The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Tactical Tuesday: Modern Ambush Types And Reasoning

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Dane D at his best on The Gunmetal Armory talking ambush tactics. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prepper-broadcasting-network--3295097/support.BECOME A SUPPORTER FOR AD FREE PODCASTS, EARLY ACCESS & TONS OF MEMBERS ONLY CONTENT!Get Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyThe All In One Disaster Relief Device! www.hydronamis.comJoin the Prepper Broadcasting Network for expert insights on #Survival, #Prepping, #SelfReliance, #OffGridLiving, #Homesteading, #Homestead building, #SelfSufficiency, #Permaculture, #OffGrid solutions, and #SHTF preparedness. With diverse hosts and shows, get practical tips to thrive independently – subscribe now!

Self-r-r-lines and the podcasting network. We have to hit the reset button and create a true culture of preparedness, starting at a very young age and filtering all the way up. Welcome to the gunmetal armory. Here's your host, Dane D. What's up, everybody? It's Dane from the gunmetal armory. I don't have a ton of time tonight, as usual, unfortunately. Like I've been telling you guys, the last couple of weeks, things have been getting a little bit more and more busy for me. it's not a you know not the worst thing or anything like that it's just the nature of the beast when you start doing more and more of your career um i think what i may end up having to do is record a show at a

different time or a different day and then just put the show up for you guys like i do uh generally but i usually try to record it on thursday for you guys um that being said it is important to me to do this podcast and to be able to, you know, keep in touch with you guys as best as I can on a daily basis or on a weekly basis, rather. So that being said, hopefully I can get this all figured out and get everything squared away to a point where it makes more sense for me. That is about all I have to say on that. Let's see. What else? If you have a moment go over to my website gunmetal lLC.com take a look at it let me know what you think um i am working on classes now um i've already taught a few of them and i'm going to be doing some more if you're

interested in knowing more about the classes please feel free to email me at gmail or at um gunmetal LLC whoops sorry gunmetal armory at gmail.com or if there is if you want to you go to the contact page on the website and email me there instead. Okay? All right. So, last week when we were talking, we were talking about ambushes and how ambushes work, okay, in the modern sense. Not so much in the World War II sense, but in the modern sense. Now, we did talk a little bit about how the stuff worked back in the day, but I think that, you know, studying the stuff that went on back in the day, it basically bears out us studying what goes on now and the kind of ambushes that might take place in a wartime scenario. Okay. So let's take a look at what kind of

ambushes and what kind of environment you can expect in that sort of scenario. Okay. So, generally when it comes to ambushes, the leader of the platoon or the fire team or whoever is going to be, the leader, is going to determine the category of ambush. And they're going to determine the category of ambush through analysis of the factors of METC, METT-T-C, okay? Mission environment, terrain, so on and so forth. You can look that up if you want a more in-depth detailed analysis of that. I also have a show on that, if I remember correctly, we did go a little bit into that as well. Okay? Now, typically, the two most important factors in MetTC are going to be time and the enemy.

Okay? That is going to be one of those things that you will want to take a look at. and when you, you know, such as you were, if you were going to plan an ambush, I don't know why you would ever do that, but if you, the listener, were going to plan an ambush,

let's say you're playing Airsoft, okay? And you want to plan a really good ambush for an Airsoft game that you're playing. All right. Let's just put that forward, okay? Now, if you want to plan that Airsoft ambush, you might look at the factors of Metcc, okay? But the two most important factors, keeping in mind,

are going to be time and enemy. Okay, so there's going to be various different types of ambush. Okay, there are also something called raids. Now, raids are a whole other different type of thing that you can encounter besides an ambush. Okay? So when you're looking at both of those, you have to be aware of all the factors involved,

which there are some of them that, you know, could get overlooked. And that's why we're going to go over those factors in detail now. Okay? So let's look at the categories here, or let's look at the types of ambush here. Remember, two most important factors are going to be time and enemy. Okay, so we have the deliberate ambush. Okay, the deliberate ambush is going to be a planned offensive action

