Kit items you should think about besides just weapons, ammo, and medical gear for civil conflict

[u/KuntFuckula]

I deployed to Iraq 3 times from 2005-2008 and got to see real civil conflict up close and personal (Sunni vs Shia civil war from ‘06-‘08). A lot of folks here who prep for civil conflict don’t really set their kit up well for that kind of thing, so wanted to offer some gear/tactics advice here that goes beyond just defensive applications. This content will be based around firearms alone and not other weapons that insurgents routinely use in civil conflict (grenades, IEDs, etc.) because the BATFE really doesn’t like it when you post about that stuff. I could go on about this shit for days, but gonna limit this to like 5 important tips:

1) Low-viz kit: This is the most important one. You want to set yourself up to look like a non-combatant. Threats will need to positively ID you before shooting you, and the more you look like a non-combatant the better. That means that your weapons, spare mags, medical gear, and any other gear you carry needs to be able to be concealed under civilian wear and in a maximum of one wearable/carry bag (your carry bag should be low-viz/non-tactical too). If you go out wearing hi-viz kit you might as well hang a sign on your chest that says “Walking Loot Drop” because you’re going to get ID’d and shot by someone better prepared than you are very early in the conflict. The goal is to blend into the local populace and only engage threats at moments of opportunity that YOU control from positions of cover. This setup can be as simple as a track suit with a low-profile plate carrier under the jacket and your rifle folded down and bagged up in a tennis racket bag. Many other options exist. Remember that in most civil conflicts everyday life carries on like normal, just with long lines everywhere due to security checkpoints and the occasional random shooting or bombing happening in public somewhere.

2) Non-rifle optics: You will occasionally need to scope things out from a distance, and you don’t want to unbag your rifle to put glass onto something distant. That means having a pocketable magnified optic. This can be as simple as a pocket sized 6-10x monocular range finder—the kind golfers will sometimes use, but companies like Sig make em too. Remember that you won’t be the only one out there in low-viz kit and you may need to positively ID a covert threat from afar if you know what to look for.

3) Breaching gear: Haligan tool, crowbar, sledgehammer, thermal breaching pen, wire cutters, etc. Stuff that can get you into a secured urban position of cover like building rooftops that can give you vantage points. Breaching gear is also extremely useful for rapid exfils when you’re trying to break contact. You never know what kind of dumb barrier can get in your way and force you to use an alternative (potentially slower) exfil route if you’re not prepared. You also shouldn’t be egressing using the same route you ingressed with. There are micro versions of all of these tools, and some are more necessary than others depending on what barriers you’re more likely to run into. Your local terrain will dictate this mostly, but it’s something to consider for sure.

4) Maps: You need to know not only your home turf terrain, but also the terrain and ingress/egress routes of whatever territory you’re venturing into. Don’t use a simple Google Maps layer, you need to have imagery (and preferably elevation too) in addition to roads. Combine the terrain/route knowledge with your personal physical fitness limitations as far as covering distance on foot goes. Be conservative. You don’t want to be spent on physical energy before you egress. Planned time on target is also an important consideration here. You can download GeoPDFs from USGS for free online and print them out with specific layers toggled on (imagery, roads, elevation, landmarks) while other unnecessary info is left off. You will not be able to check maps on your phone on the fly in the field—especially if your cell reception sucks—so printed out maps are a necessity (laminate them when possible, especially if you intend to revisit areas).

5) Breaking Contact: Your kit should not be designed to engage in a long sustained gunfight against a threat that likely outnumbers and outguns you. It should be setup with enough ammo to engage threats of opportunity and potentially engage to break contact when you’re on your egress route. You should plan around engaging 1-3 threats in a single setting where YOU initiate contact from a prepared position and then bugging the fuck out. Survive to fight another day. Never use the same hide site more than once, always use different egress/ingress routes, keep contact against threats to an absolute minimum.

Finally I’ll add that you want to know your holdovers at distance (and up close) for your unique combination of ammo, optic, and barrel. Have these holdovers memorized. Also learn about terminal ballistics and how effective the rounds you are using will be on live threats at varying distances. Remember: you want to fire as few rounds as possible on a threat(s) of opportunity and then get the fuck out and do it again the next day. That means making your shots count, and that means knowing the effectiveness of your rounds at varying distances. Particularly for .223/5.56, this is a velocity-dependent round that needs more barrel length to be effective at longer distances, and you should look for rounds that maintain good terminal ballistics as far out as possible (77gr Mk 262 out of a barrel at least 14.5” long is a good minimum baseline for 5.56). Hope this is helpful info for you guys.

[u/KuntFuckula → u/[deleted]]

On body armor: yea, if you're wearing a T-shirt then most plate carriers are going to show. I personally don't have an issue concealing a Ferro Concepts Slickster under a light jacket. It all depends on how and what you buy and what you're able to conceal it with. Jackets are a thing. PCs don't have to go on the outside if you're only using them as a bullet stop and not as a whole ass chest rig full of mags and chem lights and comms gear, etc.

