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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

“Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles, 1866 – 2016” by Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons

Wednesday, May 1st, 2019

Headstamp Publishing is excited to announce the launch of a Kickstarter pre-order campaign for our first book, Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles, 1866 – 2016, authored by Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons.

Chassepot to FAMAS is an engaging and comprehensive reference work, offering the first detailed insight into French military rifle development in the English language, paired with the highest quality photographs and design. This is a book for enthusiasts, researchers, and collectors, and as much an authoritative historical work as it is a work of art.

We are offering several beautiful editions all printed in the USA, as well as Kickstarter-exclusive rewards. We’ll be giving backers exclusive access to behind-the-scenes content, and we have set out a range of stretch goals which will help us to make the book the best it possibly can be.

Ian, N.R. Jenzen-Jones & James Rupley have formed Headstamp Publishing to produce and publish this book. With the launch of this work and several more currently in progress, Headstamp is poised to deliver works that set the gold standard in firearms and military history reference books.

The campaign is now live! You can back the project here at www.kickstarter.com.

USSOCOM Inducts Four Historic Figures into the Commando Hall of Honor

Sunday, April 28th, 2019

Virginia Hall, Army Col. Charles Munske, Army Lt. Col. Leif Bangsboll and Command Master Chief (SEAL) Richard Rogers, were inducted into U.S. Special Operations Command’s Commando Hall of Honor for their remarkable contributions to special operations in a ceremony held at the headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, April 18, 2019. Although their actions were from another era, they embody the first Special Operations Forces truth “Humans are more important than hardware.” The four inductees are an eclectic group of special operations pioneers who shared a dedication and a commitment to defending our country.

Hall, an amputee and first female operative sent into France during World War II spying in Lyon, the Nazi-allied Vichy government of France. Munske, a career Civil Affairs officer credited for rebuilding Japanese infrastructure after the devastation of World War II and was in the forefront rebuilding both Pyongyang and Seoul during the Korean conflict. Bangsboll, a Danish turned American Office of Strategic Services operator who parachuted behind enemy lines into Denmark helping defeat the Germans during World II earning the Distinguished Service Cross and who would also go on to serve with valor in Korea. Rogers, a SEAL would serve from platoon point man to senior enlisted leader USSOCOM from 2000 to 2003.

The limping lady

Hall, the daughter of a wealthy family from Baltimore, wanted to become a Foreign Service Officer before the outbreak of World War II, but was turned down by the State Department despite being fluent in French, German, and Italian. Women could be clerks but not officers. Besides, she was missing her left leg below the knee, the result of a hunting accident in Turkey years earlier, which to the State Department further disqualified her.

Undeterred, Hall went overseas and joined the British Special Operations Executive. There, she became the SOE’s first female operative sent into France. For two years she spied in Lyon, part of the Nazi-allied Vichy government of France under the guise of a New York Post reporter. After the United States entered the war, she was forced to escape to Spain by foot across the Pyrenees Mountains in the middle of winter.

Hall eventually made it back to London, where the SOE trained her as a wireless radio operator. While there, she learned of the newly formed Office of Strategic Services. She quickly joined, and, at her request, the OSS sent her back into occupied France, an incredibly dangerous mission given that she was already well-known to the Germans as a supposed newspaper reporter.

Though only in her thirties with a tall, athletic build, she disguised herself as an elderly peasant, dying her soft-brown hair a graying black, shuffling her feet to hide her limp, and wearing full skirts and bulky sweaters to add weight to her frame. Her forged French identity papers said she was Marcelle Montagne, daughter of a commercial agent named Clement Montagne of Vichy. Her code name was Diane.

Infiltrating France in March 1944, she initially acted as an observer and radio operator in the Haute-Loire, a mountainous region of central France. While undercover she coordinated parachute drops of arms and supplies for Resistance groups and reported German troop movements to London as well as organized escape routes for downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war. By staying on the move she was able to avoid the Germans, who were trying to track her from her radio transmissions.

Her chief pursuer was no less than Gestapo Chief Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie, infamously known as “The Butcher of Lyon.” The one thing they knew about her was that she limped, and therefore she became known to the Gestapo as “The Limping Lady.”

