Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

This last lesson draws the course together. The lessons before it taught safety, the parts of a weapon, loading and unloading, handling discipline, the theory of the shot, range safety, care of the weapon, the ammunition it fires, and the clearing of stoppages. This one steps back from drill and mechanism to the ethos that gives them meaning: what it is to be a lawful, disciplined, accountable bearer of arms. It is not a lesson in lethality or tactics, and it teaches nothing of the mechanics of firing, which are range-certified in person. It is the lesson on the character and lawful conduct of the soldier who is trusted with arms.

A word at the outset, because it governs every line that follows. Safety is the first word of this course and the last. Everything taught here about the lawful and restrained use of arms rests on, and never replaces, the safe handling drilled through the seven lessons before it. The disciplined use of arms is not a separate subject from safe handling; it is what safe handling is for. A force learns to handle arms with absolute safety precisely so that, on the rare occasion the law allows force, that force is delivered by soldiers in complete control of the dangerous thing in their hands, and is withheld the instant the law requires.

By the end you will be able to explain the trust under which the Army bears arms and what unlimited liability means, describe the limits the law of armed conflict and the Rules for the Use of Force place on the use of arms, work through the disciplined judgement that governs the decision to open fire and to cease it, explain the accountability owed for every round and the restraint that marks a disciplined armed force, state how a weapon is kept secure and never lost from control, state the marks of the professional bearer of arms, and explain how the disciplined use of arms expresses the Army's values and separates a soldier from a danger.

Key Terms

The trust: the unique entitlement, held by the Army alone within the Principality, to bear arms in deliberate action on behalf of the State, and never for private ends.
Unlimited liability: the principle that a soldier undertakes, in the last analysis, to risk their life for a purpose that may bring them no personal gain; the burden that distinguishes military service from every other calling.
Lawful use: the use of arms only as the law allows, within the law of armed conflict in war and within the Rules for the Use of Force at home and in peace.
Minimum force: no more force than is necessary, for no longer than is necessary, reduced or stopped the moment it is no longer needed.
Proportionality: the requirement that the force used is balanced against the threat or the aim, and never exceeds it.
The decision to open fire: the disciplined judgement, made under law, that a real and immediate threat, a warning where the situation permits, proportion, aimed and controlled fire, and an instant ceasefire all hold together before and while a round is fired.
Accountability: the duty to answer for every round fired and every use of force, honestly and fully, through the chain of command and under the ordinary law.
Restraint: the trained capacity to hold fire as surely as to deliver it; the mark of an armed force that is the master of its own force rather than its servant.
Positive control: a weapon kept at all times either made safe or in the hands and under the deliberate command of someone who knows its condition and governs where it points.
Weapon security: the keeping of a weapon and its ammunition so that they are never lost, never stolen, and never out of the lawful holder's control or accounting.
The bearer of arms: the soldier entrusted with a weapon in the service of the State, answerable for its safety, its security, its accounting, and its lawful and restrained use.

The trust under which arms are borne

Begin with the plainest fact about a soldier's weapon: it is not the soldier's own. Within the Principality, the Army alone is entrusted to bear arms in deliberate action on behalf of the State. A weapon in a soldier's hands is a portion of the State's force, placed there for the State's purposes and answerable to the State's authority. The criminal carries a weapon for themselves; the soldier carries an identical thing for everyone, under the law and the chain of command. The weapon looks the same in either hand. What differs wholly is the authority behind it and the trust it expresses.

That trust is accepted under the principle of unlimited liability, the mark that sets military service apart from every other calling. A soldier undertakes, in the last analysis, to risk their life, to kill or to be killed, for a purpose in which they may have no personal interest, because the State and the people it protects require it. This is a grave thing to take on, and the Crown and the Principality owe a corresponding duty of care in return. From it follows the first principle of the bearer of arms: arms are borne in service and under discipline, never for private ends. A soldier does not carry a weapon to settle a quarrel, to gain advantage, to frighten, or to impress. They carry it because the State has entrusted them with it, and they answer for every use of it to the State and its law.

