After-Action Review – Montana

Over the last two weeks, NC Scout and I conducted three classes at Camp Ponderosa in Bigfork, Montana.  We covered Basic RTO (Radiotelephone Operator), SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), and Fieldcraft.  A few of the students took all three courses and spent the entire time hanging out with us in the gorgeous natural setting of the Swan River Valley, in the shadow of the Rockies.

We use a “train the trainer” approach so that you can teach your whole crew what we teach. Why? Because Paul set the example with Timothy:

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

2 Timothy 2:2

The students had a great time and learned a lot of skills, mostly through hands-on application of the topics in a great wilderness setting.  I thought I would give you all a recap to encourage you to get out and take a course.

But first, let’s talk about the people who attend these courses.  The biggest fear I hear from folks is “but I don’t know anything at all, won’t I look silly?”.  The experience levels at every course range from folks who have never taken any courses to folks who take courses regularly, and everyone learns something.  The purpose of taking a course is to learn, so drop the fear of looking silly.  Which makes you more silly – learning something new or continuing to not learn due to a fear of looking like the new guy?  Get out and train because everyone was a new guy once.  We had folks from brand new people to former Green Berets, and not one person looked silly or was laughed at.  Everyone pulled together to help each other learn.

In the RTO course, folks learned everything about the practical use of HF/VHF/UHF radios for preparedness use.  It’s not a technical course on how to build radios nor is it a ham radio course.  It’s simply a breakdown of the ways in which you can use off-the-shelf radios like the ubiquitous Baofeng to stay in touch.  The course covers the various bands and how to use them, as well as how to develop a communications plan.

Students in the RTO course also learn how to build their own antennas which outperform stock antennas. In fact, we built a jungle CB Antenna, which was eye-opening in that we immediately began to receive a large amount of CB radio traffic, almost all of it in Spanish.  Think that through – your enemy is already using these bands, shouldn’t you?

The course culminates in practical field exercises, going out and observing activity and sending digital reports over the radio.

The SIGINT course discusses ways in which you can gather information from the radio signals your opposition is emitting.  Direction finding and information gathering is the key.  You learn not only how to collect information via radio, but you’re also learning how to better protect your own communications from exploitation.  Lots of hands-on field exercises cement the skills into your toolkit.

My Fieldcraft course focuses on the skills all the cool-guy tacti-cool courses skip over.  When was the last time you practiced the low crawl or high crawl?  Do you know the difference between US stalking training and the way that Commonwealth troops like the UK, Australians, and Rhodesians learned it? Have you EVER practiced the back crawl?  These are just some of the skills we practiced.  The worst part was that while demonstrating the low crawl, I laid on a bee and got stung, but fortunately it was a bumble bee, so my allergies didn’t kick in.  After learning basic individual movement, we covered team movement. 

The course covers observation skills and then camouflage skills.  After learning how humans see and then learning about ways to camouflage your gear and yourself, we went on a fun observation lane, where teams hid their gear and equipment against other teams hunting for them.  One team did a casual walk through, while the other did a hard-target sweep of the area. 

Teams learned how to pick out and occupy a secure camp site.  After a lecture period, the teams each went out and occupied a site, practicing the skills to make sure no one else was anywhere near the campsite.  The skills involved choose avoiding contact and conflict, rather than how most cool-guy courses focus on combat.  We’d rather avoid the fight and stay safe.

The second day has a period on field sanitation and water purification, followed by an entire day on land navigation.  You learn not just how to read a map and use a compass, but how to use the two together to locate yourself and anything you might see to within 10 meters anywhere that you have a good map of.  We learned the features of several different types of maps and how to use them to plan and move along routes. 

We ran a day land navigation course that took students through some very scenic mountain territory.  The walk was rough, but not too hard.  There was also OPFOR (Opposing Force) activity to observe along the route.  After the day course, students returned later to conduct a night land navigation course.  Being able to use a map and compass during the day is hard enough but try doing it in the dark or under NODs.  No one won the Second Lieutenant Award by getting lost, so I guess we covered the skill well.

On the third day, we practiced crossing a road as a team safely and securely.  We discussed the quickest way to set up a shelter and went out into the field to practice building 4 different types of tarp shelters.  We even set up thermal tarps and demonstrated how well they cover your thermal signature using thermal sights.

I highly recommend getting out and training.  Most of the students of the Fieldcraft class are planning on coming back to Bigfork for my Community Security Operations Crouse, which will cover the skills in TW-03, Defensive Operations.

My next Fieldcraft classes are:

1. May 31-June 2                 Brushbeater Training Center    North Carolina
2. June 12-14                        Private Ranch                                 Oklahoma

After that is Community Security Operations at Camp Ponderosa in Bigfork, Montana July 19-21.  The weekend following that (July 26-28) will be the Council on Future Conflict event at Camp Ponderosa, so stay and make a whole week’s vacation in Montana.  The CFC event will be sort of a preparedness fair co-sponsored by our friends at Shield Arms of Bigfork, so come out.

Get out and train.

If you’d like to support my work, become a supporter at tacticalwisdom.locals.com or make a donation below. You can also support us by clicking the sponsor links. I may make a small commission at no cost to you.