In mid-August 1944, Hall was reinforced by the arrival of a three-man Jedburgh team. Together they armed and trained three battalions of French resistance fighters for sabotage missions against the retreating Germans. In her final report to headquarters. Hall stated that her team had destroyed four bridges, derailed freight trains, severed a key rail line in multiple places, and downed telephone lines. They were also credited with killing some 150 Germans and capturing 500 more.

For her work with the SOE Hall was presented the Order of the British Empire by King George VI. The French government gave her the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. After the war, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross-the only one awarded to a woman during World War II. It was pinned on by OSS head Army Maj. Gen. William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan himself.

She went to work for the National Committee for a Free Europe, a Central Intelligence Agency front organization associated with Radio Free Europe. She used her covert action expertise in a wide range of agency activities, chiefly in support of resistance groups in Iron Curtain countries, until she retired in 1966.

Virginia Hall died on July 8, 1982, aged 76. In 2017, the CIA named a training facility after her: “The Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center.”

The Mayor of Pyongyang

Munske’s lengthy Civil Affairs military career began on Dec. 14, 1914 when he enlisted in the 13th Coast Defense Command, New York National Guard. His first exposure to Civil Affairs/Military Government activities was as a sergeant and interpreter for the postwar Engineer Operations Division of War Damages in Allied Countries section of the American Commission to negotiate peace in Paris.

Munske received a commission on June 7, 1920 as a second lieutenant in the New York National Guard serving until 1940, when he joined the active Army. After being stuck in the U.S. as a Coast Artillery officer in 1944 Munske made a career change to get overseas. He volunteered to attend the School of Military Government at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He next attended Harvard’s Civil Affairs Training School from before going to the Civil Affairs Staging Area at The Presidio, California.

In November 1945, he was sent to Japan to serve as the Assistant Chief of Staff G-5 (Military Government) of the 98th Infantry Division, headquartered in Osaka. Much of his time was spent administering civil matters, including jump-starting Japanese local industry. To do this effectively, he learned the language and culture, and attended many meetings and social events in order to make inroads with the local civilian population. His assistance to more than six million inhabitants of the Osaka Fu, Mie, Wakayama and Nara prefectures, would earn him a Legion of Merit and the Army Commendation Ribbon.

In October 1950 and Munske was assigned to the Pyongyang Civil Assistance Team of the United Nations Public Health and Welfare Detachment. He accompanied the victorious UN forces north to Pyongyang, which fell to UN forces on Oct. 19, 1950. He became known as the “Mayor of Pyongyang” when he and his fourteen-man military/civilian team achieved dramatic success when they found resources to reestablish infrastructure, resumed trash collection, established a fire brigade, made sure city workers were paid, immunized 3,500 people against typhus and another 4,000 against smallpox, reestablished the police force and law and order, organized a rudimentary health care system and set up insecticidal dusting stations to prevent and control the spread of lice and flea-borne infectious diseases. They also repaired two power plants, fixed the streetcar and telephone system and began reconstructing the key railroad bridge across the Taedong River. However, all of this hard work was for naught.

By late October 1950, the UN forces had pushed the North Korean Army across the Yalu River, the northern border with China. It was then that massive infiltrations of volunteer Communist Chinese forces attacked behind UN lines. This human onslaught quickly overwhelmed the strung out UN forces forcing them to retreat across enemy occupied territory. By the beginning of December, Communist forces were at the gates of Pyongyang. Munske had no choice but to order the destruction of what his team had recently rebuilt and join the retreat.

His next assignment was as Executive Officer of the Kyongsang-Namdo (Pusan) Provincial Civil Assistance Team where he helped administer the sizeable refugee population in and around Pusan. After UN forces again pushed the Communists north, Munske headed the Kyonggi­ Do Province (Seoul) Civil Assistance Team. He was instrumental in rebuilding the major metropolitan areas of Seoul, Inchon, and Suwon, all of which had suffered greatly having been twice occupied by the Communists.

The last phase of Munske’s CA career was as Inspector General of the New York Military District, with concurrent duties as Legal Assistance Officer and Senior Advisor for Military Government units. He inspected reserve Military Government units and Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs.

