Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Part 2


Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Part 2

· Remember, a retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.

I’ve already mentioned “don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance instead.” However, in those cases when someone wishes to vindictively do you harm you’d be best not to surmise their retreat as a retreat: Just a regroup.

· If at first you don't succeed call in an air-strike.

I have a saying that I use when problem-solving: Try graceful, intelligent, creative tactics first…but if that doesn’t work use the brute force approach.

· Exceptions prove the rule, and destroy the battle plan.

This is a tricky one. When I first joined the military I served as a combat engineer: Trained in demolitions, minefields, other combat obstacles, it was instilled in us that we needed to be detail-oriented in things to the letter. When I was in personnel administration this notion was reinforced doubly. However, when I was in recruiting…I was trained to think in exceptions: Ninety-five percent of the rules were flexible and had exceptions; there were only a select few that couldn’t be bent.

· Everything always works in your HQ, everything always fails in the colonel's HQ.

Ever plan something within the confines of your own environment, but when you take it to someone else (such as your boss) for approval it fails? No plan survives combat—or the “real world—“ intact.

· The enemy never watches until you make a mistake.

You could be doing everything perfect all the time, but that one time you make a mistake—bet your hind quarters that someone is watching.

· One enemy soldier is never enough, but two is entirely too many.

Obstacles stack up quickly. Don’t “bite off more than you can chew.”

· A clean (and dry) set of BDUs is a magnet for mud and rain.

BDUs, or the Battle Dress Uniform (since replaced with a newer acronym for the Army and Marine’s digital camouflage uniform), is the standard uniform that you see anyone in the military wearing in the field. Few things—if anything—survive the real world intact.

· Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Isn’t this the truth. It’s like crackers: When you have one can of soup around, you have plenty of crackers, but the reciprocal—plenty of soup by few crackers—also tends to be true.

· The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.

Value and utility—usefulness—works the same way throughout the entire chain of manufacture to your hands: The more something is worth to you the greater ends you’ll go to fix it not only because it means that much to you, it’s because that’s simply what it takes to get it repaired.

· Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

It is difficult to learn from books what good old-fashioned experience, “trial by fire” can offer you. Experience teaches you how not to panic. Experience teaches you the full depth and breadth of the situational dynamics. Unfortunately, you have to experience it in order to get it.

· Interchangeable parts aren't.

I grew up in a family where my great grandfather was a top-notch automobile mechanic, as is my grandfather, my father, and my brother. Though I don’t proclaim to be one, I can do many of the basic things and have a fundamental understanding of how the combustion engine works from combustion to drive train and exhaust. What I didn’t learn in my youth, however, was what the Army taught me: Hundreds of different people will be able to offer thousands of different solutions to mechanical problems. I’ve seen Army mechanics need to completely undo something that someone else before them engineered in order to properly fix the piece of equipment. Be ready to adapt, because no one else is going to adapt for you.

· No matter which way you have to march, it is always uphill.

Nothing good comes without some trials and tribulations. Life often will force you to march uphill…both ways.

· If enough data is collected, a board of inquiry can prove anything.

People will often look for data in a given situation that they are searching for…in other words, inquiries can become self-fulfilling prophecies in the sense that an individual will put a bias on the information that they are seeking in order to prove the point they want to make.

· For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism (especially in boot camp).

No matter what you do, someone will have a criticism for it that is opposite and equal to the value that you place in your action. Don’t allow criticism to hold you back from what you want to do or take away from the self-worth you derive from doing it.

· The one item you need is always in short supply.

Isn’t this the very definition of modern economics?

· The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.

There is an old saying that we are never put into a situation that we are not meant to be able to handle. Even if we are faring our way through poor weather, we are probably meant to learn something from it.

· The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator.

This reminds me very much of what we used to call the “Engineer’s Axiom:” Your IQ should be 10 percent higher than that piece of equipment which you are trying to operate. Otherwise you’re likely to run into exactly what the individual finding them in the above situation will find themselves.

