Special Tactics: Squad-Level Infantry Rural Combat

This book is designed to teach combat leaders proven tactics, techniques and procedures for defeating a real-world, thinking enemy on the battlefield through fire, maneuver and close combat. This book is intended to be useful for any infantry unit in both high-intensity and low intensity conflict. The majority of topics discussed in this book are not covered in official doctrinal publications and if they are covered, they are covered only very generally. Therefore, infantry leaders should be able to simply “plug in” most of the techniques and concepts in this book into their existing doctrine and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) in order to increase real-world combat effectiveness.

Doctrine, by design, leaves a degree of flexibility when it comes to the specific ways to fight and win in real combat. The intention is that doctrine provides a general guideline and commonly understood processes but it is up to individual leaders to refine their own tactics and fighting skills to fit specific real-world mission requirements. Unfortunately, there are few resources to help leaders with this difficult second task and units often have little time to practice fighting under realistic conditions. Special Tactics aims to help fill that knowledge gap. This book is part of that effort.

This book covers a wide variety of tactics, techniques and procedures for infantry and recon units operating in a rural environment. Topics include:

•    Different options for task organization and unit structure
•    Tactical movement formations
•    Movement techniques, guard elements and bounding
•    Tactical route planning and navigation
•    Tactical use of terrain
•    Battle drills and immediate action response
•    Offensive combat maneuvering
•    Three-element combat maneuvering
•    Defensive combat