Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Back-Up Rule

The Back-up Rule

I am learning new things from my hobby flying radio controlled models. The biggest is that you need a light but responsive touch on the controls. There is also a rhythm necessary to soar with smooth grace. One must feel the airplane with a growing intuition and not consciously jerk it around, insisting on a heavy hand. Then there is the speed of what is happening, which for an old Fart, becomes harder as the years pass not to mention the vision necessary to maintain the view and perspective of the airframe. Some people are more suited to this than others but most everyone can learn to a yeoman’s level of proficiency.

In reading my two latest biographies on Special Operating Forces operating in the war on terror I see the military’s insistence on candidates who have physical strength and stamina and also the persistence and will to continue on in the face of a protracted and overwhelming adversity. Those are the traits the services covet and value most in their elite warriors and the extent to which they are required go far beyond any capacity I have ever enjoyed. I was good at my profession but not that good. I was dealt some good cards but nothing like the hand required to become a Seal.

As an infantry small unit leader I had enough of the right stuff to get by but there wasn’t much left when the trial was over. I did however; learn a thing or two and some of the lessons that are so clear in my mind did not survive the transition from one generation of combatants to the next. For example what became instilled in my understanding, not something written in any text book, was what I call the “One Hour Rule.” By this I mean that you don’t send a force into harm’s way that can’t be reached in a short time. This doesn’t mean that operations can’t be carried out by small teams, but rather that if a small team gets in trouble there is a back-up force that can quickly reach them. If a small team is necessary for a given task that somewhere behind, is the security force. That depending on the relative size these times must be adjusted. For example a two person recon/shoot team would have a fifteen minute backup. A four person team has half hours and so on. A platoon sized force can hold out against major adversity for six hours and a company for 12. A battalion can survive a worst case for a day or two and so on. Thus at every level a responsive relief is built in.

Regardless of how well trained an elite a force is, this layering is necessary because without it the day of reckoning will come and when it does soldiers will be cut off and left alone to die. A hasty response thrown together with too little too late is an accident going to somewhere to happen. It is incumbent on planners and decision-makers to build in this support capability and not undertake those where it cannot be achieved. The operatives are brave and like the two snipers in the Black Hawk down decision, it is a mistake to commit to more than this rule of thumb allows.