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DILEMMA

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Joined: 30 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 7:11 pm Post subject: THE TUBULAR ASSAULT DILEMMA THE TUBULAR ASSAULT DILEMMA

by Tony Zanti

Entering a dwelling, uninvited by the occupying owner, may turn into a life- threatening activity. This fact summarizes the all-American legal concept of the Castle Doctrine, derived from English common law, which grants immunity to the resident who is attacked in his habitation and uses deadly force to repel the attack. Other than being covered by the Law in some States, the lord of the castle has a basic tactical advantage over the intruder: he knows very well the layout of the dwelling he lives in. This fact also holds true when parts are reversed and who occupies the premises is not the lawful party, and the intruders are actually the Law! The interior of private homes, warehouses, and other building structures cannot be guessed from the outside. Even previewed structures may have undergone significant changes over a short period of time, due to added partitions, remodelling, or the simple rearrangement

of furniture, merchandise, and other mobile features. Luckily for the lawful assaulting party, buses, trains and somewhat airplanes are not subjected to such changes, thus in theory facilitating forced entry. But, on the other hand On the other hand, the problems with tubular assault begin right at the door. Starting from the outside, forced entry assumes different characteristics when its objective is represented by a railroad car or an airliner, rather than a building. The nature of securing premises and impeding access to them is quite different, when compared to means of locomotion. Doors and windows, in fact, are the main ways of getting access to a building. Alternatively, skylights and basement entrances may constitute viable ways of ensuring the entry. Not so with tube-like structures. The tactical officer designated as the breacher, may take out the door hinges and/or the door lock by shooting a specialty round through a shotgun barrel. This is possible with most house doors, although it may be unfeasible with most doors in commercial buildings, being made of metal, or glass, or both. The above method of ballistic entry is out of the question with airplanes, railroad cars and most coaches, while it may be applied to some folding doors, usually located on school busses and jitneys.

Unlike the fixed structures, passenger cars and buses may only be entered from the doors or the windows, while the bottom floor and the roof have no passageways. Airplanes are an exception, in that they may have more than an entrance, positioned on the lower skin, thus being out of the sight of the unlawful occupants. The larger the plane, the larger the openings (usually there are no more than two of them). In most airplanes, a passageway may lead directly to the cockpit, which may be an advantage, but rarely so, because of the continued presence of the terrorists in the cockpit, which is the most important zone aboard, because it allows its occupants great visibility of the tarmac and the surrounding buildings. The cockpit also constitutes the airplanes headquarters, being the center of all communications with the outside and containing the people and the instruments that make the flight possible. Modern commercial airplanes have doors that can be opened manually from the outside, in a few seconds, thus affording the assaulting party the element of surprise, that may be corroborated by a deliberate distraction at the other end of the fuselage. One opportune consideration that must be made here, is relative to the manpower necessary to pull a stunt like hijacking a large plane, and holding it while it is on the ground, also taking into account that a medium size jet has six side doors (three on each side), and a larger one has eight side doors (four on each side), while the humongous jumbo jet has ten of them, five per side, and the Boeing 757-300 has a staggering twelve doors. On the other hand, terrorists historically have shied away from holding a plane on the tarmac for too long. Which brings to mind that the most substantial difference between buildings and mobile structures is mobility. All mobile structures we are treating in this writing come with wheels, so a good precaution to take before conducting tubular assault is to insure that the mobile structure does not go away before or during the

action. Inserting wedges in front and to the rear of each wheel and disabling the engine, are usually the most common means to attain that.

Forced entries by means of explosives are less than recommended, when applied to airplanes. Setting an explosive charge anywhere on an airplane may result in the ultimate explosion, due to the presence of the very volatile jet fuel. Besides, the large and compact make-up of the doors would render the job less than surgical. Explosive breaching may also not be indicated against school and commercial buses, due to the possibility of causing the abundant amount of glass that surrounds the doors and the windows, to shatter and to be projected inside, thus endangering the hostages lives. Blowing out train doors has an illustrious precedent, though. In what it is still remembered as a textbook counter-terrorist operation, in 1977 a team of Dutch Marines gained entrance to a besieged railroad car by simultaneously detonating explosives that tore some doors of the hijacked train. The ensuing firefight resulted in the death of six hijackers and the liberation of 83 hostages, although two of them had been caught in the crossfire and were killed, while only one Marine had sustained wounds. The siege had been going on for over two weeks, during which time the Dutch had the opportunity to monitor the situation inside the train, using thermal imaging and listening devices to gather enough intelligence to storm the train with some degree of certainty. One curious fact is that the strategic distraction thought up by the Dutch commando, consisted of two F-104 Starfighter jets that made a low-level supersonic pass right over the train. It worked. Good!

Mechanical devices commonly used by SWAT teams to penetrate buildings rams, oversized hammers, lock busters, etc. do not work on airplane doors. They also may not work on the sturdy railroad car doors, but they would surely be effective on the all-glass windows. As with coaches and buses, the easiest point to be breached is the folding door. Windows are less practical for affording the tactical operators a full entry, but they can be shattered by mechanical means with minimal risks of injury to the hostages, and permit the organization of fields of fire inside the vehicle. One big problem encountered with this type of action is relative to the property of glass to reverberate daylight, which denies an adequate view of the inside of the vehicle, necessary to discriminate targets from non-targets. One other consideration is how to counteract the effect of curtains and shutters being pulled down to block the view from the outside. If this renders the view of the inside of the vehicle impossible from a certain distance, and it hinders the practicality of applying optical devices, such as periscopes and cameras, to the outside of the glass windows, it may instead contain the glass being shattered by a mechanical

