When you are trying to blend in you must look like you belong in the environment. This means the dress matches what everyone else is wearing. Driving vehicles similar to what everyone else is driving, taking like you belong, etc. It also can mean not giving off an electronic signal different from everyone else’s baseline.
When I was in the Border Patrol our team ended up with a different uniform than the regular line guys would wear, and some of our vehicles were unmarked. This was nice depending on where we were and what we were doing. Occasionally it was an issue. If we were in an area where only Patrol Agents went, in our unmarked vehicles and then got out of the trucks in plain view of the south side spotters, our special uniforms and vehicles were a clue that something was up. Nothing would move and the stuff we were targeting wouldn’t get caught. If we switched to normal uniforms and marked vehicles then the traffic would cross, everything seemed normal and the risk for the bad guys was at baseline.
Early in 2004 we were briefed at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) to be careful when we planned gate duty (One platoon was always on the base to guard it.) Recently a SEAL unit had driven up to another FOB in a Toyota truck at a high rate of speed. Then get shot up. The Marines and soldiers thought they were insurgents. That was the signature they were going for when they were out and about. Well, they didn’t switch it off when they rolled up on regular military guys. Those gate guards weren’t told beforehand on the radio and got rightfully jumpy.
There was a report early in the Ukraine War. The Russians noticed a sudden concentration of cell phones pings with numbers whose area code was from Herefordshire, UK. The Russians leveled the area and among the killed were several former SAS soldiers, the SAS was stationed in Herefordshire. Also destroyed was the arms shipment those men were going to deliver to the Ukrainians. Those foreign numbers did not match the signature of the area.
Electronic signature is now part of the things to be considered. Our government has been using it for most of the GWOT, we used against the insurgents in 2004 when I was there and probably was used earlier than that. J6 has showed how much the government can use it in the United States, plan accordingly.
When I went to Ukraine all the locals used cell phones. No one was using a radio. The radio frequencies were monitored from what we were told. By using local phones, our signature on the environment looked like normal people using phones.
When I was deployed to Iraq in 2004, we didn’t have enough radios to use inside the platoon. We supplemented by using cheap Motorola walkie-talkies. The kind that came in the blister packs at Walmart’s and chain stores like that. One of those radios was in the front of every vehicle, so we could immediately talk when doing vehicle-based patrolling. Those radios would beep and beep more rapidly if we got close to an IED, roadside bomb, and the bomb would detonate about 20 yards ahead of the first vehicle to pass carrying one of those radios. We quickly figured out that there was a correlation between the two. It was suspected the radios being cheap and available everywhere were being used to trigger detonations, and our radios were triggering them to go off. As a result, our radios were taken away for our safety. The problem was, the bombs were detonated on command, instead of in front of us they began hitting vehicles and wounding us.
The moral of this story is that the environment did not have anyone using those frequencies but us and the insurgents. Later on, there was a group that would travel through the area and blast on all frequencies known for commanding detonations, and they set a lot of stuff off this way, undoubtably saving lives.
As you look around the area you are in, see if anyone or anything doesn’t belong with the areas baseline. Those anomalies are worth investigating more or at least being aware of. Are they just tourists? Are they tweekers coming down your road to steal chainsaws and tools to sell for drugs? Maybe you find something is amiss or maybe it’s just a weirdo. Both are worth keeping an eye on.
When you are evaluating your own signature, compare yourself and your equipment to the normal baseline. Compare price tags too. I have seen a group of people trying to look benign by wearing plain colored clothing. The problem was they were wearing designer hunting clothing. While it was solid colored (not camouflaged, that would have really stood out), it all also had the brand names on it. $150 shirts and $250 dollar pants weren’t normal, especially for the men in that area.
At a minimum you don’t want to be bothered by a Karen type or the riffraff. Both groups can sense an outsider, as they seem to prefer to harass and attack victims that will have the least amount of support. Outsiders to an area are least likely to be defended by a community.
At the most it will keep you secure. Across the spectrum of my military and law enforcement security related work, the ability to detect something not outside of the baseline has been the best tool for keeping us safe and stopping threats before they could cause further issues. If you are security conscious and haven’t been considering environmental signature, both theirs and yours, now may be time.
-Joseph
Outpost 95 