.

Note in our post on casualties, pretty much the same conclusion was reached by the sources sited there. A handful of people do most of the damage.

L.R. Speight and D. Roland in Modelling the Rural Infantry Battle: The Effects of Live Combat on Military Skills and Behavior During the Approach Phase, Military Operations Research, V13, N4 2008.

Type A, roughly 7%of the force, avoid combat and are described as non-participating (NPA)

Type B, again 7% of the force, freeze at contact (FAC)

Type C, 36% , continue after contact, but subsequently halt and do not fire, the freeze during advance (FDA)

Type D, 37%, maintain their advance to the end, but make no effective use of their weapons, they are passive followers (PAF)

Type E, 11% are full participants in combat, but weapon use is sub-optimal, they are active followers (ACF)

Type F, 2% are the heroic performers - fully participating and making full effective use of their weapons, they are the heroes (HRO).

Note, this is showing participation in an attack. In general, people under cover on the defense may be a little more active, but likely only the Type F - 2% are firing at full effectiveness.   Think of it this way.  At the Battle of Lexington and Concord, when the "minutemen sharpshooters" were blasting away at exposed redcoats at relatively short ranges, best estimates are that less than one-in-a-thousand rounds hit.  Is that the shooting of calm collected individuals at the target range?  No, of course not.  And that is how well most people shoot in combat.

So remember what we said in EOW1, know your limitations, and to that we could add, figure out who your heroes are.  The U.S. military  experience with conscripts in World War 2 indicated that they had a tendency to be a little better educated, but otherwise could come from almost any rank.  Meaning, they won't always be who you think they will be.