Mumbai and Buddy Teams

Folks,

This is a long post from another blog, including discussion, but it is important and pertinent to Absolved and especially the chapters about The Squad and the upcoming Doctrine. There is much discussion, some of it uninformed, of the origins and modern use of the "buddy team."

The buddy team is in fact just the codification of a sociological fact about soldiery that probably goes back to the hoplites. Soldiers form friendships for the most compelling of reasons: the bond keeps them alive, shares the burdens of soldiering and provides a human connection in an insane and violent battlefield. The blog entry "A Marine Officer on the Mumbai tactics" first appeared on 29 November at The Belmont Club. I reproduce it below, as well as some of the more pertinent replies.

A Marine infantry officer sends these observations on the terrorist tactics used at Mumbai.

From what I can gather there are a few interesting observations to be made of the tactics in use in Mumbai:

It appears the attackers were organized into buddy pairs, allowing one to shoot while the other moved, and so forth. Interestingly, the buddy pair has is a later innovation in small unit tactics and has only been slow to trickle through regular infantry formations. In World War I, the smallest element of maneuver (on paper) might have been a battalion or company. The Germans, in developing “storm troop tactics” then innovated even smaller maneuver elements, which we might call squads today. The role of platoons and squads became only greater in WWII. After WWII, General S.L.A. Marshall conducted a massive study of the reactions of men in combat (See “Men Against Fire”) and the result of his work was the genesis of the Fire Team. The Fire Team is now the smallest doctrinal unit of maneuver in the US military. In the Marine Corps, it is led by a Corporal, includes an automatic rifleman with a Squad Automatic Weapon, and two more riflemen.

During the Iraq War, two innovations have taken place: first, within the Marine Corps, the concept of the “buddy pair” or “buddy team” has spread dramatically, though it is still not doctrinal (it should be). The idea may have begun in the special forces, though I am not sure. The advantage of smaller and smaller units of maneuver is that if they rehearse their actions and build cohesion within the unit, they develop ever greater levels of capability *at that level*. A well-trained buddy pair with the right mindset and enough ammo can take over a city block, house by house, while under fire. The other innovation that has taken place in Iraq is to take the Fire Team and make it into a motorized element, inside one vehicle. This is less in favor now that everyone realizes that moving around in vehicles makes you seem more like robots to the locals and they then have less of a problem with killing you. In any case, all of these changes have one large thing in common — a decentralizing of decisionmaking and maneuver.

And now in Mumbai it would seem we have seen the ultimate result: autonomous buddy-pairs, with a great deal of rehearsals and navigation practice, each with its own set of goals, possibly redundant comms with brevity codes. I would imagine that each team had multiple preplanned routes to each of its objectives before they finally converged on the location for the last stand. Along the way, as some have wondered, they may have stopped for quick logistics reloads of ammo and water.
Here are some thoughts, in no order:

1. The school shooting at Columbine springs to mind when looking for analogies.

2. One of the advantages of a buddy pair, as mentioned above, is the ability to fire and move. One fires while the other moves, and then they switch. In this way, moving from cover to cover, they take ground. But this concept becomes interesting when considered against the fact that the terrorists seemingly had no one firing against them, and they did not have to disciplined in taking well-aimed shots . . .

3. . . . A photographer noted how “cool” and “professional” they looked as they sprayed from the hip. Shooting from the hip is not extremely professional, but this only is if one wants to take well-aimed shots. Perhaps shooting from the hip is very professional if one wants to spray in across a broad angle while maintaining a wider field of view than if behind the sights of your weapon. In other words, if facing no armed opposition, you have the luxury of spraying broadly, and the most dangerous thing to you is an armed threat that comes from outside your narrowed peripheral vision while using your iron sights.

