Following the economics of both war and business, many veterans of the Special Operations and intelligence community have retired from their service to their country and struck out in the private industry. These endeavors are wide-ranging from security work, teaching marksmanship classes, mentoring corporate CEOs in leadership skills, and much more.
We created CIV_GRP to do something different, to push the envelope a little bit more and challenge our clients. Most of you are likely familiar with various paramilitary themed events in which the participants run obstacle courses, ruck march all night, or even get hazed by former operators. These events replicate Special Operations selection but until now no one has actually formed a course that mimics Special Operations missions.
In fact, our course pushes the limits of even what the military would let soldiers do in training or in the field. The military does great things but as many have lamented, it is a large slow bureaucracy, one that is stuck in a post-World War II mindset. CIV_GRP will challenge civilians and veterans alike by removing artificial constraints and eliminating the silos that govern who is allowed to do what, and when.
Our students will learn both tradecraft and fieldcraft.
Throughout training and the final field training exercise, students will participate in the full cycle of intelligence gathering, target analysis, and direct action. What does that mean? After a few days of training the student will engage in simulated acts of espionage. They will meet role players in coffee shops and bars who they will cultivate as intelligence sources. They will ride subways and pace urban areas while conducting counter-surveillance. They will conduct brush passes on the side walk and find information and gear in hidden cache sites.
Students will play through a realistic training scenario as they gather intel under the pressure of knowing that there is a pending terrorist attack they have to interdict. Once they have collected enough information, they will recce a target, plan a raid, and action that objective using surprise, speed, and violence of action.
Portions of our course will challenge you physically, but we are not going to have you out in a field spraying you with a hose while you hold a rucksack over your head. Think of CIV_GRP as what comes after all of that. We’re going to challenge you mentally and intellectually. We’re going to see how quickly you can learn new skills ranging from source handling to lock picking to small unit tactics, and then we will see how you are able to couple these skills with your own creativity in our field training exercise.
So maybe you’ve taken some tactical carbine courses, maybe you signed up for a selection smoke session, or maybe you have always been curious about the reality of special operations and intelligence operations. Maybe you’ve been wondering what comes next after all those other courses you see out there.
That’s where CIV_GRP comes in.
-Jack Murphy