Munske retired Feb. 28, 1958 with 20 years of active service while serving nearly 43 years in the military. The 95th Civil Affairs Brigade has named their headquarters building after him.

He passed away on Nov. 14, 1985 at the age of 88, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

OSS operator to Green Beret plank holder

Born in Denmark in 1918, Leif Bangsboll was the son of Danish Navy Rear Admiral Frederick Christian Bangsboll who commanded the Danish submarine fleet. In 1935, he volunteered for the Royal Danish Naval Air Force and trained as an observer prior to joining the merchant marine. In September 1940, he joined the Norwegian Air Force (in exile) in Canada, where he trained as a flight sergeant. Knowing that he would not see action he volunteered for the U.S. Army, joining as a Private First Class on March 22, 1943.

Fluent in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and able to speak French, German and Greenlandic, the Office of Strategic Services recruited him in September 1943. At first, the OSS employed him as an instructor at RTU-11, otherwise known as the Farm, a school for teaching the methods of secret intelligence work. He was then sent to the Danish operations section of the OSS Special Operations branch. Because he was unable to get a U.S. Army commission at the time by agreement with the OSS the British Army gave him a commission as a first lieutenant. He eventually got his U.S. commission on Nov. 6, 1944.

On the night of Oct. 5, 1944 Bangsboll parachuted into occupied Denmark near Allborg, and was “the only American officer serving as an agent” in that country. Until the end of the war, he lived as a civilian- subject to execution as a spy if caught- and helped arm, train, and lead the Danish resistance while reporting on conditions in the country. He also engaged in several sabotage missions, including blowing rail and communications lines seriously delaying German troop movements. While in Copenhagen in May 1945, Bangsboll led a resistance force that captured German artillery pieces and machineguns leading to the surrender of the entire garrison. For his extremely dangerous assignment in a country with a robust enemy counter-intelligence network. Bangsboll received the Distinguished Service Cross and a number of Danish awards. After the war in Europe ended. He then briefly served in Germany with the OSS successor, the Strategic Services Unit.

After returning to the U.S., Bangsboll attended Intelligence Officer’s training at Camp Holabird, Maryland, and served in airborne units at Fort Bragg, NC. Before deploying to pre-war South Korea. There, he served as a Public Safety Officer in the 59th Military Government Headquarters and Headquarters Company. He then became an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon leader in the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment.

When this unit was sent to Korea as the Regimental Combat Team Bangsboll again went to war. For an action on Nov. 16, 1950 he received the Silver Star for leading a small force behind enemy lines near Pyongwon-ni, North Korea. His platoon overwhelmed a North Korean garrison and discovered the location and contents of a food storage warehouse. Later ordered to destroy the warehouse, Bangsboll once again led his numerically inferior force in killing the enemy defenders, demolishing the warehouse with its estimated 100 to 150 tons of dried food all with no friendly casualties.

When he returned from Korea Bangsboll briefly served with the Central Intelligence Agency before coming to the Psychological Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with further assignment to the newly-established I0th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Bangsboll taught guerrilla warfare and clandestine operations and helped develop the initial program of instruction. As an instructor, he excelled. He also attended the Psychological Warfare course at Georgetown University thus being qualified in both of the Army’s special operations fields.

Bangsboll retired from the U.S. Army April 30, 1963 and passed away Nov. 20, 2001.

Lifetime of service to naval special warfare

Retired Command Master Chief Petty Officer Richard Rogers, (SEAL), spent 31 years of active duty in elite special operations forces taking countless assignments from platoon point man ultimately becoming the senior enlisted leader for USSOCOM from August 2000 to August 2003.

Rogers also has an extensive resume of military experience within the Naval Special Warfare community. He joined the Navy in July 1972 and completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in May 1973. Moving through the ranks he started as SEAL platoon point man and communicator at SEAL Team ONE; as an instructor at BUD/S; as a platoon cartographer/intelligence specialist, the intelligence department head, the ordnance department head, the command career counselor, and a platoon chief petty officer at SEAL Team FIVE; and as a boat crew leader at SEAL Team SIX. Rogers also served as an Operations Chief Petty Officer, Assistance Current Operations Officer at Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He studied Spanish at the Defense Language Institute. Additionally, he served as the Command Master Chief at Naval Special Warfare Unit EIGHT in Panama; Naval Special Warfare Group ONE in Coronado, California; and Special Operations Command, Europe in Stuttgart, Germany.

