The Vector Kill Chain
Jeet Kune Do, Fighting Tactics, and Martial Arts
The Vector Kill Chain is an idea in martial arts that enables people to end fights swiftly and efficiently with reduced kinetic force and manpower.
It is a highly unconventional way of looking at hand-to-hand combat and differs from the classic popular arts of today, such as Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, Karate, MMA, etc.
The term “kill chain” is a military concept that identifies the structure of an attack. Conversely, “breaking” an opponent’s kill chain is a method of defense or preemptive action.[1]
Our story begins in the mid-1800s with Richard Jordan Gatling. Gatling was an inventor and spent his time on farms developing machine equipment. During the American Civil War, he was appalled by the death count. He astutely discerned that more soldiers died from exposure than actual gunshots. Based on this observation, he sought to create a technology that could replace the demand for large armies, thus, in turn, reducing death.[2]
To summarize, the logic of the thought process was, in essence, as such:
Increased weapon efficiency = fewer manhours on the battlefield = less exposure = lives saved
As a result of this endeavor, Richard Gatling created the Gatling gun. The Gatling gun is a rapid-fire chain-fed, crank rifle with multi-barrel rotating capability. The rotational capacity is the most novel feature. Its inception marks the beginning of the era of machine guns. The idea of multi-barrel rotating rapid-fire cannons has since evolved and is used for modern state-of-the-art weaponry in the US military.
How can we borrow the idea of rotational attack in rapid-fire sequence from the realm of gunnery and apply it in martial arts? To answer this question, let’s wind forward from the 1800s to the 1980s. In the 1980s, the elite branches of the United States government had a similar conundrum as Richard Gatling. How do we increase hand-to-hand combat efficiency to shorten the training cycle and reduce the length of the engagement to end fights quickly, efficiently, and lethally while lowering the risk of exposure? Once again, the same formula resurfaces:
Increased weapon efficiency = fewer manhours on the battlefield = less exposure = lives saved
It was the Navy Seals in the late ’80s, led by their instructor Paul Vunak, who had the first Richard Gatling breakthrough in hand-to-hand fighting technology. The method is called the RAT, it is a streamlined version of Bruce Lees Jeet Kune Do, and it is still used today as a premier method of self-defense training.
What makes the RAT system so unique is rather than focusing on just applying striking and wrestling techniques as most classic martial arts such as Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, Karate, and MMA, it instead makes time and distance the weapon. When the combat field is utilized with time and distance as weaponry, this is referred to as the Time-distance Theater. The theater of attack not being limited to a series of three-dimensional environmental parameters, such as a bar, an octagon, a street corner, or a room, but as a four-dimensional attack vector. A vector in martial arts is the orientation between you and your opponent based on the distance of your relative positions and movement across time. Time and distance is the most extraordinary weapon a martial artist can unleash on their adversary.
In comes the Vector Kill Chain. The Vector Kill Chain is comprised of five vectors, each representing a barrel in our rapid-fire, chain-fed, martial arts hand-to-hand combat solution.
The five vectors of the Vector Kill Chain are:
A vector is composed of movement and firepower. The movement can be either standup or ground. The firepower can be either empty hands or weapons. The Vector Kill Chain principle is ubiquitous across all implementations.
Each vector acts as a link in the chain. Using them sequentially in combination creates the Gatling effect. No different than a chain of ammunition fed into the Gatling gun, vectors are strung together like a long strand of high-caliber bullets. One feeds the other. The pace at which you crank them out is the tempo you run the fight. This sequential overlap of vectors applied together creates the Curve of Attack, a four-dimensional representation of the line of attack used in most classic martial arts.
Every vector has its tactical role in the engagement and is designed to elicit specific results on an opposing actor. The output of each sets up the next. Ergo, positioning sets up entry, entry sets up pressure, pressure sets up the objective, and the objective sets up the clear.
The following diagram illustrates all five vectors within the Time-Distance Theater (TD-Theater for short), the curve of attack, with the x-axis as the distance to an actor, a relative position between opponents, and the y-axis as the length of engagement. The arrows or trajectory of the path of travel in the Time-Distance Theater represents the vectors.
While a single chain can be a devastating proposition in and of itself, the rotational concept of the Gatling gun arises when we start looping the five vectors. When the vectors are looped or repeated, the true Gatling effect occurs. We call this application the EPOC Loop.
The following illustrates the Vector Kill Chain as a loop, taking shape as a Gatling-style barrel.
Understanding vectors and their applied usage is critical in deploying state-of-the-art tactics in martial arts. Vectors are defined as Level 5 on the Hierarchy of Decisiveness. The application of these principles allows the practitioner to yield very high-tempo surgical strikes against bad actors, increasing their natural weapon efficiency while minimizing the number of manhours required, thereby reducing exposure to harm thus increasing our odds of survival.
Once again, at risk of redundancy, the thought formula is:
Increased weapon efficiency = fewer manhours on the battlefield = less exposure = lives saved
The Vector Kill Chain is supported by some of the most significant theories on warfare, notably John Boyd’s theory of fast transients. John Boyd was a United States Airforce Colonel and one of the most influential war theorists of the modern era, in the same league as Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz. Boyd’s notion of fast transient attacks correlates directly with the Time-Distance Theater construct and high-tempo vector strikes.
In addition, the Vector Kill Chain adheres to the “Miller Four” principle. The Miller Four is an idea born by Rory Miller, a former Corrections Officer, CERT leader, contractor in Iraq, and author of several books. Mr. Miller asserts that the strength and effectiveness of fighting concepts and techniques in martial arts as being able to meet at least four criteria.
- The response must strengthen your position.
- The response must weaken your opponent’s position.
- The response must minimize damage to you.
- The response must maximize damage to your opponent.
All four bastions of the Miller Four are covered when applying the Vector Kill Chain.
The Vector Kill Chain is beyond kicking, punching, triangle choking, omoplata, and the guard. These are examples of tools. While tools are necessary for skilled fighting, they constitute the lowest level of the Hierarchy of Decisiveness. Tools are like owning a car, whereas the Vector Kill Chain provides the road map to drive the car on the road to victory.
For more details on each vector and its application, see:
For more reading on the Vector Kill Chain, please refer to Scott Gehring’s Strategic Engagement of Force.
References
[2] Gatling Gun — Date, Inventor & Usage — HISTORY
About the Author
Scott Gehring is a Senior Combat Instructor in the Art Contemporary of Jeet Kune Do, a 5th Degree Blackbelt in Kenpo Karate, and an expert in multiple mixed martial arts.
Check out the following resources to learn more about Scott:
