The recent attack on US Embassy personnel in Mexico provides unique lessons learned from an incident where all survived.

These are our thoughts and lessons learned from the incident

Basics

Although the Embassy personnel found themselves in a bad scenario (in the kill zone) the combination of a skilled driver and armored vehicle saved their lives. The armored vehicle did its job, absorbed the initial blast of fire, which gave the driver time to do his job.

The driver kept the vehicle moving, he realized that the path of escape was to the rear, and maneuver the vehicle, reverses through some obstacles, rammed some cars to exit the kill zone, not a bad days work.

The incident has been well documented; this is a presentation from Stratfor’s Vice President Fred Burton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip7XvjPUnd0&feature=youtu.be

Lessons Learned

In a high-risk environment (Mexico), you need to be an armored vehicle. In this scenario, the vehicle did its job as stated above.

If you are in an armored car be in one that can stop the rounds that will be shot at you

Be in an armored vehicle with run-flat inserts that can maintain the controllability of the vehicle

Have a trained driver that can quickly recognize a problem and make the correct decisions.

Have a driver that has been trained to maneuver a vehicle in a confined space, in a short time frame while under stress and have that ability measured to standard. Driving fast around a race track is fun, but not productive.

Suggestions

In many vehicle ambushes, the path of escape is to the rear, which requires the driver to back up as fast as possible. Backing up fast is a hard skill to master, it is sensitive to vehicle design, and if not done correctly can get you into more trouble than you were originally in. Some thoughts on backing up

Backing up quick – real quick is very difficult

Visibility to the rear is as important as seeing what is in front of you. Make sure you can see behind you before bad things happen in front of you.

Backing up in a straight line bears no resemblance to backing up around vehicles. A driver needs to learn to back up quickly around obstacles.

Backing up in a four-door police package vehicle bears no resemblance to backing up in a high center of gravity SUV, if an SUV is the operational vehicle of choice, the driver must have experience driving the vehicle in reverse.

Backing up in four-door police or high center of gravity SUV vehicle bears no resemblance to backing up in a 10,000-pound armored vehicle. Same as above -practice.