Book Review: Contact!

Ryan over at TSLRF recently read "Contact" and suggested it so on a whim I pulled it onto my Kindle and had a read.

I've got to say, I was not nearly as impressed as Ryan was.

The author starts by stating that one of his goals is not to regurgitate a lot of warmed over Army Field Manual type stuff.  Yet, the book is chock full of METT-TC, TLPs, and other basic army field manual type info.

The worst part, in my opinion, was an emphasis on platoon and company level operations.  I find it rather unlikely that any sort of "prepper" is going to end up orchestrating company level infantry movements.  Even the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, who are fighting a full on insurgent conflict, avoid massing in company level strength on a regular basis (it happens -- but is not a day to day occurance).

What is far more likely, in my opinion, is a single family unit consisting of mom, dad, and the kids taking care of themselves.  If they are lucky, one or two of the kids will be teenagers or young adults, or they can "double up" with some other adult relatives or another family.  At best we're talking squad sized units, not companies.

This misdirected focus took valuable pages away from more relevant skills:  what about individual movement techniques?  How about operating as a spotter/shooter "recon" type element with just two trigger pullers?  How do you provide 24/7/365x360 degree security with only 2-4 adults?  What compromises should be accepted and what technological tools can help solve the problems?  I realize that your tactical options are limited and marginal with 2-6 trigger pullers, but that's kind of the tactical problem, is it not?

Operating like conventional western uniformed military forces do is not a good plan for most preppers.  Conventional forces have crew served weapons, automatic machine guns, and serious indirect fires to facilitate fire and manuever.  They have excellent body armor and the best tactical medical care and CASEVAC that has ever been seen on the battlefield to mitigate hits.  The issues of what to do when those force multipliers are missing was not even addressed.

On the plus side, I got a lot out of the mounted ops chapter.  I feel that the author presented some tactics that came more from executive protection than from Fallujah that were very appropriate for transporting "precious cargo" like kiddos in a 2-3 vehicle convoy, which is pretty realistic for mom, dad, and the neighbors to pull off in the family cars.  This was really a high point of the book.  Another bright spot was the discussion of fire and movement, which was presented clearly and concisely.

Final verdict:  Is the book worth the price of admission?  If you have a background in small unit tactics, probably not.  The chapter in vehicle ops may be worth the price of admission alone, but other than that I didn't get a huge deal of new info out of the book.