Evasion Skills Considerations for the Evader

Successful personnel recovery (PR), or to use the older, more familiar term, escape-and-evasion (E&E), requires effective training, as well as extensive planning and preparation. While we’ve previously discussed, in some depth on this blog, the planning and preparation requirements for PR, what we’ve not spent much time on are the fundamental, specific tasks requirements of the evader himself, in order to provide the greatest possibility of successful evasion of hostile pursuit and search. Whether you foresee yourself functioning as part of an active insurgency against an oppressive regime, or are simply planning on “bugging out” when TSHTF, the same skills are absolute requirements for success and survival.

To begin with, it is crucial to preface this discussion with the recognition that this will focus predominantly on the rural/wilderness evader, rather than on urban-based evasion. There is a simple reason for this: while urban evasion is obviously crucial, in the long-term, urban evasion is unsustainable without heavy previous investment in the development of human terrain and physical infrastructure in evasion networks. The individual tradecraft skills of the evader, while still crucial, are ultimately less critical than ready access to a well-developed system of local guides, safe houses, and network contacts capable of producing or procuring effective cover identity documents. Further, in the short-term, while some of the specific details of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) differ for urban-based evasion, the fundamental principles that underlie those TTPs remain the same in an urban environment as they are in a rural/wilderness evasion. Without the developed resistance infrastructure of a functioning underground, in place, your only hope for successful urban evasion of pursuit is to get out of the city and to a new, safer location.

E&E training in the US military and paramilitary cultures has traditionally focused in large part (although certainly not entirely), on what are fundamentally very elementary bushcraft skills such as fire-building, shelter construction, and building traps and snares for food procurement. Whiles these are not useless skills, for either survival or simply being a well-rounded human being, if you, as a “prepper,” lack these skills, you are woefully behind the power curve in your preparations (but I bet you have lots of guns and ammunition and food storage, don’t you?), and you should have been a Boy Scout. E&E training, to be functionally useful needs to focus less on bushcraft, and more on fieldcraft. That fieldcraft is the individual application of fundamental, basic light infantry skills.

• Planning: First of all, of course, is the ancient law, the 7Ps: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. While it is often overlooked completely, or at best, given lip service during the planning of conventional force operations, the development of a solid, well-thought out Evasion Plan-of-Action (EPA), is absolutely crucial to irregular force planning in order to maximize the chance of survival for your most valuable assets–your people. Whether you are planning an ambush, a security patrol, or a bug-out to escape the city in a time of unrest, you need to have a well-developed EPA.

• Land Navigation: The ability to determine your location, the location of your destination, and then to move successfully from point A to point B is of obvious importance to evasion. An inability to effectively navigate will result in evaders stumbling around lost and confused, until they end up either stumbling into pursuers on accident, or get tired, cold, and scared enough that they voluntarily search out their pursuers because “anything is better than being lost in the big, dark, scary woods!” Critical land navigation tasks include:

1. Map Reading: You need to be able to look at a topographical map and read it like a book. Do you know what the different signs and symbols on the map represent? Yes, they are located on the map key. Do you know where that is located on the map? You need to be able to determine what the contour intervals are on the map you have. Is it 40 feet or 20 feet, or something different? Can you recognize and identify terrain features such as cliffs, ridges, fingers, draws, and valleys on a topographical map, based on the representation of contour line relationships? Can you measure distance on a map, using straight line or road distances? Do you know how to account for the margin of error when measuring distances on the map? Can you orient the map to the ground by associating the features represented on the map with the terrain you see around you?

2. Compass Work: Compasses are easy, right? The needle always points North. Right? Do you know the difference between True North and Magnetic North? Do you know what an agonic line is and how that affects your compass readings where you are? Did you know that magnetic declination changes, so the topo map you have, that was photographed and produced in 1983 has the WRONG magnetic declination? Can you adjust for declination, in order to orient your map correctly, to help you start figuring out where you are? Terrain association works really well….unless there’s no terrain features readily visible (seriously! Where I live, I don’t really need a compass most of the time, because the terrain is so steep and varied, that I can almost always terrain associate with ease. Try that shit in the pine woods back east though and you’ll never even get started). Worse, trying to terrain associate a map in the dark of night can be a little bit troublesome. Can you use your compass and map to determine a magnetic azimuth to follow for moving from point A to point B?

3. Here’s the rub with map-and-compass work: If you’ve never had any training in the use of these two tools, from someone who has not only training but lots of real-world field experience using a map-and-compass extensively, to bush whack off trail, I can guarantee, with 100% certainty of being right, you have no clue what you’re doing with these tools. Reading a book just doesn’t cut it. Sure, Kjellstrom’s Be An Expert With Map and Compass will help you understand the theory of what you’re learning in meat space, but until you get out there and actually learn to do it properly, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU ARE DOING!

• Route Selection: While land navigation obviously involves a modicum of expertise with map and compass, an oft-overlooked aspect of tactical land navigation that is of equal importance, if not greater importance, is your ability to select a movement route that provides maximum tactical advantage to you as an evader. This ability, of course, requires a thorough understanding of terrain analysis on the map and on the ground, through a practical comprehension of METT-TC and OCOKA.

