Longest Recon

LRRP, LRP, RRD, LRSD, LRSU, etc...
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Ando

Post by Ando »

I havent a clue, Ranger Steadfast. It's the word my DS always used, so i picked it up. Ive always thought Recon made more sense, but id have got a kickin from the boys if id said it. heh

Everything gets shortened in the British forces, we're lazy when it comes to lingo.
Ando

Barking Dog

Post by Ando »

Barking Dog is the name our DS used for the G3a3 series of rifles. Sounds like a dog barking, so...

It's pronounced Wrecky, by the way. It's just the term we use, Recce Troop, Recce Patrol, Recce Leader etc etc.
Ando

Post by Ando »

Do any US units patrol for longer than 3-6 days? My old man was in SF back in the 60's, and he went on month long patrols in the jungle in Malaya and Borneo. He says that on average they lasted two to three weeks. On one operation, he says that they patrolled across the indonesian border for two weeks, located an enemy patrol base, recced the enemy patrol and withdrew to report it, then moved in to engage the patrol base. Having taken out the enemy patrol, they were ordered to locate the base/headquarters area for the enemy patrol and others in that region.

It took my dad's patrol another week to locate the enemy base area, and by then they had only been resupped once. When they located the base and recced it, the close target reconnaisance taking a couple of days i think, they recieved orders to pull out to a laying up position and await a company of Ghurkas who were to be inserted by a "tree-jump". They arrived two days later, and a company attack, led by my dad's patrol, went in and destroyed the base. Total time on the ground for the patrol was about 26 days.

When i was learning about long range patrols on my course with 21, our instructors said that we should plan and prepare for a two week duration for most operations. Bearing in mind that the standard format of one of these patrols was the insertion of a four-man patrol, tasked with locating a target, reconnoitering the target, and carrying out actions on objective, dependant on whether the patrol was purely gathering intelligence or acting as pathfinders to bring in more troops for an attack, or carrying out a patrol attack (four guys against the world, you've got to love British thinking... :shock: ).
Ando

Post by Ando »

Roger Ranger Steadfast.
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Steadfast
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Post by Steadfast »

Ando wrote:Roger Ranger Steadfast.
Topic L96 & L96a1 moved to Weapons Forum successfully.

In answer to your question Ando. RVN = Republic Vietnam. Slowpoke and myself were "In Country" in different units and during different years. We did not know each other. We met on airborneranger dot com and I followed him here just looking at his picture. Now here is my home too. We both did do Long Range Recon Patrols.
RLTW
Steadfast

4/325 82d DIV 68-69
2nd Bde HHC (LRRP), 4 ID
K Co (Rgr), 75th Inf (Abn), 4 ID
69-70
I cooked with C- 4
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Slowpoke
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Post by Slowpoke »

Most of our patrols were scheduled for three or four days. The majority of the time, they didn't last that long because we were usually inserted in what was beleived to be a "target rich" environment. It was felt that the longer a mission was, the more likely that the patrol members attention would slip, and the more likely to lose a Team. The weight of carrying enough food and water for extended periods was also a factor. Resupply was out of the question. If a Team ran out of something, thay either did without or were extracted. Generally, finding the enemy was't a problem. The problem was what to do with them once you found them. We tried several forms of a Rapid Reaction Force, and didn't come up with anything that worked well while I was there. The brass hated having troops just sitting around, doing nothing, while they waited for our call. And if a reaction force was to be effective, they had to be able to be in the air within minutes of our call, or the opportunity would usually be lost. There was also a problem with the people in the rear beleiving our estimates of the size of force we were looking at.
I never wore a cape, but I still have my dog tags.

Experienced Peek Freak!!

173rd Abn LRRP...'66/'67
C/1/506 101st Abn
B/2/325 82nd Abn
Ando

MIKE Force

Post by Ando »

Was the MIKE Force program designed with the LRRPs in mind?

And with regards to weight, i suppose the environment you operate in dictates how much you can carry. And also the methods you choose to use during an operation.

During my 21 training, we were taught to patrol into an AO before any planned operations and cache equipment and supplies for use by our own patrols or by friendly patrols in the area. Of course, this depends on the AO in question, and on factors such as time available and the length of the engagement. This technique was pioneered by the Malayan Scouts (SAS) in Malaya and by the SAS and SBS soldiers on "Claret" operations in Borneo.

Is 100lbs an unreasonable weight to be carried on a patrol in your opinions? Most of my route marches in selection ranged between 55 and 100lbs in weight. And on exercise i usually carried around 80lbs. I went on a two week exercise, and there was no resupply. The scenario was "Cold war gone hot" (No change there then, even in 2002) and we were "a patrol inserted to locate and destroy an enemy command element". What this meant was that after the insertion, we were on our own until we reached the objective, carried out the task and exfilled under our own steam. So i carried food for around 20 days (a little extra never hurt anybody), plus my personal equipment and personal weapon. Water wasn't an issue as we were working in a temperate environment.

The new British rations are shit hot, by the way, as they are ready to eat and come in a thick foil wrapper that can be compressed to fit in a tobacco tin (ive squeezed two into my tin before). They taste pretty good too.
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Re: MIKE Force

Post by Silverback »

Ando wrote:Was the MIKE Force program designed with the LRRPs in mind?