4. Note this sentence, from the AP article: “They weren’t aiming at anyone in particular. It was like they wanted to empty their magazines and do as much damage here as possible before heading to the Taj,” I would argue that the terrorists, while being superbly motivated, and having planned intricately for their assault, are nevertheless poor marksmen. Given the details that we are learning of their attack, the most surprising thing is that more people weren’t killed.

5. It seems that there is a convergence taking place within the realm of small-unit tactics. Infantry units, terrorists, police forces, criminal and narco-gangs, and so forth are all converging in terms of the tactics they use against one another. The only tactical difference between 5 terrorist buddy pairs and a Marine rifle squad is their goal: the former seeks a position to create the most carnage indiscriminately for the longest period of time while the latter might be sweeping or clearing an area or conducting a manhunt, meaning it seeks to use the utmost precision in its application of force. If I may presume: the terrorists have learned fire and movement from us, from watching us, and from reading our manuals, which are posted online. But our tactics are not geared toward indiscriminate slaughter. The question is, will they develop any tactical innovations that allow them that advantage?


7. Starling:

Wretchard, thanks for posting these comments. I found them very informative. As a management theorist with a specific interest in organization structure and design, the discussion about the merits of decentralization and team/group composition certainly resonates.

One of several comments that caught my eye was this one: “The Fire Team is now the smallest doctrinal unit of maneuver in the US military. In the Marine Corps, it is led by a Corporal, includes an automatic rifleman with a Squad Automatic Weapon, and two more riflemen.”

Knowing nothing whatsoever about military maneuvers and tactics, I had assumed that a sniper team was the smallest “doctrinal unit”, i.e. a spotter and a shooter.
Again, thanks for passing along the observations.
Nov 29, 2008 - 7:36 pm


8. wretchard:

The Marine infantry officer adds in a subsequent e-mail:

There’s another big tie in here with deception: you did a post not long ago about the need for the military to wear uniforms, etc. (you’ve done more in the past I know). Here, we have terrorists with no uniforms, and still of unknown and unconfirmed origin, asking for the damned passports of innocent people. And yet our military must wear uniforms or else void international law. Something isn’t right here.

One advantage that terrorist buddy pairs have is that they can confidently fire on anyone. The odds they will engage another terrorist buddy pair are almost nil. And if they kill man, woman or beast it simply adds to their tally. One problem facing a response team is that they have to have postive ID on the enemy. A blue on blue or accidental killing of a civilian is a definite, it not a probable contingency.

My own guess, and I am not an infantryman, is that defensive tactics should aim to nullify the maneuverability and relative invisibility of terrorist buddy pairs. If they are immobilized, or at least localized, then the buddy pairs can easily be overmatched. Their advantages are also their disadvantages. They have limited stocks of ammo and a relatively low rate of fire.

A terrorist buddy pair’s greatest killing potential is either in the first few minutes and when they have gained a position (such as in the Taj Hotel) in which the urban terrain favors them. At all points in between they will be dead meat for a professional police or military force in platoon or greater strength. Of the two windows of opportunity, the most deadly is the first few minutes. Imagine a school, a shopping mall or a stadium. In the first twenty minutes, a number of buddy teams assaulting inward from the entrances could trap most people in it. By the time a response team got there, they would have segued to defense.

But if they can be contained, then at least they can’t move on to the next hotel, the next building, the next mass killing ground.

There are only two long term defenses I can imagine, as a layman. The first is subsidiarity. The second is intelligence. Subsidiarity will mean the existence of enough armament at the grassroots level to create uncertainty for the terrorist buddy pairs. This is the concept upon which the air marshal idea relies. The possibility you may encounter an armed man in the first minutes when you are supposed to enjoy surprise could ruin everything. Instead of losing one terrorist per hundred casualties, the terrorist might be killed after only shooting two or three. Intelligence is the other defense. The Mumbai attackers had support cells. They had to train somewhere, be transported somehow, set up their resupply points in some fashion. All of these activities have signatures.

