Rescue task force is not a strategy, it is a tactic
The challenge of the Rescue task force is a case of “Always doing things right, but not always doing the right thing.”
Imagine if your favorite football team punted every down. Regardless of the score or time left in the game, they simply punted the ball.
Punting the ball every time is the classic case of tactics employed in the absence of strategy. And even if your team is the best punters in the league, a single tactic is not going to win games.
Tenacious adherence to the diamond formation used in the Rescue task force may suffer from a similar mindset as always punting. As Sun Tzu will attest, the allure of a perfectly performed tactic in the absence of strategy is an age-old problem.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The topic of “Active shooter/Hostile event,” simply known as “ASHER,” is pressing the fire service into a hard conversation; do we really know what to do? Do we have the strategies and tactics to meet the diverse problem space of mass killings? We have multiple strategies and tactics for fires, but when it comes to ASHER events, will we put all of our eggs into one basket known as the “rescue task force” (RTF)?
A mental model for tactics vs strategies
On the most basic level, a strategy is the broad “what” we want to accomplish while a tactic is the specific “how” we are going to do it. Strategies produce objectives while tactics produce tasks. As Harry Yarger, professor at the Army War College and author of “Strategic theory for the 21st century:” explains, “Strategy is not tactics, and tactics are not strategy.” “Tactics ultimately implement a strategy” In other words, tactics are created to achieve your strategic objectives.
Colonel Yarger reinforces Sun Tzu’s criticism on tactics employed without strategy by saying “when tactics are inappropriately selected or executed, they may create strategic effects that are negative.” Said another way, if your tactics don’t match your strategic objectives, you are heading in the wrong direction. To further understand this mental model, we must explore the levels of war.
Levels of war
“Modern military theory divides war into strategic, operational, and tactical levels.” “The three levels allow causes and effects of all forms of conflict to be better understood.”
Strategic
The strategic process provides a broad and coherent blueprint to bridge the gap between the realities of today and the desired future. Like saying, “our goal is to win the game.” Our strategy to achieve this is to put more points on the scoreboard than the opponent.
And although this a guiding message, it lacks details on how to score more points. That is where the operational level comes into play.
Operational
The operational level is the bridge between the tactics and the strategy. Whereas the strategical objectives produce broad, general goals; the operational level produces narrower goals to achieve the strategic objectives. For instance, if your strategy in football is to put more points on the scoreboard than the opponent, your operational objectives may outline goals such as “always move the ball towards the in-zone” and “stop the opponent from advancing towards their in-zone.”
Tactical
Finally, tactics are the specific forces, equipment, and supplies used to achieve the operational objectives. Or rather, what plays will we run to advance the ball towards our goal line. Tactics are where the rubber meets the road, but in the absence of an overall strategy, they can actually drive you off a cliff.
Pulling it all together
The level of war concept is not foreign to the fire service. Most of our large-scale events are organized based on the military model. Even a simple house fire has elements ingrained into the construct. For example, on a house a fire our strategic objectives are to remove all savable life from the structure and contain the fire to the room or building of origin. The operational objectives are to perform a primary search, ventilate, and extinguish the fire. And finally, the tactics are how the crews will achieve the search, vent, and extinguishment of the fire.
The tactics performed are typically chosen by the crews based on the environment they face. Like a well-trained football team, fire crews will have numerous tactics to choose from depending on the situation.
Bridging to an active shooter
Now, this begs the question; what are the strategic objectives and operational objectives during an ASHER event?
Strategic
Fortunately, the military has assisted with this as well. Following the battle of Mogadishu in 1993, think the “Black Hawk Down” movie, the Joint Special Forces created guidelines for injured soldiers in combat zones known as Tactical Combat Causality Care, or simply known as “TCCC.”
Following the Columbine school shooting in 1999, TCCC was eventually adapted to civilian guidelines in 2011 known as Tactical Emergency Causality Care, or simply “TECC.”
TECC became the civilian foundation for operations in a hostile environment, and it outlines two very straightforward strategic objectives:
- Stop the killing!
- Stop the dying!
Operational
And although the strategic objectives are very clear, they lack the operational details of how do we “stop the killing” and “stop the dying.” In comes the Hartford Consensus, a joint effort between the TCCC committee members and the American College of Surgeons. In 2012, the Hartford Consensus outlined operational objectives packaged into the acronym known as THREAT .
THREAT simply lists out five operational objectives in order:
T -Threat suppression
H -Hemorrhage control
RE -Rapid Extrication
A -Assessment
T- Transport
Eventually, the THREAT acronym becomes a national standard, offering operational objectives to law enforcement, fire, and EMS.
Tactics
And finally, what tactics will achieve the THREAT objectives? What are “the detailed actions and maneuvers that lead to cumulatively the achievement of the strategic objectives?”
Here is where it gets a little messy. Putting the carriage before the horse, we actually developed a tactic prior to outlining our strategic or operational objectives.
