Patrolling and Tactical Movement

FLD 230 · Fieldcraft, Tactics, and Soldiering · Level 200 (Phase Two)

A Royal Army College course in moving, observing, and operating as a section in the field.

Course length: 10 hours, studied online and asynchronously at the student's own pace, together with any in-person practical instruction and assessment the course requires.

Foreword

Everything else a soldier learns has to be carried somewhere on foot, in the open, as part of a team, often without certainty about what lies ahead. Tactical movement and patrolling are how that is done. They are the craft of moving a body of soldiers through real ground so that the team stays together, stays secure, sees more than it is seen, and arrives able to do its task and to act lawfully when it matters. A section that can do this is a soldier's first and most useful tactical unit; one that cannot is a crowd with weapons, loud, strung out, and surprised.

These skills are old and unglamorous, and they reward patience rather than dash. Tactical movement is not speed for its own sake; it is controlled motion, which keeps a section in hand and ready. Patrolling is not an advanced skill kept for special troops; it is the ordinary method by which soldiers move, watch, secure ground, and find things out. For the Royal Kaharagian Army, a small and lightly armed force, these are exactly the skills a search line, a cordon, a relief task, and an exercise all rest on. This course teaches the thinking and the drills; the doing is rehearsed, safely and in person, through airsoft military simulation and certified on the ground.

Who this course is for

Every member of the Royal Kaharagian Army who works in the field, of every rank. Tactical movement and patrolling are team skills, and a section is only as good as its weakest mover, so all train them together. The course is a Phase Two course: it assumes Recruit Training (Phase One) and builds directly on Navigation and Fieldcraft, which it treats as a prerequisite. It expands the Basic Training Manual's modules on movement and concealment, on tactical movement and formations, on understanding the ground, and on disciplined presence and observation, and it is the tactical home of the Army's airsoft military-simulation training.

What you will be able to do

By the end you will be able to:

• explain why tactical movement values control over speed, and state the principles that govern moving under uncertainty;
• read ground for cover, dead ground, and a route, and use the ground to move and to halt;
• choose and hold a section formation, with correct spacing and arcs, and say why each is used;
• move as an individual and as a section, including fire and movement and bounding overwatch, in principle;
• treat a halt as an active moment, post observation, and run a simple observation post;
• understand the purpose and types of patrol, and what a patrol must prepare, brief, and rehearse;
• describe the conduct of a patrol, including routes, rendezvous, danger areas, and the actions-on; and
• patrol among people lawfully and with courtesy, and run an honest debrief that turns a patrol into learning.

How the course works

The course is self-paced and studied online, lesson by lesson, with a reflection at the end of each. But tactical movement and patrolling are practical, collective skills, and they are mastered only by doing them: on the ground, as a team, under instruction, and certified in person. The Army's way of training them safely is airsoft military simulation (milsim), conducted under the Airsoft Milsim Safety and Conduct Standard, with trained marshals, eye protection, and the honour system. This course gives the knowledge those rehearsals rest on, so that when you take the field you are practising a craft you already understand rather than meeting it cold.

A note on what this course is, and is not

This is a course in moving and operating as a disciplined team in the field, not a course in closing with and destroying an enemy. The RKA is a humanitarian and home-defence force; its patrols search, observe, secure, reassure, and report far more often than anything else. The drills taught here, formations, contact drills, danger-area crossings, exist so that a section stays safe and in control if something goes wrong, and so that lawful restraint is kept under pressure. The use of force is governed throughout by the Law of Armed Conflict course and the Rules for the Use of Force; the bearing of arms by the Weapon Handling and Safety course. Tactics here serve security and legitimacy, never aggression.

Structure

How it fits with the other courses

This course is the meeting place of much that is taught elsewhere. It rests on Navigation and Fieldcraft for route, ground, and concealment; it applies Signals and Field Communication for the orders, hand signals, and reports that hold a patrol together; it is bounded by the Law of Armed Conflict and the Rules for the Use of Force wherever force is in question; it assumes Weapon Handling and Safety for the carriage of arms; and it carries Combat First Aid for the casualty a patrol must be ready to treat and move. A patrol is the synthesis of a soldier's whole training, which is why it comes in Phase Two, once the parts are in hand.

A note on the RKA's reality

A Kaharagian patrol is most often a search team on the high ground, a presence patrol reassuring a community after a storm, a party moving to and around a relief site, or a section on exercise. The same disciplines that keep a patrol safe in theory, spacing, observation, communication, and lawful restraint, are exactly what keep a search line effective and a relief task orderly. This course is taught for that reality, with the harder contact drills kept as the safety net they are, not the purpose.

A note on sources

This is the College's own course. It is built on the Army's own Basic Training Manual and on the British, Canadian, and wider Commonwealth field tradition, written fresh in Kaharagian terms rather than reproduced, and adapted to a small, lightly armed, humanitarian force.

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