Ultimately, our relative safety depends on knowledge. What purpose, I was asked at recent party, did US troops serve in Afghanistan? I said intelligence. Their chief utility was that they could pick up something. The rumor of war. If you broke contact with the enemy you gained a certain degree of safety but only at the risk of losing information. Now there are many ways to gain intelligence, not all of them having to do with putting infantry in far away places. But the principle is the same. We must always know what the bad guys are up to and that means getting close to them in some way.

Nov 29, 2008 - 7:36 pm

17. Starling:

Excerpts from a short, but telling, article in the Times of India on why it took Indian commandos over 9 hours to respond:

Why did NSG take 9 hrs to get there?

The terrorists strike Mumbai at 9.30pm. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is in Kerala. He is briefed about the attack on the city’s prime locations. By the time Deshmukh grasps the enormity of the situation, 90 minutes have gone by.

He rings Union home minister Shivraj Patil at 11pm and asks for NSG commandos. “How many men?” Patil asks. “200,” says the CM. Patil calls NSG chief J K Dutt and tells him to send 200 battle-ready commandos to Mumbai.

Most of the NSG men have to be roused from sleep. They don their uniforms, strap on safety gear, collect ammo and firearms. It is discovered that the only plane that can take 200 men, the IL 76, is not in Delhi but Chandigarh. Precious minutes are ticking by.

The IL 76 pilot is woken, the plane refuelled. It reaches Delhi at 2am. By the time the commandos get in and the plane takes off, four-and-a-half hours have elapsed. Experts say that unless a response is mounted within 30 minutes of an attack, the enemy can assume key defensive positions.

It takes the aircraft almost three hours to land at Mumbai airport. Unlike the Boeing and Airbus, IL 76 is a slow plane. By the time the NSG commandos board the waiting buses it is 5.25am.

The buses take another 40 minutes to reach the designated place in south Mumbai where the commandos are briefed, divided into different groups and sent out on their mission.

By the time they start their operation, it is 7am — in other words, nine-and-a-half hours after the terror strike.

Many lives might have been saved had this delay not happened. The obvious question is why is the NSG stationed only in Delhi. When Indian cities are vulnerable to terror attacks, why is there no commando force like the NSG, or its units, in every city?

19. wretchard:

Why did NSG take 9 hrs to get there?

This is why subsidiarity is important. In a country as vast as India — or the United States or Australia — it can take hours to fly a terrorist response team to a given location. That concedes the first deadly minutes to the enemy. They have to be shut down and contained within an hour. We know how to contain many types of dangers, fire for example. Buckets of sand, CO2 extinguishers, etc, building evacuation plans, etc are there to provide a subsidiary response until the fire company gets there.

Unfortunately it has become the tendency to centralize responses to violence ever more. Hardly a week passes without a story about some hapless Briton being hailed before the judge because he conked some house-breaker on the head. You’re supposed to wait and not provoke the house-breaker until the proper policemen came. While this allowed the politicians to gather the powers of life and death into their hands and prevent “abuse” this also lengthened the response times. Today we shudder at ROTC training on campus. We take, as an indice of civilization, the proliferation of “gun free zones”. Those zones are “come and get it” dinner bells for Mumbai-style terrorists.

There was at one time, the idea of a “well-regulated militia” to span the distance between vigilanteeism and waiting for help which might take too long to come. If the Indians had a number of local counter-terror teams it could help them response more quickly next time.

Nov 29, 2008 - 8:19 pm

20. F:

The idea of personal self-defense still exists in the US: many of my friends have concealed carry permits, and I applied for one myself a month ago (it takes around 3 months to be issued in Nevada). Of course the next question is, would I draw and use a weapon, especially after the emphasis placed by my instructor on all the legal and personal safety reasons NOT to use my firearm.