Following the Columbine shooting in 1999, Arlington County fire is credited with creating a groundbreaking tactic known as “Rescue task force,” or RTF. RTF is based on diplomatic protection where EMS providers are escorted into a threat zone surrounded by four law enforcement (L.E.) members in a diamond formation.
Applauded for its ability to break classical mindsets in police and fire/EMS, RTF created a route to get caregivers into threat zones they typically wouldn’t go. But created prior to the fire service’s understanding of its broad objectives, RTF had no real metrics to judge its effectiveness. Like a football team that always punts because it doesn’t understand how the game is scored, an RTF may be “always doing things right, but not always doing the right thing.”
You should never go to war with just one tactic.
The one right way
Widespread consensus on untested tactics or ideas is not uncommon. In the scientific world it’s know as an “information cascade.” An information cascade occurs when people seek a solution to a novel problem and latch onto the first answer they find. Eventually, one concept gains momentum, crowding out the idea space for any additional solutions. A tactic carried by an information cascade becomes the “the one right way,” or even worse, a “best practice” without any empirical evidence of effectiveness.
Information cascades become so powerful that they overwhelm personal judgment, creating an internal narrative that says “It’s more likely that I’m wrong than everyone else. Therefore, I will do as they do.” Information cascades cause market bubbles, poor medical practices, and bizarre fashion statements like bell-bottom pants.
The fire service’s strong desire to latch onto “best practices” often creates momentum for ideas or tactics that have never been tested. The best way to overcome an information cascade it to test the concept against a real-life event and see if the tactic meets the operational objectives. For example, would an RFT meet the THREAT objectives of the Sandy Hook shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, or the Pulse Night Club shooting?
The Test
A test of the RTF is exactly what the Sacramento Fire Department just did. Using the Pulse Night Club shooting as a guide, the drill involved 26 shooting victims spread out over five connected rooms with a 200-foot drag to an evacuation zone. A total of 36 full repetitions were measured against the THREAT objectives. Basically, they recorded how fast firefighters entered the building, controlled hemorrhage, extricated the live victims, assessed, and transported.
Experience tells us that an RTF is slow to form up, logistically heavy, and ultimately unneeded for a single shooter locked down in the bathroom such as in the Pulse nightclub shooting. So the Sacramento Fire took an organic approach, starting with the strategic and operational objectives, they asked what “detailed actions and maneuvers” would most effectively suppress the threat of one shooter, control the hemorrhage of 26 people, rapidly extricate all live victims, assess them, and transport them.
Rescue Strike Team
Eventually, the tactics of the drill were divulged into what can be called a Rescue Strike Team (RST). “Strike team” because it consists of “like forces” as opposed to the mixed forces of a “Task force.” The diamond formation of the task force was logistically heavy and objectively slow. Meaning an RTF took one L.E. personnel for every one fire personnel to form a diamond, and when they did, hemorrhage control and extrication were slow and cumbersome.
The RST split the two different forces so they can achieve their objectives in their natural movement; L.E. to first suppress the threat and fire to control hemorrhage, extricate, assess, and transport. Splitting the forces required less L.E. and allowed the fire crews freedom of movement in secured zones.
The RST in the drill consisted of 5 crews, or 20 firefighters escorted by a single L.E. agent into a secure corridor, allowing the remaining L.E. agents to contain the shooter. Instead of requiring 1 L.E. agent for every firefighter, the RST only used the number of L.E. agents required to suppress the threat plus one to escort the firefighters.
So how did the RST stand up against the RTF in a closed box with a single shooter? Whereas an RTF takes roughly 45 mins to enter, treat, and remove victims; the RST took less than 12 mins to enter, treat, and remove ALL victims. Yes, you read that correctly. A group of 20 firefighters was given freedom of movement in five secured rooms, located, secured tourniquets, applied chest seals, and removed all live victims over a 200 foot drag to an evac zone in less than 12 minutes every time. The fastest teams removed the all victims in less than seven minutes from the time the RST entered the building.
The RST meets all operational objectives including the final triage and transports off the scene in less than 28 mins every time. Given the environment of the pulse nightclub, an RST is much more effective that the RTF.
Does that mean the RST is the one right way? No! The RST is just one more tactic to meet the objectives given a single shooter in a closed box. Like a forward pass is an alternative to always punting in football, the RST is one alternative to an RTF.
The Take-Away
The main takeaway is that tactics are driven by your operational objectives and shaped by the environment. You don’t punt when you are one yard from your goal line and you don’t always throw a forward pass. We should have a number of tactics so we can flex to the environment, including open spaces, buildings with multiple shooters, and events with multiple locations.
Developing additional tactics is a normal evolutionary process the fire service has always faced. We’ve developed multiple ways to vent a building and multiple ways to enter a house; we shouldn’t lock into one play and do it over and over again regardless of the circumstances. Rather, we should figure out how to meet our objectives. We have a job to do; “Stop the dying!” How do we rapidly control bleeding and provide movement for a mass number of victims? I can tell you from experience, it doesn’t happen very fast in a diamond formation. Once the threat has been suppressed, we only need to know one thing; “where is my working area?” We will choose our tactics from there.