The trust attaches to the soldier in this Army with special force. The Royal Kaharagian Army is a small, lightly armed, humanitarian force, often working among its own people in support of the civil authority. In a small place every soldier is recognised, every weapon noticed, and every act with one remembered. The trust is not an abstraction handed down once at attestation; it is renewed or spent in each encounter a soldier has while armed. A force of this kind has no margin for a soldier who treats the weapon as personal property, and a single misuse can cost the Army a standing it took years to earn.

Lawful use only

A soldier uses arms only within the law, and the law speaks in two registers the bearer of arms must know. They are not interchangeable, and the first discipline of lawful use is knowing which one governs the situation in front of you. In an armed conflict the law of armed conflict applies; at home, in peace, in support of the civil authority, it does not, and the Rules for the Use of Force govern instead. A soldier who reaches for the rules of war on a home street has reached for the wrong book entirely, as the Aid to the Civil Power and Public Order course teaches at length.

The law of armed conflict: the rules on weapons and targets

In armed conflict, the soldier is bound by the law of armed conflict, as the dedicated course teaches in full. The plain rules the soldier carries are few and clear, because the use of arms in war is bounded by the law's rules on what may be used and what may be struck.

The first rule is distinction, the line between a lawful target and a protected person or thing. The soldier directs fire only at lawful targets, and reaches reasonable certainty first that what is being engaged is in fact a lawful target. This is the rule against firing at a shape, a sound, a movement, or a guess. The duty is to look, to confirm, and only then to fire; the round that goes out on a guess is the round that strikes the wrong person, and both the law and the conscience forbid it.

The second rule spares those who are out of the fight. The surrendered, the captured, and the wounded who no longer resist are protected and may not be attacked. The moment an opponent ceases to resist, the lawful object of force is gone, and so is the permission to use it. This rule runs from the field of war straight through to the home street, and it is one of the steadiest tests of a disciplined armed force: force stops with resistance, and not a moment later.

The third rule governs the weapon and its ammunition. The soldier uses only issued arms and ammunition, as they were designed to be used, and never alters a weapon or its ammunition to cause unnecessary suffering. This is the rule Lesson 07 met from the side of maintenance: the weapon is held in the condition the State intends and is changed by no one else, and the law of armed conflict forbids the very modifications that careless tampering might produce. Lawful use of the weapon and proper care of the weapon are, at this point, one discipline seen from two sides.

Lawful use in war is therefore not a vague aspiration; it is a small set of hard rules, kept under pressure, that keep the soldier's force directed only where the law allows. The fuller treatment, with the categories, the protected persons and objects, and the conduct of operations under pressure, belongs to the Law of Armed Conflict course, which this lesson points to rather than reproduces.

The Rules for the Use of Force: restraint at home and in peace

At home and in peace, in support of the civil authority, the soldier is bound by the Rules for the Use of Force. Their spirit is restraint, and they bind every use of force to a set of principles a soldier can carry and apply. Force is used only under lawful authority, in support of and subordinate to the civil power, which on home soil holds primacy. It is used only when necessary to a lawful aim, and only when lesser means have failed or would plainly fail. It uses the minimum needed and lasts no longer than needed, reduced or stopped the moment it is no longer required. It is proportionate to the threat and never more. It observes distinction, directed only at those who present a threat and taking care to protect everyone else. It keeps humanity, never used to punish, to humiliate, or in cruelty, with the wounded and those who have ceased to resist protected and cared for. And it carries accountability, every use answerable afterwards and honestly reported.