That said, I barely avoided being in the Japanese embassy in Lima when it was stormed by Shining Path guerrillas in 1997. Several of my colleagues were there, though, and recalled seeing many of the guests in attendance (mostly diplomats or aid personnel) ditching their personal weapons in the bushes rather than using them against the handful of terrorists who had scaled the back wall. If only 3-4 of the armed guests had successfully taken down a terrorist in the first moments it would probably have stopped the attack immediately. Perhaps with a little loss of innocent life, but as it is the embassy was held for several months and finally stormed by Peruvian armed forces (who managed to kill all the terrorists without loss of innocent life.)

As for why the Indian policemen didn’t shoot back, I was stationed in India in 1965-67, and in those days (and presumably today) policemen were not routinely issued ammunition.
Nov 29, 2008 - 8:50 pm

25. fred:
I have some nagging doubts in my mind about the alleged military-like way of operating these jihadis exhibited. They had to know that they would be operating in an environment where it was extremely unlikely that any of their targets would be carrying weapons. They had to know that the Indian police would be confused and ineffective during the initial stages of the assault, which is when most of the casualties were inflicted. Why would they need to employ a buddy system of fire and maneuver? Fire and maneuver presumes an environment where hostile fire is to be expected to stand between one and one’s objective. They had the element of surprise as well as being able to grossly outclass their targets in terms of firepower.
Reading the lead-in article only causes me to have more questions about the jihadis, not fewer. Still, they show some exposure to military training. Plus, it would appear that they were were well armed and logistically supported. If this was six months in planning, then the greatest worry the Indian government has is the presence of logistical support cells within the target society. And all of us here know that support cells are THE hardest of the Islamic nuts to crack. The enemy designs it that way. Combatants are cannon fodder. Expendable. But the logistical support cells are critical and must be protected at all costs. It is that end of the operation that gives the enemy the ability to project terror well beyond the deaths of the gunmen.

Nov 29, 2008 - 9:08 pm

26. Cannoneer No. 4:

Buddy System

Pair every youth with another in the same ability group. Buddies check in and out of the swimming area together. Emphasize that each buddy lifeguards his buddy. Check everyone in the water about every 10 minutes, or as needed to keep the buddies together. The adult in charge signals for a buddy check with a single blast of a whistle or ring of a bell, and call “Buddies!” The adult counts slowly to 10 while buddies join and raise hands and remain still and silent. Guards check all areas, count the pairs, and compare the total with the number known to be in the water. Signal two blasts or bells to resume swimming. Signal three blasts or bells for checkout. — Boy Scouts of America Safe Swim Defense, in use since before 1968.
Nov 29, 2008 - 9:11 pm

27. James:
Buddy pairs may be maneuverable but what happens if you have armed opposition? If one of the pair is hit the other is left with very few choices and none of them are good. A two man team may work well when things are going well for you, but in the worst case scenario situation, you’re both dead.

Nov 29, 2008 - 9:11 pm

33. wretchard:

This excerpt from the Telegraph details information taken from the sole surviving terrorist. The attack team was gathered in “a remote mountain camp in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan- administered Kashmir … During the months of training they were taught the use of explosives and close quarter combat. It was ingrained upon every man that ammunition would be in short supply and therefore every bullet should count.” They were then taken to Rawalpindi, the military heart of Pakistan, where they met with another team of six trained in another camp. They referred to each other by assumed names, which SOP for clandestine ops. At Rawalpindi they received an intel briefing and sandtabled, as it were, their attack. They launched from Karachi and were nearly turned by the Indian navy.

Here the team improvised. They hijacked a fishing boat, the Kuber and killed the crew. Using the fishing boat they made their way past the Indian coastguards. All in all, they were challenged more frequently than the 9/11 attackers but their initiative and training won them through. In close combat inside the hotels with the premier Indian counterterror force, they proved formidable.

Major General RK Hooda, the senior Indian commander, acknowledged the group, the Deccan Mujadeen, were better equipped and had a better knowledge of the battleground than India’s soldiers.

After the battle, one member of India’s National Security Guard, who led one of the assault groups against the terrorists occupying the Taj Mahal hotel, said they were the “best fighters” he had ever encountered.