An expert in a variety in special operations skills, Rogers was qualified as an open and closed circuit scuba diver, open and closed circuit diving supervisor, static line and free-fall parachutist, static line and free-fall jumpmaster, small arms range safety officer, close quarter combat range safety officer, and helicopter castmaster. He trained and mentored recruits aspiring to become SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman, trained indigenous forces throughout southwest Asia.

A seasoned combat veteran he held leadership positions in combat Operations Just Cause in Panama and Allied Force in Bosnia, and he became the first Theater Special Operations Command-Europe senior enlisted leader.

As the senior enlisted leader of USSOCOM he ushered in a new era for SOF, when the command transitioned from peacetime engagement to the War on Terrorism.

Rogers retired from the Navy in 2003 and continues to work to improve the training and professional development of naval special warfare personnel as a civilian at the Center for SEAL and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman. He became the driving force in the development of the new SEAL and SWCC ratings for enlisted personnel. Rogers also successfully negotiated additional senior enlisted billets from the Navy to ensure proper force structure for the community.

In May 2006, he assumed the N3 (Operations directorate) position at the Center for SEAL and SWCC, a learning center to manage the new SEAL and SWCC ratings, where he continues to improve the training and professional development of naval special warfare personnel.

In total, Rogers has dedicated 47 years to naval special warfare and special operations. Mentoring the special warfare community for nearly half a century, his contributions will have a lasting impact for future generations of naval special operators.

Story by Michael Bottoms, USSOCOM

SCUBAPRO Sunday – Happy Birthday Department of the Navy

Sunday, April 28th, 2019

On 30 April,1798 Congress establishes the Department of the Navy as a separate cabinet department. Previously, naval matters were under the cognizance of the War Department. (I like the name War Department better then Department of Defense) Benjamin Stoddert is named as the first Secretary of the Navy.

United States Navy claims 13 October 1775 as the date of its official establishment, when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Navy. But with the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy was disbanded. Then with threats to American merchant shipping by Barbary pirates from four North African States, in the Mediterranean, President George Washington signed the Naval Act of 1794 the act authorizing the construction of the Navy’s first six frigates ? Congress passed a resolution to establish with haste a national navy that could protect U.S. commercial vessels from attacks by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and nearby Atlantic waters. The Algerian and Tunisian pirates joined forces, and by 1650 more than 30,000 of their captives were imprisoned in Algiers alone. Piracy was the cause of several wars between Tripolitania and the United States in the 19th century.

Remembering Operation Eagle Claw

Wednesday, April 24th, 2019

Today marks the anniversary of Operation Eagle Claw. In the early morning hours of 25 April, 1980 President Carter announced to a stunned world that the United States had undertaken an ambitious raid into Iran to liberate 52 American hostages held illegally at our Embassy compound in Tehran. The assault force can be seen here, loading C141s.

Unfortunately, Operation Eagle Claw was unsuccessful and we lost eight American servicemen in a horrible aircraft ground collision.

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However, their deaths were not in vain. The hostages were eventually repatriated and the accident was the watershed event that created, over the next several decades, the world’s preeminent Special Operations capability; USSOCOM and its components. We wouldn’t be where are today without the determination of that fledgling task force. Join me in remembering those that had the guts to try.

Patriot’s Day – An American Act Of Defiance

Friday, April 19th, 2019

Each year, we remind our readers of the events of April 19th, 1775. Rebellion had been brewing on the North American continent for years. Finally, in the early hours of the day, an American Army fired on British troops, starting a war that would last for over eight years and see the ascendency of the American Eagle over this land we now call the United States.

This battle is also where we draw our concept of the iconic Minute Man from.

Each Patriot’s Day, we honor those men at Concord and consider what it must have been for them to stand there together, in the face of the world’s greatest army and take up arms in the defense of their colony from oppression.

This militia came together on that morning to protect their arms from seizure by an oppressive government. That is a fact.