that will be conducted against a specific target for a specific purpose at a predetermined location. So look at a good example would be something like, well, I was going to say the attack on the heavy water plant in World War II, but that's not a deliberate ambush. That wasn't what that was. But let's look at the criteria again, okay? A deliberate ambush is a planned offensive action. It would be conducted against a specific target for a specific purpose, and that target is going to be at a predetermined level. location. Okay. So specific target. Let's say radar installation, specific purpose to shut down or destroy the radar installation. Predetermined location would be the radar location or the radar installation. Okay. You might also plan that deliberate ambush for the patrol that goes around the radar installation. There may be a patrol that goes around it. You may want to ambush.

that patrol. Okay? So when planning these types of deliberate ambushes, the leader is going to require some pretty detailed information to actually plan it out properly. The size and the composition of the targeted enemy unit. Okay. So you're going to have, you're going to be targeting someone or something. Generally, if it's an ambush, of course, it's going to be a someone. Okay. So let's go back to Airsoft. If you've got your enemy team, you know, red and blue, I don't know, you go to the whole Halo thing, remember Red versus Blue? And in the Halo, I don't want to call them cartoons, but

I don't know if you guys remember that from YouTube or not, but Red versus Blue. So, the size and the composition of the targeted enemy unit. So let's say you're the Red Team and they're the Blue Team. Okay? You need to know how big the Blue Team is.

Let's say the Blue Airsoft team is 10 guys. Okay, you need to write that down. The composition of those 10 guys. Let's say some of them have Airsoft rifles. You know, the

AR-15 style rifle or something. Let's say some of them have airsoft pistols. And let's say one or two of them have what would be considered an airsoft sniper rifle because long range, you know, or longer range type airsoft rifles do exist. Okay?

So let's say you have two, four, and four. Okay, four pistols, four rifles, and two long range rifles. Okay, so now you have the size, ten men, and the composition, four, and two. Okay, you have the size and the composition of the targeted enemy unit, the blue team. Okay. So you would also want to find out as much information as possible about the blue team, not just what weapons they're carrying, what kind of gear they have, do they have night vision, do they have what kind of optics and types of gear do they have on their rifles?

You know, you see, the enemy equipment is going to tell you a lot about who they are. Okay. If you see a group of Bubba Airsofters that, you know, just have the average rifle and they don't have any of the gear that you would expect to see on the average airsofters, Airsoft crew, then you have nothing to worry about. You know, well, I mean, obviously you have something to worry about. But it's not nearly as much of a threat as if you see a specific type of gear on these people. For example, and I'm just going to use reality here, okay?

If I went to the shooting range, and this is outside of a threat or anything like that, but if I went to the shooting range and I saw a guy with a, let's say, a Daniel defense AR-15, and he's got a Tridicon ACog on there. Okay. And he's got a peck box on there. Okay. And he's got Surefire Mags. All right.

And let's say he's got a Geysley trigger. Okay, he's got top of the line gear all the way down. But he shoots like shit? Well, I'm not really worried about that guy. Yeah, he's got the money, but he ain't got the fucking training. Okay. Now, if you wrote the same thing, range with that same guy with that same weapon system and he is ripping up those targets.

Okay. You know, you might want to keep your eye on that guy. That guy probably knows what he's doing. He's probably had quite a bit of training and he actually knows what type of weapon system he wants and how he wants it set up. So there's all these little things that you can use to analyze your enemy. You can use to analyze the people around you. You can practice this as you go throughout life. For example, if you have a friend that comes over and he has a concealed carry firearm on him, and he doesn't happen to be concealing that day, let's say he's going constitutional carry, open carry, whatever you want to go with, and he's got a, you know, just a normal 1911, maybe a Rock Island Armory or something like that.

