Company History
Mission
To maximize efficiencies through innovative training and simple effective equipment, that compliments tactics, techniques, and procedures, in order to enhance survivability and effect mission accomplishment.
Vision
The definition of combat is to oppose vigorously or to fight against. Whether your enemy is a terrorist on a foreign shore, a thug on your street corner, a natural disaster, or a commercial competitor, you engage in some form of combat when confronting that challenge. Through mobile training teams, specialty forums, and counsel from vetted experts, Contact Front will provide a bridge between the military, first-responder community, and the market place in order to facilitate knowledge sharing and exploit efficiencies in strategy and procedures beneficial in all forms of combat.
Company History
For over twenty years, firefighters have been developing unique and innovative tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s) in an effort to facilitate the rapid and efficient extraction of personnel under hostile conditions. With nearly every bell presenting a potentially immobile victim in a residential dwelling, confined space, or urban structure, and with the ever increasing possibility of that victim being one of their own laden with heavy bulky gear, fire departments nationwide have remained committed to learning how to save themselves, civilians, and other firefighters.
Throughout years of learning hard lessons, and validating TTP’s on the unforgiving fire-ground, fire departments have emerged with practical solutions to casualty extraction and structural rescue in dangerous, and often time sensitive, environments. One of these solutions has been the implementation of rapid intervention teams (RIT), task organized elements with mission critical equipment, specially trained to respond to and execute personnel recovery and transport in the most efficient and effective manner.
RIT training focuses on closing with the casualty, introducing a mechanical advantage, extricating the victim if necessary, and then extracting them from the life-threatening situation. All too often, when saving their own, the increased weight of the firefighter from necessary equipment, has become a deadly obstacle. For this reason, RIT is grounded in mechanical advantage principles that can be employed in seconds without the burden of additional gear further impacting the fireman’s load.
Contact Front was formed in 2007 when William C. Wennberg, a former Marine infantry officer, and Edward Hojnicki, Jr., a 30-year veteran firefighter and Battalion Chief in Wilmington, DE, realized that our military, when tasked with casualty extraction during tactical operations, was facing similar challenges as firefighters, and could benefit from RIT training and equipment. With Hojnicki as one of the fire services’ leading RIT experts, and Wennberg having served in direct support of Operation Enduring Freedom and a combat veteran of Iraqi Freedom, they were able to integrate best practices of the fire service into a tactical package geared toward pre-deployment training.
In addition to the training, Contact Front examined the specialized equipment of the RIT in an effort to find light-weight, low-cost solutions to the dilemma presented by the recent increase of the combatant’s load. Contact Front was determined to identify equipment that would not further burden this load but instead would introduce a mechanical advantage to accommodate the Golden Hour. Nylon webbing, a staple of the RIT tool bag, appeared to provide the most utility and versatility, with the lowest impact to the individual load.
With the current combat load of today’s Warfighter well in excess of fifty pounds, lifting, carrying, and dragging techniques, as referenced in FM 4-25.11 (2002), Appendix B, such as, the ironically named “fireman’s carry,” are not only ineffective and obsolete, but risk injury to the combatant(s) performing the transport. Field and other litters, although useful, are impractical in numbers on the objective, and have a critical impact to the combat load, effecting both mobility and the ability to provide accurate fire. Contact Front offers material and training solutions to this capability gap and is committed to finding solutions to enhance the survivability of the operator in order to ensure maximum firepower is brought to bear on the enemy.
As well as pre-deployment training for the military and other combative agencies, Contact Front provides fundamental and leadership training for all levels of first responders, and leadership seminars and team building workshops for business executives in order to enhance corporate performance .
Contact Front will continue to bridge these agencies where applicable expertise can be shared both ways, because, in many ways, we are all in the same business.