These principles drive a graduated response. Wherever the situation allows, a soldier challenges and warns before using force, rising through the steps only as far as necessity demands and falling again as soon as it allows: the disciplined presence of the Army; clear verbal instruction, warning, and de-escalation; proportionate, trained physical control; defensive force against assault; less-lethal means where issued and authorised; and lethal force only as a last resort, only against an imminent threat of death or serious injury, and only when nothing less will serve. A soldier is not required to attempt a lower step where doing so would be unsafe or plainly futile against an immediate, grave threat, but the principles bind throughout. The soldier's right to defend themselves and others against an imminent threat of death or serious injury is never removed, but that defence too must be necessary and use no more force than is reasonable in the circumstances as the soldier honestly believed them to be.

Whether in war or in peace, the through-line is the same: arms are used lawfully, sparingly, and under control, never freely and never in anger. The mission-specific Rules of Engagement issued as orders for a particular operation sit within these limits and the limits of the law; they may narrow what a soldier may do, and a soldier obeys them, but no order and no Rules of Engagement license what the law forbids.

The decision to open fire: a disciplined judgement

At the heart of the lawful use of arms is a single decision, and it is the gravest a soldier makes: whether, in this moment, to open fire. This lesson teaches that decision as a disciplined judgement, not a reflex and not a matter of nerve. It is drawn straight from the Rules for the Use of Force, and it holds five things together, each of which must be true before and while a round leaves the muzzle. Learn them as one connected judgement, the way the marksmanship principles of Lesson 05 are one connected process, because in the moment they are weighed together and not ticked off in turn.

The threat must be real and immediate. Force answers a danger that exists now, not one that is feared, imagined, or merely possible. The soldier confirms that there is in fact a threat, and that it is present and pressing, before force is even in question. Most lawful firing decisions are settled here, because most of the time the honest answer is that the threat is not yet real or not yet immediate, and the lawful course is to wait, to warn, or to withdraw.

A warning is given where the situation permits. Wherever it is safe and possible, the soldier challenges and warns before using force, so that the person may desist and the force may never be needed. The warning is part of the discipline, not a courtesy added to it; it is the step that most often makes the next step unnecessary. It is dispensed with only when giving it would itself be unsafe or plainly futile against an immediate, grave threat, and even then the judgement to omit it is one the soldier must be able to justify.

The force is proportionate to the threat. The response is measured against the danger and never exceeds it. The soldier uses the minimum that will answer, choosing the lowest step on the graduated response that will meet the threat, and reserves lethal force for an imminent threat of death or serious injury when nothing less will serve. Proportion is what keeps force from becoming punishment or excess; it ties the size of the response to the size of the danger, and to nothing else.

The fire is aimed and controlled. If the soldier must fire, fire is aimed and controlled, directed at the threat only, with full account taken of what lies beyond the target. Here the whole of the marksmanship taught in this course, and certified in person on the range, serves its true purpose: not display and not volume, but the control that places the lawful response exactly where the law allows and nowhere else. Wild, unaimed, or excessive fire is both a safety failure and an unlawful one.

The fire ceases the moment the threat ends or surrenders. Force stops the instant it is no longer needed, the moment the threat ceases or the person surrenders or is rendered unable to continue. There is no "one last shot," no firing on after the lawful purpose is spent, no continuing because the blood is up. The discipline to stop is exactly the discipline the range teaches in the authority of "stop," carried from the controlled environment of the range into the gravest moment of operations: when the reason for force is gone, the force is gone with it.

Held together, these five make the decision to open fire a lawful and accountable act rather than an impulse. The figure below sets them out as a simple decision aid drawn from the Rules for the Use of Force. It is a teaching aid for the judgement, not a checklist to be read off under fire; in the moment the soldier weighs it whole, and the habit of weighing it is built long before, in training and in the settled character this course exists to form.

