Tactical carry and the GO Bag - By abhm

I am going to break this down to try and make it useful for the working professional, who has a bit more choice in terms of gear, industry fashion etc, and the serious civvy or professional who has to mingle and work in a more corporate type environment.

Dressed for success in a tactical environment.

One of the things I have noted on courses I have attended and presented is that almost everyone (myself as well in the beginning) pitch up on the first day kitted to the nines and beyond.

I can remember one of my first serious tactical courses where I arrived dressed and kitted pretty much as follows:
Boots, police issue canvas type
Uniform field wear
Belt kit, police issue leather holster, 3 mag pouches, torch and baton holder (back in the day of the big maglites), tear smoke canister (policeman with the red cap), tear smoke grenade, stun grenade, smoke grenade, knife (Swiss army pocket knife), 3 x R5 mags, Z88 and R5, body armour with plates and topped it off with the stupid cap!

All of the above was packed onto my belt kit! (Note: I was young and dumb and had a much stronger lower back; I have learnt a bit since then!)



After the first wake up, shake up morning jog I re-learnt a few lessons which had been taught to me in basic training, but which I had ignored by wanting to be, look and feel like the MAN! So generally, after the first day of the course, vests, bags and belt kit gets re-looked at and refined to encompass only the bare minimums; the 'nice-to-haves' and 'snivel gear' goes to 'only carry if you have to'!

Yet after the course, once we have had a radox bath or two, our bodies, aided by the endorphin binge of the previous few weeks, revert back to packing on the kit again. The truth is you need to balance mission specific and generic carry and even in civvy life you need to apply the principles of planning before you walk out the door loaded for bear on a duck hunt!

Footwear
Stockings are not just for women, they really work on preventing chafing!! If you really don’t want to wear stockings, rather get the nut cruncher bicycle shorts!
Socks are one of the most important parts of your tactical kit! Invest in good ones because hot and sore feet are going to get you faster than most other injuries. Falke is really great, under armour socks are not half bad and for the cold weather a pair of the big thick jobs are the bee’s proverbial’s!

Second in importance is boots and believe me when I say this: your feet become your focal point when you stand a lot as they bear your entire bodyweight and if you don’t take care of them, they ain’t gonna take care of you. I have experimented with various types of footwear and have found two brands which suit me for tactical wear and one for CP work.
- Original SWAT: both the boot and the shoe are great, lightweight, cool and comfy and at a pinch the SWAT shoe works in the CP role, especially during less formal events.
- Converse’s desert pursuit boot was another inspirational find.
- Hush Puppies or Bronx for CP work, but more on that later.

I also tried out 511’s, Oakleys, Bates and various others and found they did not suit me. 511 and Oakleys are not good boots, as good boots last and every pair I got of both of these brands did not; maybe these manufacturers should stick to making either clothes or sunglasses, because they don’t make good boots! Bates lasted but I could never find a pair which were cool, as in temperature, enough!


Communications
There are three pillars of a fight: shoot, move and communicate. Communication is the one aspect which, should you get it wrong, nullifies the other aspects. You can still move in other aspects, you can cycle to secondary weapons or pick up another weapon, but if your communication is dead, it's dead and you... well, you are neck deep and digging! Oh, I am going to add navigation equipment to this little section as well, because you need to be able to communicate where you are for the help to get to you! Let me re-emphasize the importance of communication because if you skimp on this you might as well pack your bottle of “and shoulders” into your GO bag.

So break down your communications into three basic segments:

1 Communication backwards
2 Communication laterally
3 Communication downwards. (Confused? Don’t worry, more to follow!)

Communication backwards:
This is your communication back to base, civilization or home! I carry, depending on where I am and what I am doing, an Iridium sat phone and at least two mobiles – with the Blackberry I am upping that to 3. One phone will have a local number, one an international roaming one and the other my e-mail, etc. In seriously isolated areas, I add a B-Gan to that as well, but that is expensive. By the way, the internet is great for this as well, so get a Skype network up or similar I have a Soft phone. Wherever I can, I set my laptop up and, using either the 3G card or B-Gan, I can phone on VOIP (just be aware that in some countries this is against the law!) on that token, using car chargers for everything! A good idea is a solar charger for your laptop and the universal charger kit, which allows you to charge all your other phones from the laptop! On laptops: I use a Lenovo T60, but in the past I have used a Panasonic Toughbook and Toshiba, both of which held up really well!

A friend was once in a chopper which made a hard landing on an out-of-the-way site and found that their only comms back was e-mail! We were able to direct help to them, thanks to their B Gan.

Aside from the mobiles and sat phone, the rest of the back communications should be stored in your vehicle or inside your GO bag. Do not store it loose, but in the bag that you are going to grab should you ever need to exit that vehicle in a hurry. More on the go bag later, but this should be considered your double arms length kit! Another note: a Bluetooth headset for your primary mobile is really handy, just get one that’s comfortable and doesn’t hurt your ear.

HF radio is great if you are on extended trips; if you are working in hostile environs then yes, it is important, but bear in mind it is technical and you need the support of a good radioman on your team. If you have HF, remember to equip ALL your vehicles.

Communication laterally:
This is also important, as you need to be able to speak with your team mates! This is primarily accomplished by a mobile phone, especially for the serious civvies and some CP taskings, but a short range two-way radio is a great asset; even those two-car trips down to Cape Town are made so much easier by having that cross-ability. One of the lasting lessons from Northern Ireland to the British Army was the importance of this level of communications: it is reflected in their current use of the PRR (personal role radio), which allows the lowest ranking squad member access to a radio net. The use of headsets in this role is also important, as it keeps your comms somewhat more private in the sense that your principal won’t hear your conversation. Bear in mind, however, that no voice transmission is ever really secure, so work out a code and use it.

So what to use?? I like the Motorola’s and Entel’s as they give me about a 1,5km range in a built up area and about 2,5km in an open area on non repeater transmission, as the chances are you will never have access to temporary or mobile repeaters. Even the little Motorola Talkabouts are handy little pieces of kit and if you can get the ones with the IPICS interface, you are cooking with gas!

Communications downward
Knowing where you are relative to where the cavalry is has always been a major part of my planning. I never, ever want to be the one on the net requesting help and not knowing where to direct the help to! I have grown attached to my posterior and wish to keep it lead free for as long as possible. So, base your downwards communications on two principles:



GPS: I carry three: one on the vehicle, a Garmin e-trex on my person and a Nokia Navigator mobile phone. The reason for the phone? I am often on jobs in countries where standing outside with a GPS and taking waypoints can get you into a lot of trouble, but standing outside sending a text message is OK. Update your position every hour, if on foot, and every 20 minutes if in a vehicle. This provides a reasonable search radius for someone in a helicopter coming to help.

Maps: Paper does not have battery issues; keep your position updated, as you don’t want to write down too much info on the maps. If you need to mark anything, keep it in code and make sure that whoever is doing your journey management or your ops management has a copy of exactly the same map in their ops room. An ops room map can be marked with emergency rendezvous points (ERV’s) and you need to know where these are. If you lose comms, consider that an emergency and you need to re-establish; if you can’t, move to the agreed ERV.