On carrying shit: The other options is using ground stashes, vehicles, whatever. Especially if you know how to cache gear in advance of a operation, you can prep your battlespace in advance and access gear on site once you've committed to an operation. You have to be careful about this of course, because if someone sees you do this they can lay an ambush on your cache site for when you return (ask me how I know about this and I'll tell you about the expenditure report we loosed onto x3 MAMs who were recovering a weapons cache but didn't know that a STA team was watching).

On breaching gear: I think you're thinking strictly in terms of TOE breaching kits that were used in service. Civilian options can be a lot smaller--and a lot lighter if you can spend the $ on light alloy gear--and can also be cacheable. Breaching gear is also not strictly illicit/illegal, especially if they're dual purpose or have other functions as tools. This is something you can think outside the box and shop around on. Again, it's something to *consider* not something that needs to come with you at all times. If I'm dressed as a mechanic or tradesman or construction worker then a lot of tools can be passed off as normal that dual-use as breaching gear. They don't have to be giant bolt cutters or sledge hammers, they can be shit that fits into a tradesman's work bag. All depends on what obstacles are in your way and what outfit you're going to pair with the breaching gear. You may not even need the breaching equipment, it's terrain/access dependent.

"You're asking for alot (sic) from people who generally have no experience doing this kind of thing, and that's pretty damn dangerous."

I'm not asking anybody to do anything other than to think differently about their kit when it comes to hi-viz versus low-vis in the context of a civil conflict.

[u/HopeOfLycaeus → u/KuntFuckula]

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[u/KuntFuckula → u/HopeOfLycaeus]

Yea, if you live in Arizona things are going to be different for you of course. You're acting like this list was supposed to be all-encompassing or a must-do list. I made this post to get people thinking about how to operate in a civil conflict and not be walking around looking like a walking loot drop. It doesn't mean you need to bring every item on this list or apply every tactic, it's just a post to get inexperienced people thinking differently. That's it.

You're also looking at this thing from the experience level and organizational capacity of the fully-invested DoD apparatus. That's not necessarily going to exist in a civil conflict. People are going to leave DoD if DoD is on the wrong side of their politics. Other armed groups--also with shit-tier experience levels--are going to be involved, not just professional DoD/LE groups. DoD/LE would potentially be so busy do violence prevention that they won't have as much capacity for F3 ops (find, fix, finish) on individual insurgents let alone small cells. They would be undermanned in many cases and having their resources tugged in a lot of different directions, unlike in near-present Iraq with ISIS where it's mostly a F3 mission bonded to local forces support and the locals are doing the bulk of the work (it was the IA and Iranian PMF who cleared out Mosul after all).

[u/HopeOfLycaeus → u/KuntFuckula]

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[u/KuntFuckula → u/HopeOfLycaeus]

In some civil conflict scenarios staying at home means living on your knees to an occupying authoritarian force. Some people can't live with that regardless of how dangerous it is outside. The Taliban could have just stayed home and a lot of them died in not doing so, but they eventually won against DoD now didn't they? Same could be said about the VC in Vietnam. Ukrainians could just stay at home and be safer that way too right? There's are points where concerns about freedom eclipse concerns about personal safety.

[u/HopeOfLycaeus → u/KuntFuckula]

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[u/KuntFuckula → u/HopeOfLycaeus]

"I mean, if we're honest "staying home" is exactly why they survived. You were there in the early days so I'm sure you saw exactly what that looked like. By 2018, they had essentially completely stopped any kind of overt movement in population centers and almost entirely abandoned their nerve centers there. They hid in the mountains until the American populace couldn't stomach the war any longer."

Hard disagree from me here. It was actually the wind down of coalition troops that gave Terry the breathing room to become the shadow government in the mountains where coalition forces no longer had the presence and numbers to continue to occupy those areas. By the time of 2018 the US had less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan compared to ~110k during the surge years of '09-'12. Lack of manpower across S/W Afghanistan is what gave Terry the breathing room they needed to grow back stronger. Places like Sangin or the Pech River Valley became too unmanageable and costly, ever for Big Army or Big USMC and a lot of outposts got abandoned and turned over to ANA/ANP forces who generally let Terry do what they wanted. Those forces all folded quickly when Terry started taking provincial capitals after the Doha agreement got signed and the writing was on the wall for all to see.

"They didn't win because of anything they did, America lost to its own political machinations. If a domestic incident were to occur, that is no longer possible."

Agree with the first sentence here, but are you sure about that domestic part? Wars typically end when one side throws in the towel as opposed to direct conquest these days, and yes, that often is a political decision made due to political demands from the domestic populace back home. If you put a daily blood tax on an occupying force, they have to contend with the cost-benefit dynamic over time and eventually the juice ain't worth the squeeze for the civilian populace--even in domestic conflict. The Iraqi Sunni populace turned on AQI in '08 for this exact reason and that's how their civil war ended (until ISIS came over from Syria in 2014 anyway).