Okay, cool. You know, maybe he's had a basic concealed carry training course, basic safety course. That's it. Okay, that's fine. you know and he has it in just your basic you know I don't know a Black Hawk Holster or something like that

then you have your other friend that came over and he's got a I don't know let's say a Glock 17 with a threaded barrel an MOS slide a Trigon RMR on there custom apex trigger extended magazines

and let's say a surefire X300 U light on there, along with a G-Force holster, well, there might be, or decode, rather, there might be a chance that, you know, he knows his gear, and he knows what he wants, and he knows how to put it all together, he's got the training to use it. Okay? So, all of this stuff goes back to composition of the targeted enemy unit. Okay, composition of the unit look at everything they have there's a reason that leaders or you know the commanders the people in charge they want to know what weaponry they're looking at okay when you look at um area

studies okay like like they do um all over now area studies are pretty common now but if you were to live in a place like portland when they have that chop zone or where the hell that thing was called and you were to look at the guys they had that were guarding their little chaz or chopson or whatever the hell and you were to look at those guys and look at the composition of their weaponry look at the composition of their body armor so on and so forth it's going to tell you a lot about those guys right off the bat so keep that in mind next thing here we go weapons and equipment available to the enemy right what weapons do they have what is available to them What's sitting on the ground next to them?

Or maybe the Airsoft Blue team there, right? What is back at their camp? Maybe the red team's going to come up and watch them at their camp for a few days before they decide to do any kind of an ambush. Before they set up their L-shaped or linear ambush, maybe it'll be hasty. Who knows? Maybe it'll be a V-shaped ambush, you know?

Could be all kinds of things. So the next thing that you're going to need to know, the enemy's direction and route. Okay, where are the enemy blue team, Airsoft, whatever, where are they moving to? What is their patrol route? Okay, what direction do they move? Okay, let's say the Blue Team leaves their camp, okay? Let's say you're on a week-long or two-week-long Airsoft and excursion thing that you're doing with all your buddies, okay?

Your enemy team goes out and patrols their area, and every time they go out, you're watching them, Red team's watching them. Every time they go out, they always seem to go out and head north. Okay? They leave their camp headed west, and then they make a turn and head north. They circle all the way around their camp,

about 100 to 200 yards out, or they might spiral outward and get bigger and bigger and bigger, right? And just kind of like try to sprawl outward. and see what's around them. Pay attention to that stuff. You have no idea how much intel is around you if you're just paying attention.

Next thing. Times that the targeted enemy Airsoft unit will reach or pass specific points along their route. Okay? So let's go back to them leaving their little camp. They leave headed west and they make a turn to go north and then they spiral outward from their camp, patrolling in somewhat of a circle.

Okay? So if they keep the same pace, which is pretty rare for an undisciplined unit. But let's say that they keep a same or similar pace when they're doing their patrols around their blue base camp, their blue Airsoft base camp, okay? So they're patrolling, patrolling, and they happen to pass.

the two redwood trees that are around their camp at exactly 15 minutes after they leave. And then they happen to pass the creek that they go over at 35 minutes after they left. And so on and so forth. You are going to keep track of this stuff and you're going to see what the average is on these things. the reason for this is because you'll be able, number one, to predict where they're going to be at pretty close to what time. And number two, it's going to give you the ability to set up your ambush where you need to set it up. That's how our guys got their butts handed to them in Vietnam. It's because our guys would go out and patrol very, very similarly each time.

And because they didn't know the area very well, they would generally tend to stick to the same routes. So, that's a deliberate ambush and the things that entail a deliberate ambush. Next up is going to be a hasty type ambush. The platoon or the squad, they would conduct a hasty ambush when it makes visual contact with an enemy force. That and when it has time to establish an ambush without being detected. Okay? So if your Airsoft Red team is out patrolling, and they happen to see the blue team out patrolling, before the blue team sees them, they could set up a hasty ambush. And if they do it correctly, they will set it up without being detected.

