spark@onestopknifeshop.com
Wise Guy
As I look back over this thread, what gets me is just how little people know about MOUT operations in general, and the high body count's they provide to the friendlies.
We already know the situation: 2+ bad guys shooting up a large school.
Mission: Rescue the kids.
Enemy: 2+ well armed bad guys. Location unknown. Exact number unknown. Weapons unknown.
Terrain: School (large building)with multiple areas for egress. Enemy knows the terrain intimately, and there is evidence that the building has been booby trapped.
Troops: 80+ SWAT officers in various teams who have never worked together as a whole, and cannot use "Scorched Earth" tactics to resolve the situation.
Prognosis: Bad.
These kids planned this event, no if ands or buts about it. The knew the territory, they prepositioned explosives, and had discussed their overall strategy and tactics. The police were hamstrung because of the innocents, the explosives, and their desire for minimal casualties. On top of that, I'm willing to bet that they were all on different comm's, we know they hadn't worked with each other in large scale operations like this.
2 people, working as a team, with prior proper planning and equipment can rig up enough traps and fire zones that they could easily take on this sort of force. When we'd do MOUT scenarios in the military, we sometimes lost up to two squads when facing a single opponent inside of buildings, and we could use frag's and AT rockets against them. Add the boobytraps to the scenario, and the body count goes much, much higher.
IMO, I feel that the cops did the right thing. They could have done a dynamic entry to save the dying teacher, but without good intel, it could easily have gotten a lot more hostages killed. How long did it take for them sweep through the building for explosives? How many car's we found rigged with IED's?
Overall this situation was a nightmare that could have ended a lot worse. I feel the police did the right thing, and probably saved a few lives by not doing a dynamic entry.
Spark
------------------
Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
www.bladeforums.com
We already know the situation: 2+ bad guys shooting up a large school.
Mission: Rescue the kids.
Enemy: 2+ well armed bad guys. Location unknown. Exact number unknown. Weapons unknown.
Terrain: School (large building)with multiple areas for egress. Enemy knows the terrain intimately, and there is evidence that the building has been booby trapped.
Troops: 80+ SWAT officers in various teams who have never worked together as a whole, and cannot use "Scorched Earth" tactics to resolve the situation.
Prognosis: Bad.
These kids planned this event, no if ands or buts about it. The knew the territory, they prepositioned explosives, and had discussed their overall strategy and tactics. The police were hamstrung because of the innocents, the explosives, and their desire for minimal casualties. On top of that, I'm willing to bet that they were all on different comm's, we know they hadn't worked with each other in large scale operations like this.
2 people, working as a team, with prior proper planning and equipment can rig up enough traps and fire zones that they could easily take on this sort of force. When we'd do MOUT scenarios in the military, we sometimes lost up to two squads when facing a single opponent inside of buildings, and we could use frag's and AT rockets against them. Add the boobytraps to the scenario, and the body count goes much, much higher.
IMO, I feel that the cops did the right thing. They could have done a dynamic entry to save the dying teacher, but without good intel, it could easily have gotten a lot more hostages killed. How long did it take for them sweep through the building for explosives? How many car's we found rigged with IED's?
Overall this situation was a nightmare that could have ended a lot worse. I feel the police did the right thing, and probably saved a few lives by not doing a dynamic entry.
Spark
------------------
Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
www.bladeforums.com