   LAWFUL USE OF FORCE: A DECISION AID
   (from the Rules for the Use of Force; for study, not a field checklist)

      Is there a REAL and IMMEDIATE threat?
                |
        NO -----+----- YES
        |               |
   Do NOT use      Can I CHALLENGE and WARN safely?
   force. Use            |
   presence,      YES ---+--- NO (unsafe or plainly futile)
   word, control;  |          |
   withdraw or     Warn. Did   Proceed to the
   hand to the     it stop     minimum necessary
   civil power.    the threat? response.
                   |
              YES -+- NO
              |        |
         Force not   Use the MINIMUM force, PROPORTIONATE
         needed.     to the threat, at the threat ONLY.
         Stand to,   Mind what is beyond the target.
         report.        |
                   If you must fire: AIMED, CONTROLLED shots.
                        |
                   The MOMENT the threat ENDS or SURRENDERS:
                        |
                   CEASE FIRE. Protect and give first aid.
                   REPORT, honestly and in full.

Accountability for every round

A round, once fired, cannot be recalled. It travels somewhere, strikes something, and is answered for. From this plain fact comes the duty that binds the bearer of arms as tightly as any: accountability for every round fired and for every use of force, the duty to be able to justify it.

Accountability begins before the round is fired, in the discipline that makes the firing justifiable in the first place. A soldier who has held to the decision above, a real and immediate threat, a warning where it could be given, proportion, aimed and controlled fire, an instant ceasefire, has a clear and honest account to give, because the account is simply the truth of what they did and why. The soldier decides as one who will have to answer, and answers as one who decided rightly.

It continues in the report that follows. Every use of force, however small, is recorded and reported through the chain of command as soon as practicable, factually and fully: what was done, why, and with what effect. This is not a bureaucratic burden laid on a hard moment; it is the substance of the accountability the principles require, and it protects three parties at once. It protects the public, by ensuring that force used in their name can be examined. It protects the soldier, because the honest, contemporaneous account is the soldier's truest defence, and the soldier who acted within the law has nothing to fear from a faithful record and everything to lose from a false or absent one. And it protects the Army, whose standing rests on its willingness to be answerable for the force it holds. The honest report after a hard event is the same integrity this College asks on the range, where results are recorded as they fall and never inflated.

Accountability also runs in the ordinary law. The Army is not above the law, and a soldier answers for the force they use not only to the chain of command but, where the law requires, in the ordinary courts, on the same footing as any person. This is not a threat held over the soldier; it is the guarantee that the State's force, in the soldier's hands, remains the people's and the law's. The bearer of arms who understands this does not fear it. They live by it, because it is the same thing as the trust: force held for everyone, under the law, answerable to all.

Restraint: the truest mark of a disciplined armed force

It is natural to think of an armed force by what it can deliver. This lesson asks for the opposite emphasis. The truest mark of a disciplined armed force is restraint: the trained capacity to hold fire as surely as to deliver it. The soldier who can hold fire when the law and the situation require it, as readily as they could fire, is the soldier the State can trust with arms. The one who can only fire is not yet a soldier in the full sense; they are a danger waiting for an occasion.

Restraint is not timidity, and not the absence of skill. It is the higher discipline of which firing is only the lesser half. It takes more training, more character, and more steadiness to withhold force under provocation than to deliver it under threat, because withholding runs against the pull of fear, of anger, and of the urge to be doing something. An undisciplined armed force fires easily and stops late; a disciplined one fires only when it must and stops the instant it may. The whole apparatus of this course, the cardinal rules held under stress, the finger off the trigger until the decision is made, the authority of "stop" obeyed at once, exists to build exactly this: a soldier who is the master of their own force and not its servant.

Restraint is also what makes an armed soldier safe to place among the public. A force that is the master of its force can stand armed in a crowd, in a tense hour, and be a steadying presence rather than a threat, because everyone present can sense, in the soldier's calm and control, that the force they carry will not be loosed except as the law allows. For the Royal Kaharagian Army, a humanitarian force that earns its place by help and by trust, restraint is not a constraint reluctantly accepted. It is close to the whole point. The Army's value is measured less by the force it could deliver than by the force it holds in check, and a soldier's restraint, more than their marksmanship, is what the public meets and remembers.