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“Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
-John Parker
Captain of Militia

As the initial volleys of fire were exchanged near daybreak on Lexington Green, colonial volunteers fell back in the face of over 500 occupying British troops. But as the battle moved on to Concord, the tide turned, and the redcoats were routed as more and more colonists joined the fray.

The British troops retreated through Concord where they were reinforced. Despite boasting a strength of 1700 men, they remained no match for the determined colonists who forced them to retreat to the safety of Charlestown in Boston. The militiamen continued their pursuit which transformed into the Siege of Boston.

Today, join me in remembering those American warriors who pledged their lives to give us our hard fought freedoms and this great land.

1985–SureFire Model 310

Tuesday, April 16th, 2019

Released under a new brand name, SureFire, the Model 310 Tactical Light was the first dedicated handgun-mounted WeaponLight. It provided a rugged and reliable source of high-intensity light that could be conveniently mounted to a Colt 1911 pistol. At a staggering 15 lumens and powered by a single 123A lithium battery, the Model 310 featured two switches: A handgrip Pressure Switch activated the light as long as pressure was applied, while an On/Off Switch on the left side of the housing activated the light until the Off switch was pressed. Once again, a SureFire product created a new genre in tactical gear.

www.surefire.com

SCUBAPRO SUNDAY – The Men with Green Faces

Sunday, April 7th, 2019

Max Talk Monday: Contracting in Iraq 2004 – 2007

Monday, April 1st, 2019

This is the sixteenth installment of ‘Max Talk Monday’ which shares Max’s experience as a contractor, beginning with three years in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, followed by two years in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Iraq during those years was a very interesting time. It was the ‘Wild West Years’ and in terms of security contractors, there was a lot of good, and a lot of bad during the period. In searching for suitable constructive videos, I found a lot of ‘mercenary hate journalism.’ This was the period when there was a lot of risk, and there were some really professional outfits, and then there were some genuine cowboys – the era where reportedly ‘bouncers’ with no military training were employed as ‘bodyguards’ etc. My assessment on the matter was that after the invasion, in 2003, things were relatively quiet until the insurgency kicked off in earnest 2004; it was at this time that many of the unsuitable types who had jumped on the money train got out, but not all. There was definitely a ‘Walter Mitty’ factor at play with some organizations who did not recruit the best. Once it got dangerous, it was time for the professionals to play.

Travis Haley became famous for the Najaf rooftop shootout. Yeager became infamous for the Route Irish ambush. I didn’t get famous for anything, and just kept working! I had originally been recruited in early 2004 for a convoy protection job based near to Kirkuk, where we had run high value convoys from the Turkish and Syrian borders. I had trained up a platoon of South Africans for the convoy escort function. This was back in the day of hillbilly armor on pickup trucks, all locally sourced and modified.

I then moved to Baghdad for the central period of time, before spending the last year based out of Fallujah, as shown in the video clips I am going to post below. It is all the video I have. My impression was that the British companies were by far the most successful and professional, and had the best contracts with the US government. The Aegis contract in Fallujah that I was on for my final year in Iraq had an element providing ‘Reconstruction Operations Centers’ across Iraq, and then teams like ours which worked for the US Military, doing a mix of close protection and reconnaissance / liaison – for that, read that we would often go out on missions without the ‘client.’ This took us all around Al Anbar, from Fallujah to Ramadi, Al Asad, the places like Hit and Haditha up along the Euphrates, and back into Baghdad. We operated around, alongside and independently of the USMC / US Army, and we utilized high profile SUV and Reva armored vehicles. We took casualties in constant enemy contacts and lost ‘Bully’ KIA from that team. The composition of that team was entirely a mix of British Paras and Commandos, so that means you have a team from a couple of the best SOF organizations in the world, and the levels of professionalism were accordingly high. In uniform, out of uniform , the professionalism and standards remained. There was no ‘UCMJ’ keeping us in check on missions, it was simply professionalism. If you didn’t work out or your ‘war cup’ got full, you went home. I ultimately quit after five years because my son was born.

