GWOT II - Reaction Team

[drewkitty]

GWOT II - Reaction Team

I had to train our security personnel carefully and in detail with respect to the client's Reaction Team or, in shorthand form, REACT.

Most employees and even some Reaction Team members didn't fully grasp the nuances.

If it wears a uniform and carries a gun, it must be Security, right?

Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

The CLIENT and COMPANY had a contract. It was very vague. We'd added a number of addendums to that contract. The post-Firecracker ones were schitzophrenic at best. Arguably highly illegal, depending on how you viewed weasel wording such as "use force to exclude trespassers" and "reasonable efforts to provide services under any and all conditions" and especially "the terms 'force majure' and 'act of war' and 'act of God' shall not be reasons that justify nonperformance under this contract."

Under that contract, COMPANY had agreed that it would supply a certain level of 'security services' which obviously have to be performed by 'security personnel' equipped with 'mobility equipment' and 'tactical equipment.'

This did not get CLIENT off the hook for providing for its own security, especially under disaster conditions.

Pre-Firecracker, one could call the police. The police could call SWAT. The Incident Commander could request mutual aid through multiple levels of government, ultimately the National Guard or even the Army.

Post-Firecracker, none of that was happening. None of it. We'd had a sheriff's deputy visit. Once. We'd had San Jose Police visit several times in the first three weeks, each time in fewer numbers, and then they were too far away to come back again.

What we had instead was Homeland. The one time we'd asked them to come out - to take custody of a terrorist prisoner - they'd shot him to avoid the nuisance of transport.

The propaganda said Homeland was our brave defenders. By reputation, Homeland was much better at gathering up refugees and putting them on buses than they were fighting anti-American partisans.

Even if they felt like helping, and were able to help, they would be far too late.

Staffing up the contract security force to answer all the threats was just not tenable. Even the CLIENT - wealthy as they are, providing essential services in the War On (Of?) Terror - can't afford to have hundreds of people standing around with guns just in case something bad happens. Again.

So they had chosen, with some prodding, to cross train their own employees as combatants.

This is the literal definition of a militia. In this case, a corporate militia. Lots and lots and lots of issues there.

I am continually amazed by the number of people who think that soldiers and police have unlimited access to the weapons they use on duty. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The VP of Human Resources had expressed ... concerns ... about her problem children having access to firearms. She could kind of wrap her head around the idea that security personnel needed to have firearms because the bad guys did. She could not appreciate that security guards armed with pistols were outclassed in every way by intruders with rifles.

That her Employees might be trusted with rifles hurt her brain.

So we had strict weapons controls.

Security carried handguns and would be issued appropriate longarms as needed, based on duties and role. But the big toys would be turned in between occasions.

REACT members carried no weapons at all. But when gathered together and issued weapons, would considerably outnumber and also outgun Security. However, they also would need to turn in their weapons when not needed. ALL their weapons.

To who? An armory, of course, staffed by a mix of CLIENT and COMPANY personnel who thoroughly understood the tension, with procedures written that would allow COMPANY to audit and maintain control but CLIENT to seize control if it ever became necessary.

Each REACT team consisted of five personnel. Four gun toters and a team leader. The team leader was always a manager. Leadership is leadership, except when it isn't. So the SLE, VP HR and VP Operations formed a panel and personally up-checked every REACT team leader, and occasionally removed one from REACT when necessary.

The gun toters could be ordinary Employees. They could not be Contractors. Ever. They were required to participate in trainings, be vetted by a process that had Security as well as their line managers and HR involved, and meet a couple other criteria that weren't ever shared with me.

Most importantly, they could go nowhere and do nothing without their Team Leader, who wore TL armbands as part of their REACT uniform. They could do nothing alone. Only in pairs or more could they possess firearms. But any configuration but the five-pack with a TL present was automatically suspect.

How many REACT teams did the Client field? That would be telling, but well over a dozen.

We didn't dare have them all go to a central armory to get their weapons every time. So instead, we had lockers set up that were under the control of the central armory. The lockers would only unlock if the site alert conditions allowed for it, or someone took bolt cutters or a combination saw to the emergency locking pins. We didn't want anyone taking over the armory and therefore the whole site, but we also didn't want an Employee helping themselves to their gear and deciding to re-negotiate the terms of their employment. It did happen a few times, because security procedures are never perfect, but never worked out well for them.

On the command and control side, the SLE had been very blunt. I call out the Reaction Team. _HE_ owns it. I can borrow it but I have to give it back.

I tell them what needs to be done, and they do it according to their procedures. A blunt instrument. If it's a delicate problem, it should be within Security's capabilities, right?

There was another issue there. There is a rich and majestic (literally) history of security personnel taking over from the people they used to work for, prior to self-promotion through use of force. The CLIENT wanted to stay in control of its own Employees and premises and assets.

A quick way to do that, that did not depend on whether I personally tripped in front of a bullet, was to make that a fight between REACT and the security force would not be a fair fight.

We'd even written a procedure for what to do if the contract security force went off the reservation. In a few words, RT kills us all.

However, the integrity of the Reaction Team and the behavior of the individual Employees was very much a security, or Security, issue.

The effectiveness of the RT was directly linked to quality of training, past and present. That wasn't my issue. A stable of Employee line managers, some ex military and some not, took it in turn to "administer" the RT.

The big advantage Security had over REACT was that we trained all the time, and they could only train in what time could be spared from coding. But some of them were former military - more on average than in Security - so some of them started from a higher baseline.