Weapon security: never losing control of a weapon

Running alongside the lawful use of arms is a duty so basic it can be overlooked, and so serious that its breach is among the gravest failures a soldier can commit: weapon security, the duty never to lose control of a weapon. A weapon and its ammunition are never to be lost, never to be stolen, and never to be out of the lawful holder's control and accounting. A lost or stolen weapon is the State's force passed, by the soldier's negligence, into hands that hold no trust and answer to no law, and the harm it may then do is laid in part at the door of the soldier who let it go.

Weapon security is the same discipline as the positive control taught throughout this course, extended across time and place. Positive control keeps the weapon, at every moment, either made safe or under the deliberate command of someone who knows its state and governs where it points; weapon security keeps that control unbroken between issue and return, the weapon in the soldier's hands or secured in the manner regulation requires. There is no moment when a weapon is simply put down and forgotten, left in a vehicle, set aside in a building, or handed to someone with no right to it. The soldier accounts for the weapon and every round, signs them in and out, secures them when not in use, never leaves them accessible to those who should not have them, and never conceals their whereabouts. The exact drills of carriage, securing, and storage are set in regulation and certified in person; the principle is simple and absolute, that the weapon is never out of the soldier's lawful control.

This duty grows heavier, not lighter, in the settings the Royal Kaharagian Army most often works in. Among the public, in a crowd, in a vehicle, during a relief task or a public-order deployment, the chances to lose contact with a weapon multiply, and a weapon lost in such a place is lost into exactly the situation where it can do most harm. The disciplined bearer of arms therefore treats the keeping of it as a continuous duty that ends only when the weapon is returned and accounted for. To lose a weapon is to break the trust at its most literal point: the State's force, placed in the soldier's keeping, let slip from it.

The marks of the professional bearer of arms

Everything this course has taught gathers into a few marks that distinguish the professional. They are habits, not slogans, and they hold at all times, not only when convenient.

Safety always. The professional never relaxes the cardinal rules, in the field, in the cleaning bay, on the quietest day. Safety is paramount at all times, and no task, hurry, or order overrides it. Positive control always. The weapon is, at every moment, either made safe or under the deliberate command of someone who knows its exact state and governs where it points. There is no unknown third state, and the muzzle never covers what the soldier is not prepared to destroy. Faithful accountability always. The soldier is answerable for the weapon and every round, securing them, signing them in and out, accounting for them, never leaving them accessible, never improvising or concealing, never losing control of them. Lawful, restrained use always. Arms are used only within the law of armed conflict and the Rules for the Use of Force, with the minimum force the situation demands, fire aimed and controlled and ceased the moment the threat ends, sparing those who have ceased to resist.

These marks share a single purpose: that the soldier is never a danger to their own side or to the public. A professional bearer of arms is safe to stand beside, safe to share a patrol with, safe for a national to meet in the street. The careless or the lawless soldier endangers the very people the Army exists to protect, and in a small principality, where every soldier is seen and every incident felt, one such failure can undo much good. The marks of the professional are not decoration; they are precisely what makes an armed soldier a protector rather than a threat.

It is worth saying plainly where these marks are formed. They are formed on the ground, under qualified instruction, in the drills that this course supports but never replaces: the safety precautions, loading and unloading, handling, range conduct, and live firing are taught and certified in person, and nothing in this reading is ever to be practised on a live weapon on its strength. This lesson, and the whole course, is the knowledge layer, the why beneath the drill. The marks are also rehearsed through airsoft military simulation, which is a school of conduct as much as of skill: the member who keeps the muzzle disciplined and the finger off the trigger, who accepts a hit at once and never lets the competitive urge override safety or fairness, is rehearsing the very discipline and restraint the law demands in earnest. But that simulation is training, distinct from and never a substitute for the real-weapon doctrine of this course. Airsoft devices are training equipment, not weapons of war, and the two are never confused. The habits cross over; the things themselves do not.

The ethos: Discipline and Respect for Others

Beneath all of this lie two of the Army's values, and they are the soul of the disciplined use of arms.