And with regards to weight, i suppose the environment you operate in dictates how much you can carry. And also the methods you choose to use during an operation. Is 100lbs an unreasonable weight to be carried on a patrol in your opinions?
100 lbs is too much. You have to figure out whether or not you want to be ready to fight when you get to your OBJ. I have asked spartan to host a clip of approach march weights. You may be hard as nails but you aren't doing much with 100lbs strapped to your back.

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Ando

Post by Ando »

I agree Ranger Gronk. Like i said, our standard load for an exercise (and supposedly an operation, although i havent got that far yet) was around 75-80lbs. Often i had to carry the GPMG as opposed to my personal weapon (M16a1/2 or Diemaco C7) which added another 29lbs to the weight, plus a thousand rounds of 7.62(I was the FNG, so go figure). Our patrol SOP upon enemy contact was for two of the team to take a knee and return fire, while the other two bugged out a little way, hit the deck and ditched the bergens before covering the other two as they did the same (remind me to cover British Contact Drills for the infantry and UKSF at some point, don't worry it's not an OPSEC issue). If we chose to engage the enemy and assault, we'd collect the bergens later. If we chose to leg it, we left it behind. Obviously if the kit contained anything that could possibly breach OPSEC we'd blow it in place. On many an exercise that fuckin bergen nearly killed me.

On one exercise in Scotland, we took a casualty (My illustrious buddy Stu turned an ankle and fucked himself up) right after our insertion by boat onto a beach at night. As soon as we started taking fire from an enemy OP on the beach, the boat bugged out and left us, so we had to take out the OP with three guys, carry the other fucker 17 miles to our final RV, cache our equipment and his sorry ass, recce and demo the objective, then bug out with all our kit and Stu the fuckwit. Carrying one bergen is bad enough, carrying TWO of the fuckers, a GPMG and a rifle is downright crazy.

In our patrols we have to be self-sufficient. We usually have no means of rapid extraction, and we were always surrounded by miles of rugged Scottish or Welsh countryside. So we have to carry that amount of kit to survive. One SOP is to ditch our Bergens and survive on our belt-kits if we have to. We carried a couple of days rations and some basic survival kit to allow us to make it to the ERV and then move onto extraction.

We always carried just enough kit for the job, but often this was way above the infantry's standard 55lb bergen. If we were putting in an OP we had to carry everything in on our backs. So all of the OP kit, optics etc had to be shared around the team, on top of our personal kit. I think us Brits operate in a different way to the US Army anyway, because every poor infantry fucker carries 55lbs as standard. Correct me if im wrong, but the duration of your patrols means you need less kit.
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Post by Silverback »

My last experience with Royal Marines is well documented on this site. The problem as I see it is we (The US Army) focus too much on running as a means to achieve cardiovascualr fitness. I have witnessed guys that could run 10 miles very fast getting folded up by their rucks on a cold muddy drop zone. I think we need to build more lean muscle mass and get away from the "How fast is your 10 mile time" mentality.

I hold the British forces in general in high regard for their ruck fitness level. Whenever I went to a school hosted by the Brits we had to conduct some kind of ruck march/run in order to be accepted into the class. This was a test of whether or not a man applying for a given course can actually move/maneuver with his individual equipment.

With that said 100lbs is not a realistic load! It's too much weight to function with.
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Re: MIKE Force

Post by Slowpoke »

Ando wrote:Was the MIKE Force program designed with the LRRPs in mind?
The MIKE Force was, if memory serves me right, made up of indigenous (SP?) personel, as a reaction force for SF. We tried some "Kit Carson" scouts (useing an ARVN Ranger on a LRRP Team) but it didn't work out very well. Too many of them didn't have the balls for the job, and the ones that did were crazy....thought they were John Wayne. That only lasted for about a month. I've heard that the 101st LRRPs tried the same thing with the same results.
I never wore a cape, but I still have my dog tags.

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173rd Abn LRRP...'66/'67
C/1/506 101st Abn
B/2/325 82nd Abn
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Post by Steadfast »

Thank you sotb. And welcome home brother. We are honored to have you amongst us. We have a good group of guys that come by occassionally. Pull up a chair, and take a beer out of the cooler. We have plenty here.
RLTW
Steadfast

4/325 82d DIV 68-69
2nd Bde HHC (LRRP), 4 ID
K Co (Rgr), 75th Inf (Abn), 4 ID
69-70
I cooked with C- 4
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Post by Silverback »

SOTB,
I agree with you on learning the "small things" When I began my tour in the AD I/we Learned lots of "little things". The little things we learned made us better fighters and more proficient warriors. Things like "Never put 30 rds in a 30 rd Magazine, stuff that at the time didn't seem important.

After Participating in a 12 month Middle Eastern sabbatical, I found out that those little things held a huge amount of importance in daily life.

We as a brotherhood of warriors have relearned some lessons and we continue to imporve our ability to find, fight and destroy the enemy everyday.
RC 2-87
3-75 84/85, 95/97
"thnks 4 pratn merku!"
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