Okay? So the conduct of the hasty ambush should represent the execution of disciplined initiative within the parameters of the commander's intent. So if the commander wants to, let's say you've got that 10-man blue airsoft team, okay? And your leader at the red airsoft team, he wants you to bring back nine of the 10 blue airsofters, okay? That is his intent. He wants as many alive as he can get, so he can interrogate them, okay? The action for a hasty ambush should be established in a unit SOP. scope of practice

and rehearsed so soldiers know what to do on the leader's signal. So the leader gives a signal each of the guys in the red Airsoft team or whatever team it is need to know what their role is how to execute it and to do it

right then. Next thing, formations. The platoon leader considers the factors of Metcc to determine the required formation. And this is the one. The ambush formation, linear, L-shaped, and V-shaped ambushes. Linear ambushes? This is an ambush in a linear formation, or a line.

The assault and support elements deploy parallel to the enemy's route. So, if the enemy is traveling down a road, you're going to deploy right along that road as well, parallel to it. Two lines, like the Roman numeral two, okay? slash slash okay this position forces the enemy on the long access of the kill zone and it subjects the enemy to flanking fire the linear formation can be used in close terrain

that restricts the enemy's ability to maneuver against the platoon or in open terrain provided a means of keeping the enemy in the kill zone can be affected okay so in a linear ambush. You would have the enemy walking down that pathway and you've got your guys in a linear formation in a line, you know, broken apart, maybe 10 yards in between each one, okay? And your far two guys, or you're far two guys on one side and far two guys on the other side of the line. And let's say

you got six in the middle, okay? Ten guys on the Red Airsoft team, right? Those two guys on either side are going to be set up crisscross fire. They're going to be setting up that kill zone so nothing can escape if that makes sense. Hopefully it does. Maybe I'll do a video on this so you guys can actually see what I'm talking about. All right. Next thing here. I'm running out of time, but next thing.

An L-shaped ambush. This would be pretty self-explanatory. An L-shaped ambush is the assault element forms a long leg parallel to the enemy's direction of movement along the kill zone, just like the linear one. The support element forms the short leg at one end of and at a right angle to the assault element. So you've got your support element that's there in case you need them. Now remember from last week, the support element fixes the enemy's force to prevent it from moving out of the kill zone, which allows the assault element to conduct the ambush.

keep that in mind, especially if you're the commander of the Airsoft team and you're trying to put together an L-shaped ambush. All right. So, this provides both flanking long leg and infallad, short-leg, fire against the enemy. The L-shaped ambush can be used at a sharp bend in the road, a trail, or a stream. It should not be used where the short leg would have to cross a straight road or trail. The platoon leader must consider the other factors of METC before opting for the L-shaped ambush. Special attention must be placed on sectors of fire and SDZ of weapons because of the risk of fratricide when conducting an L-shaped ambush. Now, if you guys want to answer an interesting question, answer me.

email me at gmail.com, or gunmetal armory at gmail.com, sorry. And answer me why the shape of an L-shaped ambush could create fratricide. Why is there a risk of fratricide when it comes to an L-shaped ambush? Okay. If you don't know the answer, draw it out on a piece of paper or something. Look at how the fire will go and see what I mean. Okay, so I think you'll find this very, very interesting. And then finally, the V-shaped ambush.

The V-shaped ambush assault elements are placed along both sides of the enemy route, so they can form a V. Take extreme care to ensure neither group fires into each other. This formation subjects the enemy to both enrolade and interlocking fire. Now, next week we're going to get into the type of ambush or the types of them. You're going to go into the types, which would be area ambush and point ambush. That will be next week. And you will use the enemy commander of the Red Airsoft team will use the factors of MetTC

to determine the type of ambush that the platoon will want to employ. okay I hope this was interesting for you all I know it was for me if you guys have any questions please please please feel free to email me at gunmetal armory at gmail.com and I'm looking forward to maybe one or two or I don't know a few of you guys answering me as to why there is a risk of fratricide when it comes to an L-shaped ambush

and even a V-shaped ambush okay all right guys until next time this is Dane from the Gunmetal Armory signing off Take care everybody. Good night. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time on the Gun Metal Armory.