The first is Discipline, the subordination of personal considerations to the collective interest. Discipline is what holds the cardinal rules under fatigue and stress, what keeps the finger off the trigger when startled, what makes a soldier prove a weapon clear for the thousandth time with the same care as the first. It is also what holds the decision to fire to its five hard conditions when the blood is up, and what stops the fire the instant the threat is gone. Safe handling and lawful use are discipline made habitual: the calm, deliberate command of a dangerous thing, held steady at the very moments when it would be easiest to let slip.

The second is Respect for Others, in the Army a creed and not merely a legal duty, extending to the wounded, the dead, prisoners, and the civil population, and resting on the truth that the Army is not above the law. Respect for others is why force is used sparingly and never in cruelty, why those out of the fight are spared, why a weapon is never used to frighten or to humiliate, why fire ceases the moment a person surrenders, why the soldier guards the public from the very force they carry. Taken together, Discipline and Respect for Others make the weapon what it ought to be: a grave responsibility, held in trust, handled safely, secured faithfully, accounted for honestly, and used lawfully and sparingly. The weapon belongs to the State; the manner in which it is borne belongs to the soldier, and it is in that manner that the Army's values are seen most plainly.

The capstone: safety, handling, and lawful use as one whole

This is the last lesson of the course, and it is worth seeing the whole at a single glance. The lessons are not separate subjects but one professional whole, joined by the through-line of this lesson: a soldier is entrusted with the State's force, and keeps that trust by holding the force in complete control and using it only as the law allows. Safety, the first and last word, governs every moment a weapon is in the hand; knowing the weapon, the safety precautions, and handling discipline make that safety habitual; the theory of the shot, range safety, and the care of the weapon build the control and reliability that make aimed fire possible and keep the weapon as the law and the State intend. This last lesson is where all of that control turns outward and meets the law: the soldier who can handle arms with absolute safety is the soldier who can be trusted to use them only lawfully, with minimum force, aimed and controlled, ceased the instant the threat ends, and accounted for to the last round; and the soldier who can deliver force is, by the same discipline, the one who can withhold it.

Seen this way, the safe handling taught from the first lesson is not a preliminary that lawful use leaves behind. It is the foundation lawful use stands on, and lawful use is what safe handling was always for. A force that handles arms safely but uses them lawlessly is a danger; a force that means to use arms lawfully but cannot handle them safely is a danger of another kind; only the union of the two makes a soldier the State can arm. The calm, safe, disciplined, lawful, restrained handling of arms is exactly what separates a soldier from a danger, and it is among the truest marks of the professional. That union is the whole teaching of this course, and it is the character this last lesson asks you to carry.

In Practice: The Cordon in the Square

A section is deployed in support of the civil authority during a disturbance in a town square, the police holding primacy and the soldiers there to steady the situation, not to fight it. Watch the ethos of this course in their bearing. Their weapons are carried under positive control, muzzles disciplined, fingers off triggers, never levelled at the crowd, because a muzzle pointed at frightened nationals erases every other good the deployment might do. No weapon is for a moment out of its bearer's hands or control; in a press of people, where a weapon could be snatched or lost, each soldier keeps theirs as close as their own life, because a weapon lost here would be lost into the worst possible place.

Their presence is steady and their manner calm. The first tool is presence, the second a word: where a challenge or a warning will serve, they use it, and most of the time it does, because a clear, firm instruction given early is what stops trouble before force is ever in question. When one man pushes forward and grows violent, the response rises only as far as the threat demands and no further: control, proportionate and trained, not a blow struck in anger. No soldier's hand goes near a weapon, because the threat is not one of death or serious injury and nothing of the kind is in question; to reach for arms here would be neither necessary nor proportionate, and every soldier knows it without being told.

