[Uncle Buck]

I have been in a few "tactical" situations in which the people I worked with should have had the tactical advantage. i.e., better training, better equipment, team mentality, familiarity with the area. But when the situation got to the point of drawing your weapon and proceeding w/caution, the entire operation was fouled up.

One incident: My partner, junior to me in age and rank, was nominated for every award our squadron could think of. He participated in every training exercise, answered all the inspectors questions correctly, knew everything there was to know about the equipment we used. He was the darling of the squadron.

We responded to an intruder alert in a restricted area. Inside this area there were very high dollar aircraft, weapons and fuel. We found the intruders truck, I instructed him to take a position to the passengers side of our vehicle, to stay in the dark, behind the headlights. I stood outside the driver side door.

Once he was in position, I turned on the take-down lights to illuminate the truck. Using the loud speaker in our vehicle, I asked for anyone who might be in the truck to show themselves. No reply. Repeated call with same response.

I approached the truck and shining the flashlight into the window of the truck I saw ammunition, spotting scope, a large knife and other things of that type on the front seat. When I opened the door to the truck, there was a rifle behind the seat and a pistol case on the floor under the drivers seat. I called all this in over radio, requested back-up and instructed my partner to turn on the overhead bubble lights to mark our spot so responding patrols would know our precise location. No response from him. I had to go back to the vehicle and do this myself, and my partner would not answer his radio or respond to voice request for his status and location.

Going around the back of the truck, I found my partner in the prone position, frozen. I took his weapon and proceed to direct arriving patrols. We took control of the scene and secured the area, the intruder was located, the incident was terminated with out anyone getting hurt.


My point in this is he (my partner) was trained and trained and trained on how to respond to this type of situation. He froze. Because of his inaction, if the situation had turned bad, someone we were counting on would be out of the game.

I ran in to this type of situation on several occasions while serving in the Kuwait/Iraq area.

Now here on the forum I see a lot of people talking about tactical advantages by doing this or that when it comes to carrying a firearm, or responding to certain things in a certain type of way.

The cynical part of me always wonders whether they are actually capable of doing or responding to things the way they say they will, or are they just armchair commandos who have read a book, played video games and learned everything they know from other keyboard commandos.

I would like to hear your stories and opinions of these kinds of "Tactical" threads.