The great equalizer was the Kill House. A training course type experience, with subcaliber ammunition, that Security and REACT both made use of, a lot.

The training facilities were shared by Security and RT but were owned and developed by the Client.

Why? That would be telling, and telling would be followed by sudden unhappy ending. Something something coding something the War something cutting edge.

I'd helped with their procedures book. I had to know their tactics.

They were deliberately modeled on the needs of a pre-Firecracker Police SWAT team. SWAT stands for Special Weapons _a_nd Tactics. The SLE had determined, in logic that followed from our situation, that the situations that exceeded Security's capability would therefore demand an advanced response not a basic one.

Given the limitations of time and training, there were a lot of the classic SWAT missions that they didn't have time to train in.

High Risk Warrant Service? Not happening. No courts, no warrants. Security could handle any locker or area searches, using REACT as the heavy if more force was needed.

Barricaded suspect? Sort of. The 'no hostage' policy meant that we would just go in and kill them. But that didn't mean we would have to be stupid about it. All the departments would contribute to solving the problem according to their talents. Facilities could do some interesting things to modify the environment. Fire Brigade would breach doors and force barriers. Security would handle the OODA loop - observe, orient, decide, act. But REACT would go in and kill them.

Hostage rescue? See 'barricaded suspect,' with more casualties.

Vehicle assault? Basically a barricade or hostage situation aboard a bus, or armored truck, or other small enclosed space. That would be a "nice skill to have" but we just didn't have time. So I tried to make damn sure that any time Security took control of such a vehicle, that we would either keep control of it or practice dumping people out of it so fast that a bad guy couldn't take it over any way but empty. Then we blow it up and problem solved.

Riot work? Our employees were just not that tough a crowd. So REACT didn't carry much less lethal. What they did carry was batons for beating people and zip ties for temporarily securing prisoners.

Armed intruder / active killer? That response was the bread and butter of the REACT teams. They would get their weapons, go to the sound of the guns, and at the end of the engagement they would have fired the last shots. It's a lot more complicated than that, it always is, but it disconcerts a murderer to have his would-be victims shoot back, and while he is disconcerted he can become discorporeal.

Dignitary protection? Supposedly. I wasn't allowed to know anything about that aspect of things, because REACT might be protecting the SLE from the Security group. The one guy I could have asked is dead now. But when the SLE had his doubts, a REACT team or two would be present as if by magic.

I resolutely refused to allow REACT to be used on convoy protection operations. Their strength was on Site in defensive roles. Taking them off campus put them at great risk for little reward.

They still had to train in certain light infantry operations that most SWAT teams don't spend much time on. Patrolling, movement to contact, sniper suppression and defending fixed positions from military attack.

The thing that I wouldn't let Security do, that REACT had to do, was room clearing and close quarters battle.

We trained on it, of course, because we might have to do it in a pinch, and in fact did it an awful lot. But it was always a high risk low reward evolution, and on the numbers killed almost as many security personnel as our other big killer, IEDs.

Details matter. The problem was the 'fatal funnel.'

I assume that you have at some point in your life visited a restaurant. There is typically a clear delineation between the public spaces of the restaurant, mostly seating, and the working areas of the restaurant, mostly the kitchen. This doorway typically does not have a door because people are carrying stuff back and forth. Food the one way, dirty dishes the other way.

Imagine that there is a bad problem in the kitchen. A cook who throws knives, say.

If you have to go through that door, and you know it, and the cook knows it, he can put a dozen knives in you before you can say sashimi. Or get off a single shot.

So you go around. Go through the back door. Climb up on the roof and come down. Get down into the basement and come up the stairs from behind. Take a card from the Kool Aid Man's playbook and go through the wall. Or the window if you're less into that brick breaking thing.

But if you can't go around and have to go through that doorway, you are in the 'fatal funnel' and the funneling is generally fatal.

Now add a door. Opens in? Opens out? Left hinge or right hinge? Metal, wood framed or wood?

We used this trick defensively all the time. An invader of our premises would now find every doorway and many corridors exacting a price at every turn and twist. Security personnel would kill one or two, fall back to the next, kill one or two, rinse and repeat.

Offensively, however, we lacked the cheat codes to overcome a nominal defender.

Distraction devices? When they worked. But even a "Mo Special" could not be as reliable as a manufactured dazzle munition. Some people, especially those with training, just don't distract. They ignore the flash and the bang and fire at where the door was before the explosion.

Shields? Unobtainum. Even if they stood up to heavy weapons which they would not.

We did have one cheat code. Fur missiles.

Alvin and our dogs. Not K-9s, that was a different level of training and utilization.

But a dog will go through the door and bite the SOB(s) on the other side, allowing entry to happen.

But Alvin couldn't be everywhere and the dogs were a finite resource. Given a choice, we'd rather lose a dog than a person.

Sometimes we didn't get that choice.

What we could always rely on spending to get through the fatal funnel was blood. Violence of action. Speed. The willingness not merely to roll to the sound of the guns, but charge them without thinking.

If you tried going through one at a time, you would be killed one at a time, and fail.

If five of you went through together, the enemy would kill two or three, and the survivors would be in an even fight. Then the next REACT team would enter and that particular fatal funnel would be overcome. Then do it again, and again.

Very expensive of personnel.

Also the reason why REACT teams were in groups of five.

Sometimes you win by stealth and speed and skill. That was Security.

Sometimes you win by taking a sledge hammer to the problem.

That was REACT.

But when you break a sledge hammer, you don't have to tell the factory or little Baby Hammer that Sledge and his friends won't be coming back to the toolbox.