Category Archives: Uncategorized

Originally posted on Badlands Fieldcraft:
VS Training has put together a number of tactical decision games (TDG’s) and I’ve been going through them to knock the rust off of my own planning and decision making skills. If you have some extra time I’d highly suggest checking them out, the ability to thoroughly plan is a…

In the Team Leader Class, one of the things I teach students is how to make a team training plan.  Today I will endeavor to show you how to create a personal training plan so that you as an individual can seek self-improvement. Identifying Your Mission You should start your training journey with a goal in mind.  It’sContinue reading “Creating a Personal Training Schedule”

WARNING: Opinion If you’re just starting out into building up a fighting kit, all of the info out there can be pretty overwhelming. The natural tendency is to focus on the cool-looking points of your gear, but this can be counter-productive, especially when you have a fixed income. For example, it’s natural to immediately buyContinue reading “Priorities of Purchase; Progressively Building a Rifleman’s Kit on a Budget 2022 Edition”

A few months ago I wrote a series on my Jäger Kit, describing how I set up my belt kit, chest rig, and pack for light infantry-style operations requiring an extended field stay of a week or so.  About a month later I bought a customized Minuteman 4 chest rig from UW Gear, and I have spent the meantime testing it duringContinue reading “Minuteman 4 Chest Rig Review”

A contact of mine in the military aviation community recently introduced me to hawg-ops.com.  It’s a free tool to quickly make tactical maps designed for CAS pilots to plan missions, training events, and tabletop exercises.  Opening the website brings you to a map of the US that allows you to zoom in to any location, initiallyContinue reading “Hawg-ops.com: A Free Tactical Map Tool”

It’s Memorial Day.  This morning I went to the local war monument and read every name that was engraved there.  There were a couple hundred names, so it took me a while. And while I could have paid my respects with a few somber minutes of silence, reading the names of the fallen has aContinue reading “Names in Stone”

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about a simple method to set up a map board for battle tracking.  Today I am going to cover how to use that board to track units, events, and combat reports in real time. Battle Tracking Defined Battle tracking is the task of keeping track of events as theyContinue reading “Battle Tracking on a Map Board”

Whether you’re standing up a neighborhood protection team, security at your homestead, or even just monitoring protest/riot activity in your area, you should make a map board and set it up so you can keep track of events as they unfold.  There are many ways to do this, the following is what I have usedContinue reading “Von Steuben T&C Sends: How to Set Up a Map Board for Battle Tracking”

Hiking is one of the most ancient forms of exercise known to man.  And for an infantryman, it’s irreplaceable.  Especially if you’re training to use light infantry tactics as a modern American Minuteman. This week I’ve decided to do an experiment of hiking 5 miles every day for 5 days.  It’s not a long distance, norContinue reading “Hiking with a Combat Load 5 Miles a Day for 5 Days”

Yesterday I went to a local airsoft field with a buddy of mine.  We train regularly together on a lot of things such as fieldcraft, marksmanship, radio testing, etc.  We also occasionally go to airsoft matches as a force-on-force supplement to our normal training.  Sure, it’s not the most realistic type of training, but thereContinue reading “Tactically Communicating”