He said: “They were obviously trained by professionals in urban guerrilla fighting. They used their environment and situation brilliantly, leading us (the NSG) on a dangerous chase through various tiers of the hotel which they obviously knew well. Their fire discipline too was excellent and they used their ammunition judiciously, mostly to draw us out.

“It was amply clear they came to kill a large number of people and to eventually perish in their horrific endeavour,” he said. “Negotiating with the Indian authorities or escaping was not an option for them.”

While the attack team only consisted of ten men, there are many other implied components. The men who recruited and trained them. The men who recruited and trained the Team B. The intel briefers. The providers of the Zodiac boats. The men who coordinated the whole shebang. So it was, despite appearances, an expensive operation, though considering the damage it inflicted, very cost effective.

The best time to intercept this type of operation is to detect it in its training stage. Once the attack team had landed, then luck, tactical skill, the availability of local response and numerous other circumstantial factors would determine its outcome.
Nov 29, 2008 - 9:28 pm


34. raff:

Buddy Pairs. Taught to me in battle school in canada in the early 80’s. Use of buddy pairs demonstrated quite nicely in the film HEAT.
Nov 29, 2008 - 9:33 pm 35.

F: Cannoneer #4 (#24): Actually, in the Lima dip corps of the nineties, probably more of us carried than not. Urban terrorism was winding down, but was not completely gone and car bombs still rocked the city now and then. As for “backing their play,” that’s a bigger “if”. When you’re standing at a long table of hors d’oeuvres with a drink in one hand and a sandwich in the other, chatting with a colleague, the thought of drawing and shooting, especially when a handful (and it was only a handful) of bad guys are shooting AK-47s into the air, is probably pretty alien. But if one of my fellow dips had made the first play he probably would have found himself in good company. Now whether there were any sober shooters in the party, well that’s another issue.

In the 27 years I was in that line of work I carried only about 5 years (but I did carry in Lima). Only once was I threatened in a way that could possibly have lead to me using my heat. I didn’t, and a very drunk French cooperant walked away alive as I shook my head in slow amazement at how stupid he had been and how I close I had come to completely (and tragically) misinterpreting his actions. The lesson I took away from that will probably slow my draw if the situation ever presents itself again. As Jeff Cooper used to teach, you need to know you’re prepared to use your firearm before you strap it on the first time. Nov 29, 2008 - 9:47 pm


36. exhelodrvr:

“It was ingrained upon every man that ammunition would be in short supply and therefore every bullet should count.” ”

That doesn’t go with shooting from the hip.

Nov 29, 2008 - 10:04 pm

37. The Anti Jihadist:

Another commenter remarked on the North Hollywood shootout ten years ago. It’s not a coincidence that the two perps–a buddy pair–in that incident were not taken down until they split up. Perhaps they should have watched ‘Heat’ a few more times (in that movie’s big set-piece shootout, the buddy pair escape whilst the lone ‘gunman’ goes down).
Nov 29, 2008 - 10:49 pm

51. Tim san:

I am pretty certain that the whole “buddy pair” concept came from close quarter battle (CQB) training. Every CQB trained team member knows when they come to an open door or hallway the point hesitates until he gets a “bump” from behind ensuring he has a wing man for the dynamic entry. Conversely going in alone was considered nothing short of a mortal sin. Back in 96 - 98 time frame only Force Recon (Marine Corps) and the SF community trained in CQB - you had to have a clearance to attend the assault breacher course and the whole bag of techniques and procedures was considered classified. Today Close Quarters Battle drill is standard infantry training and also most likely the source of buddy pairs - although in CQB it is not always the same buddy backing you up when you run a house.