· Airstrikes always overshoot the target, artillery always falls short.

A trap that a manager or a leader often runs into is the trap of unwillingness to delegate. Many of these types of people have been engrained with the belief that they can do things better than someone else. However, this does not allow for the opportunity to learn, to train, and to coach. Artillery that falls short, airstrikes that overshoot, and support that fails to properly hit the mark can be overcome with enough preparation of those people that are required to see to these sorts of tasks.

· When reviewing the radio frequencies that you just wrote down, the most important ones are always illegible.

The amount that a person is prone to panic is often directly proportional to the gravity of the situation: Panic does strange things to a person…including not allowing them to write legibly, for instance.

· Those who hesitate under fire usually do not end up KIA or WIA.

I wish I could find text of the original study, but I recall hearing once of such a study in which World War II and subsequent conflicts were studied and it was shown that, of every 10 people, 7 were there to die, 2 were there to reload for the 10TH individual, and that last person—the 10TH individual—was there to be the warrior. Although valor and glory are two things that make great men and women greater, recall that discretion is part of the valor equation: Pick your battles and remember that many, many Congressional Medals of Honor are awarded posthumously.

· The tough part about being an officer is that the troops don't know what they want, but they know for certain what they don’t want.

A “glimmering generality” is that people will have the tendency to criticize about what they don’t want, but won’t necessarily know what they want until such time that they see it.

· To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.

Context is extremely important when looking at any situation.

· The weapon that usually jams when you need it the most is the M60.

The M60 7.62mmGPMG, General Purpose Machine Gun, was employed on a bipod with an effective range of 500 meters or on a tripod with an effective range 1,100 meters. It also was used on vehicles and helicopters in a defensive role. It was gas operated, air cooled and belt fed, with a quick-change barrel to help reduce overheating during a firefight. It has a practical rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute (550 rounds per minute max): Truly a magnificent weapon, a great tool that could mean life or death for the group of soldiers using it. Entropy is the natural process in which things break down unless we put effort into keeping them useful.

· The perfect officer for the job will transfer in the day after that billet is filled by someone else.

Jump on your opportunities quickly, or else they’ll go somewhere else.

· When you have sufficient supplies & ammo, the enemy takes 2 weeks to attack. When you are low on supplies & ammo the enemy decides to attack that night.

Always be prepared for the enemy because you can bet that they will always be prepared for you.

· The newest and least experienced soldier will usually win the Congressional Medal Of Honor.

…Because new, less experienced individuals often have more boldness than their war-hardened, veteran counterparts they are willing to do those things which others aren’t to be awarded those recognitions that others aren’t. Entropy not only makes those things in our lives less useful, they can make us less useful as well.

· A Purple Heart just goes to prove that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.

Success is when preparation meets opportunity. That bears repeating: When preparation meets opportunity. Sometimes this is just a series of factors that happen to fall into place just right, but oftentimes we can do things like decreasing the risk factors involved with our participation in the situation or we can increase our preparation of ourselves and our teams.

· Murphy was a grunt.

I quickly became aware of a practice by officers that I revered to go to the less-ranking troops in an area of operations—junior non-commissioned officers and below—and ask them of their opinions of what was going on. A former non-commissioned officer in-charge that I had the honor of serving under once remarked of a major general that would often approach him for his opinion about the current events within his command.

Experience gains breadth of perspective while knowledge increases depth of perspective. The higher up a chain of command a person goes, the more their perspective changes from a details-of-the-tactics type to a strategic style. If the non-commissioned officer (sergeants) are the daily supervisors of the Army and the commissioned officers manage the resources of it, the privates and specialists are the arms, legs, and hands of it: Those that do the daily grind of the businesses in which we work. There is a good chance that these individuals might have a perspective that is different from our own and, quite possibly, potentially useful to yours.



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