Individual skills, group tactics.

In my last post about "Support By Fire" someone asked, "what do you do about it?"  Well I'll speak mainly from second hand experience in Iraq from different forums and exercises conducted based on after action reports.

The answer is, by the time your door is kicked in you can't do a damn thing but submit or die.  As long as there is a somewhat functioning legal system you can take your chances with that (many Iraqis did and were back on the streets within days).  If you are prepared to go "Aces and Eights" on the thugs you can rig your house to blow and take some with you.  But for those who choose to submit and live, I cannot fault their choice.  Every person who becomes a prisoner taxes the thugs resources, every person who stays alive really does live to fight another day.  You can't fight when your dead, but if you are dead already then take as many as you can with you. 

But if the thugs start rounding up people you know, chances are you are already on a list and you should get out of your residence at the first opportunity.  After all, if you know they are going to be at a certain place, but not at a certain time, that is a tactical advantage.

Tactical advantage is all about knowing something the other guys doesn't know, holding terrain the other guy doesn't hold, and making decisions that make the other guys decisions irrelevant. 

I've mentioned the "sniper spiderweb" before.  You could in theory do it with two positions, but only on a perfectly flat plane, single hill, or double hill terrain.  Since reality isn't like that, you need three positions or more, and in my opinion 5 is about ideal. 

If you can set up five sniper positions all facing in on an objective, you can always retreat away from or towards the objective and have four other teams covering your movement.  Remember what I said about "support by fire" trying to achieve standoff?  I guarantee you that unless they are going to unload with heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles they won't be outside the "spiderweb."  And if they do bring heavies to the fight, you have eyes on that position and can choose not to fight that day.  Or you could choose to wait to blow the objective after the thugs are inside, a house born improvised explosive device is a bad day for the entry team.

Only your imagination limits how you respond to thug aggression.  But if you decide to do it alone then you have already isolated yourself.  It is true that not having a network means you can't be compromised by others, but it also means your job is much much harder.  Getting "Juba" in Iraq was a matter of expending massive resources and a lot of luck (and dropping a 500 pound bomb on his building) so a lone wolf can be very effective. 

So at the end of my post I don't have THE answers to "what to do about X" but I have a bunch of thoughts.  Tactics are not written in stone, and thinking that there is a playbook that has all the answers is dangerous.  There are steps to follow to ensure maximum odds of success (such as always maintaining security and setting up a robust support by fire position) but there is never a guarantee of success.