We didn’t get ‘veteran status’ or claim to be ‘US Combat Veterans’ from our service. We did it for a mix of the financial reward and because it is what we were trained to do. We were professional soldiers. There is no VA for the wounded or damaged. There is no help or therapy for TBI or PTSD from the numerous contacts and explosions that we experienced, not that I believe most of us needed it. I am not writing that for anyone’s sympathy, we were all grown up professionals playing by big boys rules. There is a lot of hate out there for ‘mercenaries.’ Fact is, the Iraq war effort would not have progressed without the contribution of all sorts of contractors from paramilitary teams like ours, to guys that drove supply trucks in convoys.

Here is a mix of two videos I had on my computer, one which was a mix of photos of the Fallujah team and location, the other was a training day for SET 13 in November 2004.

In looking around the internet, I discarded various videos that I found from the time period, mainly because they were negative reporting from journalists with an agenda against ‘mercenaries.’ Mainly they were about Blackwater. Sadly, Blackwater was fairly terrible, as were many of the US security companies. We literally came across a team in the Green Zone dressed in cowboy hats and long cowboy coats – they were living some kind of cowboy fantasy. I believe it was a cultural / professional issue with many of these guys lacking experience of foreign countries and thus lacking in judgement and professionalism – the ‘othering’ of civilians leading to excessive violence and unnecessary killing. That was not unusual, I have received ‘friendly fire’ from a USMC platoon in Fallujah who believed we were a team of ‘foreign fighters’ (they were not really wrong) and also a National Guard convoy coming onto the road via a slip road, while we were on a low profile move around Baghdad, firing across and into the line of traffic to create a gap. The ‘keep back 100 meters’ thing was very definitely real and we enforced it on high profile moves, but it is a question of judgement, and you don’t really want to have to open fire unless you have been through escalation of force, assuming time and circumstances allow. If your professionalism levels are high and your fear levels are under reasonable control, then it allows you to make better judgments in the moment.

My two years in Helmand were doing operations work for the UK Foreign Office, which was a different beast from Iraq. It was in itself very interesting. Because I personally have a military career beginning in 1991, and covering a wide area of military experience, beginning with deployments to Northern Ireland in the 1990’s, including various other operational and training deployments, and then Afghanistan following 9/11, added to which is my five years of varied paramilitary work in Iraq and Afghanistan, I feel I have a widely varied basis of experience to offer via Max Velocity Tactical. This is why my writings are not simply a regurgitation of military manuals, and why I am able to translate military knowledge and training into something useful for civilian unconventional or paramilitary teams.

As a comment on that, I do of course have to deal with the internet. I notice that when I post training videos, there are inevitably comments from guys who only know whatever manual they have read. Or they spent five minutes in the military and learned some basic stuff. They will tell me that “it wasn’t per the TM” – but they have no idea what the training objectives were, and it was most likely not per whatever TM they are referencing, because the training objectives at MVT are built from years of varied training and experience, and bring in techniques from various armed forces and organizations. I guess there are a couple of types of trolls out there – the ones who’s area of expertise is ‘weapons manipulation’ and ‘range nazi’ stuff , and they will comment on those types of videos. Then, because MVT is the only real organization that has properly moved into and trains small unit tactics, there are the types who think they know SUT from limited experience, or some Tom Berenger Sniper fantasy, and feel qualified to comment on SUT videos, usually telling me we are getting it all wrong. The best guys are the ones who watch a video, with no clue about range restrictions or safety measures, or the training objective, or anything specific about the circumstances and level of the students, and who don’t understand that we are training a drill which if carried out in the real world is always going to be a calculated risk, as everything tactical always is; these are the guys who will say – “sure, if I was over there on that hill with a sniper rifle, you guys would all be dead.” I think the internet should be taken away from these people – it is certainly a harsh mistress when you are trying to spread a truly professional tactical message, versus the derp and the ignorance that abounds.

MVT Tactical Manual

Max is a tactical trainer and author, a lifelong professional soldier with extensive military experience. He served with British Special Operations Forces, both enlisted and as a commissioned officer; a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Max served on numerous operational deployments, and also served as a recruit instructor. Max spent five years serving as a paramilitary contractor in both Iraq and Afghanistan; the latter two years working for the British Government in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Website: Max Velocity Tactical

YouTube: Max Velocity Tactical