Well, I got back from PenguiCon a few days ago (conflict of interest note: I’m on the board of directors) and have a much better understanding of urban combat losses than when I went there. PenguiCon is a cross between a Linux technical conference and a science fiction convention. It’s much more diverse than that, however.
At PenguiCon, a company known as “Aegis Consulting” runs events called “Black Sweater Parties” which in fact involve teaching people SWAT tactics – room breaching and clearing, how to sweep a building and clear out hallways and stairs (I hate stairs). They don’t use real weapons or explosives – water guns painted black, imitation flashbangs, etc. However, the principle of operation is close enough that you can get a good feel for what’s going on. If you place yourself in the moment you can even stuffer from PTSD (I did last year – thankfully not severely). The event starts with about 2 hours of teaching how to perform all of the techniques, and the theory behind them. Then the fun begins.
The event that I participated in was on Saturday night – technically Sunday morning at 2:00am, working on 4 hours of sleep from the night before. We were fried. Out of the 9 people we had to play with, 4 had not taken the training – this was an informal tossed-together practice.
The scenario we were given was of the hotel lobby and the three floors immediately above them, which were all open on one side down to the lobby. There were three sets of stairs going from the lobby to the second and third floors – on at each end of the “in-play” area, and one about a third from one end. The lobby itself was not in play, but the stairwells at the lobby level were.
Since we had 9 people, we divided ourselves into 3 teams of 3 people each. 2 experienced hands and a newbie on each of team Alpha and team Bravo. I was in command of team Charlie with 2 newbies. In brief, I was driving the short bus. The plan was to send all 3 teams up the stairwell. Team Alpha and Bravo would proceed up the stairs to the third floor and sweep that while team Charlie would take the second floor. That’s right – the “special” crowd would take a whole floor. This was an exciting idea. I think I was also given this “glorious” task because I wasn’t there for the training the night before, and therefore must not have known what I was doing. Right. The plan is that the Alpha and Bravo teams will come down the two remaining stairwells as we finish sweeping the 2nd floor. I asked how we would know if we needed to clean up or not. I was told that if we heard shooting to assume that everybody was dead. OK. Well, gear up and head out.
We then begin deployment. Since the hotel is completely open for the convention, we have people going up and down the stairwell. This is annoying, but we can’t expect them to put up with us unless we put up with them. Anyways, we line up outside the doors and team Alpha and Bravo charge in. We wait a few moments and then flash-bang our 2nd floor entrance, charging in. We clear the little space which sticks out in front of the elevators and then procede to clear out the hallway (roughly 100 yards long). Nothing. Of course, a bunch of people in the party rooms want to play with us, but we are strictly business. We are walking as quickly as we can while still being silent. Down the hall we go, checking room alcove after room alcove. Fortunately, we don’t need to search the rooms themselves, just the hallways and stairwells themselves. Down the hallway with no OpFor contact. We finally get to the end of the hallway and we have met up with no opposition. Mission complete. Almost.
While we’re waiting for the other teams to finish, we hear gunfire and lots of people hitting the ground on the floor above. We wait a few more minutes and hear nothing more. At this point, mission orders tell us to go up and sweep the 3rd floor – after all, we were told to assume that our teammates were dead. We procede up the stairwell at the end of the hallway opposite to where we started and pause. We aren’t sure what’s on the other side, but it can’t be good. With no OpFor people on the second floor, they must have all been on the third floor. We get ready to breach.
On a count of three our pointman throws open the door (I’m in second position) and notice two people there with guns. Point and I take out the guy standing. There’s another guy lying down which we both turn on next. Sadly, I forgot that I’m supposed to go low with point man high. I am hit by guy on ground. Pointman was hit by guy standing. It takes a moment for us to figure out who’s really dead. In the end, our third man is still alive. At which point the guy on the ground who killed me asks “wait, aren’t you on my team?” Fuck! We just wasted 4 perfectly good people on a friendly-fire incident. It was fast. They had guns. They were in the way. It was fast. We had guns. We were breaching the door. Fuck.
Though we “won” the match by getting all of the bad guys, we lost half our manpower to a stupid friendly-fire incident. It happened in a split second – people trying to get inside the decision curve of the other guy and killing teammates instead. I now understand why and how this happens in a warzone, especially an urban combat area. It is just too easy to kill the wrong person, especially when working on little sleep and pumped on adrenaline.
It was a lot of fun. No PTSD this year – just a lot of stupid dying.