breaching method and limit hostages injuries. One of the most popular methods of assaulting a commandeered bus is for the SWAT team to approach the bus from the right side, and breach the folding door and several windows at the same time, thus gaining entrance from the door and establishing firing positions from outside the windows. A fast way for the tactical officer to get into a firing position is to use a short ladder, brought in place and held by a fellow officer. Sometimes, according to the space surrounding the bus and the conditions of the road, a pickup truck or a similar vehicle may be used to permit the operators who are standing on the bed of the pickup a solid and prominent firing platform. This can also be as fast, or faster, depending on the circumstances, and add an instant element of surprise to the action. Portable tactical ladders are a permanent part of any tactical team, and they come in many shapes and lengths, so that they can allow the operators a sure access to even second floor windows or balconies, or to the wing of a large airplane. Sometimes pickups are employed together with ladders. Some other times a dedicated vehicle, which incorporates a telescopic or a fixed ladder is available in certain airports.

A smaller tubular structure, such as a jitney, may pose more dangers at the door while breaching it than when the entry is being made by the tactical team. The reason is that a smaller enclosed space is more likely to hold fewer, identifiable targets than a large, spacious environment. Also, there are far fewer places that a terrorist can use as hiding or as cover, being the seats in the jitney few and distant. This is not always true, of course, but it is more likely to happen. A large coach poses more problems, in that it has two rows of seats on each side and a narrow corridor between them. The seats can be used by the terrorists to hide behind them, and IEDs may be placed underneath them, also contained in bags kept inside overhead shelves or drawers. A consolidated method of clearing a bus or a coach right after the entry has been made, is to place two operators up front, facing towards the rear of the vehicle, so to set up two PODs (points of domination), while other operators move along the central corridor in a linear fashion, scanning left and right, high and low. The lead operator must engage a positively identified target, while other operators behind him should not be allowed to shoot past him, for the probable risk of delivering friendly fire. The exception to this rule (worthy of being dignified by the related SOP) is given by the two officers positioned up front, each sitting at their POD, who should have an unobstructed field of fire, thus providing an immediate backup to the operators in the line ahead of them. This resource is not void of dangers, as one may fathom, and it has to be used with extreme care, always anticipating that a fellow operator or an hostage may move into the line of fire. While the smoke if any is clearing, the command suited to the occasion and directed to all those who are present is certainly Hands on your head!. At this point, operators may be justified in appearing nervous, observing an individual raising his arms way above his head, as in the typical terrorists gesture of getting the arms out of the way of the effects of the blast caused by the explosive vest, worn under the clothing. It may be so. Also, this action may have been produced by the high state of stress all passengers in that vehicle have been subjected to. How are you going to tell the difference? The next, obvious step

involves the consolidation of all individuals aboard the bus: terrorists, passengers, those who were wounded and those who had been killed. Clearly, the terrorists will be kept separated from the rest, and the mission related SOP will be adhered to. A decent SOP will dictate the general course of action, as well as contain several Plan Bs: improvised remedial actions by the different members of the team, may give different results, some of which may not be acceptable. Standardization of actions will bring the smoothest outcome. Trains can also be very different from one other. Passenger car models are somewhat unique, especially in the inside disposition of the seats and corridors, and they change greatly, according to the geographical location they service. The interior of a passenger car may be very similar to the interior of a bus, but it may also be completely different. The assault operation of a train has to take in account these very important differences, so that team members do not have to guess and improvise to an exaggerated extent. Also, passenger cars do not hold any fuel, nor fuel containers, and it is safe to use pyrotechnics as distractionary devices.

Airplanes are even more complex. First of all, they come in all lengths, widths, shapes and sizes. They have different entrances, placed at different points on the fuselage. They also have completely different interiors, more so than passenger cars. The reason of this is not only referred to the fact that interiors vary from one model of airplane to the other: two identical models of airplanes, belonging to two different companies, will show different colors and logos, but they may also house two completely different layouts. The number and the disposition of seats may be different from the business class to the tourist class, and the location of the toilettes, the flight attendants station and storage areas may be placed in a way that the two planes will look completely different inside, while apparently identical when viewed from the outside. Then, obtaining immediately the layout of the airplane that will be the object of the above attentions, is the first step of the basic intelligence work that has to be done. Getting past the airplane door gets half of the job done, but the remaining half is extremely challenging! Once inside the plane, each operator on the team has to behave as if he were in perfect symbiosis with the rest of the team. Such coordinated dynamics can only be the fruit of a hard and persistent training effort, of course. Any mistake could be fatal. Here, points of domination should be taken immediately (on larger planes, PODs are subjected to shifts and changes of location and/or direction), and the rest of the team should move throughout the cabin, being very careful at choosing fields of fire. A grounded aircraft will take plenty of firearms rounds, without any serious consequences, although it is not a good idea to shoot towards the engines, because it could start a fire: even from inside the plane, any tactical round will easily pass through the soft aluminium skin, or the windows. Misses are not allowed! It must also be considered that deploying flash bangs on the cabin floor can be very dangerous, because of the presence aboard of the highly flammable jet fuel. The use of snipers is always called for, but their

actual deployment may remain a remote possibility, due to the fact that visibility of individuals inside the plane is scarce, which makes target identification a quite difficult task. In the end, it should be noted that tubular assault is not about flash bangs, blowing up things and shooting weapons: its only purpose is to save lives! _________________ "There is no telling how far a man can go in life if he doesn't care who gets the credit." Ronald Reagan - 40th President of the United States Back to top

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