When the man gives up and sits down, no one touches him in anger; he has ceased to resist, the lawful object of force is gone the moment his resistance is, so he is treated accordingly and, where he needs it, given aid. No soldier reaches for a weapon to settle a personal slight, because the arms they carry are the State's, borne in service and under discipline, not their own to spend. Afterwards, every use of force, however small, the control applied to the one violent man, is reported honestly and in full, because the section is answerable for it and the honest account is both the public's protection and their own. Nothing dramatic is required of them, and that is the measure of their professionalism: armed soldiers stood among the public, in a tense hour, were the master of the force they carried, and were a protection rather than a threat, because safety, control, security, accountability, and lawful restraint held without a word being needed to enforce them. The restraint that nobody saw, the fire that never had to be considered, was the day's real achievement.

Check Your Understanding

What is the trust under which the Army bears arms, and what does unlimited liability add to it? Why does it follow that arms are borne in service and never for private ends, and why does the duty to keep a weapon secure and never lose control of it follow from the same trust?
Set out the limits the law places on the use of arms in war and at home, naming the law of armed conflict's rules on targets and weapons and the principles of the Rules for the Use of Force. Then work through the disciplined decision to open fire: what five things must hold together, and what becomes of the fire, and of a person, the moment the threat ends or surrenders?
Explain why accountability for every round, and the duty to be able to justify it, follow from the fact that a round cannot be recalled. Why does the lesson call restraint, the capacity to hold fire as surely as to deliver it, the truest mark of a disciplined armed force, and how do the values of Discipline and Respect for Others underlie the whole?

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This course has argued from the first lesson to the last that the calm, safe, disciplined, lawful, restrained handling of arms is exactly what separates a soldier from a danger, and is among the truest marks of the professional. Looking back across the whole course, write about what kind of bearer of arms you intend to be. Of the marks set out here, safety, positive control, weapon security, faithful accountability, lawful and restrained use, which will take the most discipline for you to hold under pressure? Think in particular about restraint, the holding of fire and the ceasing of it the instant a threat ends: what have you settled now that will help you hold it when it is hardest, and why is the force you hold in check, more than the force you could deliver, the measure of the soldier you are becoming?

Summary

The Army alone is entrusted to bear arms in deliberate action on behalf of the State, accepting the unlimited liability of that service; it follows that arms are borne in service and under discipline, never for private ends, and that a weapon is never lost or let out of the soldier's lawful control.
Arms are used only lawfully, and the soldier must know which law governs: in armed conflict, the law of armed conflict, engaging only confirmed lawful targets, sparing those out of the fight, and never altering a weapon or its ammunition to cause unnecessary suffering; at home and in peace, the Rules for the Use of Force, with lawful authority, necessity, minimum force, proportionality, distinction, humanity, and accountability, rising and falling through the graduated response.
The decision to open fire is a disciplined judgement: the threat must be real and immediate, a warning is given where the situation permits, force is proportionate to the threat, fire is aimed and controlled at the threat only with mind to what lies beyond, and fire ceases the moment the threat ends or surrenders.
Every round is answered for; accountability is the duty to be able to justify each round and each use of force, through an honest report and in the ordinary law, protecting the public, the soldier, and the Army alike.
Restraint, the trained capacity to hold fire as surely as to deliver it, is the truest mark of a disciplined armed force; the soldier who can withhold force as reliably as deliver it is the one the State can trust with arms, and for a humanitarian force the force held in check is the real measure.
The marks of the professional bearer of arms are safety always, positive control always, faithful accountability and weapon security always, and lawful, restrained use always, so that the soldier is never a danger to their own side or to the public; they rest on the Army's values of Discipline and Respect for Others.
Safety is the first and last word, and the safe handling taught from the first lesson is the foundation lawful use stands on; the calm, safe, disciplined, lawful, restrained handling of arms is exactly what separates a soldier from a danger. All handling and use in this course is the knowledge layer; every drill and skill, and all live firing, is taught and certified in person, and the real-weapon doctrine of this course is kept distinct from training by airsoft simulation.

The Disciplined Use of Arms