  Route selection for the evader needs to take maximum advantage of any available cover and concealment both during movement and for laying-up in hide sites for rest. You need to consider concealment not just from ground-mobile threats, but also from aerial observation and engagement in some situations. You need to be able to select a route and then adhere to that route, that makes active pursuit and tracking either impossible, or prohibitively difficult. Yes, that means you’ll probably need to be in good physical condition (don’t bother with machismo-laden bravado-infused comments about how you’re too old to bother running, but you’ll sell your life dearly…number one, I just don’t give a shit about your braggadocio, and number two, eating a mortar round or a belt of 7.62×51 from a M240, after shooting one dude with your rifle doesn’t constitute selling your blood “dearly.“).

• Move Tactically: We’ve previously discussed the individual skills required to move tactically with stealth for the guerrilla, and need not belabor the point here. Recognize however that while being able to run like a raped ape for a couple of miles, even with your rucksack and LBE on might be critical, and is something you should be capable of, slow and steady, when you’re trying to evade pursuit ultimately really does win the race. Moving slow and cautiously, whenever possible (like anytime you don’t have pursuers breathing down your neck as they’re tugging at the back of your belt) increases the chances that you can avoid doing something stupid to indicate your presence and location to the pursuit forces, and allows you to implement counter-tracking measures to slow down that pursuit as well (I’m not any sort of a professional man-tracker. On a good day, I MIGHT be able to track a muddy dog through a hospital operating room. I do know it’s damned near impossible to completely foil a dedicated tactical tracking team that knows what they are doing. All we’re hoping for is to keep them busy enough looking for our sign and spoor that they don’t have much time to actually follow it…).

• Camouflage and Concealment: Camouflage and concealment from observation is a critical aspect of tactical movement to avoid compromise and capture. Like the other basic infantry tasks we’ve previously discussed, this one should need no real introduction.

• Select and Occupy a Hide Site: You’re going to have to stop and rest eventually. Whether you are capable of moving steady and safely for one day, two days, or five days, eventually, if you don’t rest, you’ll make stupid mistakes, like walking into a well-prepared ambush. However, especially in a solo evasion scenario, going to sleep violates the third principle of patrolling, “security,” doesn’t it? Only if you lack the ability to select and occupy a well-chosen hide site effectively. A hide site needs to be, first and foremost, hidden. It needs to be in a place that no pursuers are likely to accidentally trip into while searching for you. It needs to provide some way of forewarning you of the approach of pursuers. It needs to provide multiple egress routes, in case pursuers do get close enough that you are flushed out. Finally, if all else fails, it needs to provide you with adequate protection to allow you to fight and repel pursuit until you can effect an escape (not likely, but hell, where’s the harm in trying, right?).

• Equipment Considerations: There is a lot of interest in building “survival kits” and “bug-out bags.” There’s no harm in that. What does appall me is the preponderance of otherwise sensible people who invest a lot of time and effort into building the silly little Altoids can based “survival kits” that then get thrown in their ruck with all of their other gear….all of their other gear that is specifically chosen to keep them alive in the field…(see what just happened there?) If you adopt the previously discussed SMOLES concept for packing your rucksack, as well as for developing your fighting load and first-line gear, there’s really no reason to have a “survival kit in a can.” That is, after all, the reason for the three-echelon packing concept. If you’ve got your ruck and fighting load with you, then you should have the ability, equipment-wise anyway, to survive indefinitely. If you have to dump your ruck (which if you have it on when things go haywire, you shouldn’t have to except in very limited cases–or you’re a fat ass who doesn’t do effective PT and so you can’t carry the goddamn thing), or your EPA kicks in when you don’t have your ruck on, such as it sitting in an Objective Rally Point (ORP) when a raid or ambush goes to hell on your, you still have your fighting load and first-line gear on. If that was developed with SMOLES in mind, you probably won’t be as comfortable as you would be with your ruck on, but you should still be able to survive. If for some reason you have to dump your fighting load, then you’ve still got a full SMOLES load-out in your first line gear, and that should only get dumped if the pursuers are doing it by dumping your pockets after they’ve killed or captured you.

Evasion planning and training is a critical skill set in irregular/guerrilla warfare. Unfortunately, in American tradition, we tend to focus more on the easy to do bush craft aspects of it. Those are easy to practice in your backyard, or at the park, and require little or no real physical effort to learn and practice. The real, important aspects of evasion training however: being fit enough to go miles every day, day-after-day-after-day, on little sleep and rest, and less food, while thinking clearly enough to select good routes, and utilize a map-and-compass for land navigation to get your where you need to go; those require actual commitment to train and practice. Not learning and practicing them however, will result in an inability to escape and evade capture. Whether it’s regime security forces you’re fleeing, or a horde of cannibalistic San Franciscans, when the time comes to nut up and run, you’d better have the necessary skills and abilities. Otherwise, you’re likely to end up in the hot water, one way or another…

DOL,

John Mosby

Advertisement