I would like to think that armed Americans would be able to disrupt a similar attack if it were perpetrated in a Red State with shall issue CCW laws. Last year and off duty police officer went up against a lone rifle wielding assailant in the Trolley Mall of Salt Lake City with a favorable outcome. Of course that was a single assailant - fighting in buddy pairs makes that a lot harder to do. But in similar circumstances I would not hesitate to do the same even against 2 or more armed assailants - at the distances these shooting are averaging a good pistol fighter is not significantly at a disadvantage against marginal riflemen because the riflemen tend to spray on full auto which from the hip is not well aimed fire and off the shoulder is defacto anti aircraft fire after the 3rd round. Nobody wants to find himself armed with only a pistol at a proper gunfight but it is better than nothing and with a little luck and some solid training I would think the average CCW holder could stall an attack like this very early as it unfolds. Those who do not rush to the sound of gun fire and hold up with others would be very problematic for terrorist gunmen to run down too. Trapped people, like trapped animals, tend to fight (well some do many just accept their fate) and if you have mothers with children included they can fight very well - especially if they have a pistol and a clue how to use it. Terrorist expected to walk into hotel rooms facing unarmed people who can do very little to stop their attackers. In the United States that scenario would be true only if the terrorists picked a city where the population has been disarmed - Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco….those types of places with entrenched Democratic machines who, provided cover by a clueless and compliant media, never have to answer for the carnage in their streets when compared Red State cities like Salt Lake.

It is a matter of time before we see a similar attack in America. The group who planned this operation can obviously plan well - like so many Muslim extremist groups their execution was piss poor. Ten guys, total surprise, three days of active shooting, unlimited ammo, and cops who go to ground or run at the sound of gunfire and the total tally is maybe 300 KIA? That is a bad execution of what appears to be a solid plan. But still an attack or two or even more like that launched simultaneously across the country would bring huge amounts of stress to our complacent population and our fragile economy - even with piss poor execution. But one thing all if us can count on is that the planners know where armed Americans are and where they are not. If you live in a Blue State with restrictive CCW laws you are at a much greater risk from this sort of event than I am.

These kinds of attacks are coming and in the aftermath of the first wave it will be very interesting to see what our elected betters choose to do about it. There are a lot of options to include encouraging CCW holders to carry instead of discouraging this healthy habit. I doubt Cannoneer #4, myself or any of the other regular commenter’s here will be lucky enough to see a “buddy Team” of young terrorists pop up in front of us at the local mall or hotel (I carry a full size Kimber .45 when in CONUS just in case I do get lucky) but I promise you if we did those boys would not escape our tender mercies without a few leaky holes in their torso. Sheepdogs aren’t sheepdogs because they enjoy the title - they are sheepdogs because they cannot be anything else. Our country still produces far more than our share because unlike most people around the world we remain free men. Free to own firearms if we want, free to say or publish what we want, and most importantly free to protect ourselves, our families, and any stranger in need - with lethal force. I work with former military men from around the globe and the Brits, Aussies, Kiwi’s, Canadians, all of them know that they no longer come from lands where men can be called free. All of them have a single goal it seems and that is to live in America (I already told them that Ted Kennedy has ruined their chances because they are not poor, illiterate or from the third world) because there a man is still free. And free men don’t let ten teenagers run amuck for 72 hours shooting people in the largest city of the land. Only serfs or slaves would tolerate that.
Nov 30, 2008 - 2:56 am 52.


56. Limpet6:

The buddy pair is hardly rocket science. For a start you have unarmed civilians outgunned. So you don’t need anything more than a one-man team so long as you are firing. The problem is the firing gaps. So you have to riflemen work together to cover the gaps.

They didn’t need much in the way of “borrowed tactics.” This was like a bank job.
Walk through it the scenario and a deserted area and the problems would come to you.
Don’t ascribe great things to these bullies. Their advantage was training with self-loading rifles and a supply of grenades.

By the way, Underwater Demolition used the buddy pair as the basic tactical element in WWII. I don’t think these Pakistani punks stole it from them.
Nov 30, 2008 - 6:18 am