Point:

  It all varries according to what you are doing.

  Going through an area sown heavily with mines or those cluster bombs about every half hour.  Same goes for heavy boobytrapped areas.

  Open terrain without action, all day, but really shift every hour or two, or even four even.

  Where there is contact, every stop <which is about every hourly>

  Jungle operations or urban operations again every hour or two tops.

  If the patrol is a fireteam sized patrol, then the point man/rifleman is stuck.

  Also, if you have a particularly good point man with the luck and skill and that is his thing, then let him run with it.  I tend to think in T2K and somewhat in the real world people fit into their roles and take pride in them and are often loathed to leave them.  Drew for example has fallen into the role of machinegunner.  He isn't but he has done pretty well, he carries the weapon and it suites him.  Had I made him a regular rifleman, given him some good stealth or recon skills and you freaks had issued him a rifle instead of a machinegun he could have easily fallen into the role of point man, moving light, slow and noticing everything all aided by some good roles of the dice.



  Now to response to Dawids question:

  A security circle:

  At night or poor visibility, it is automatic!  And it is a tight circle, where everyone goes into the prone with feet touching or ankles crossed.  On patrols that go for long periods you will fall asleep when going prone, so the feet touching or ankles crossed, well when one person moves you will nudge the guys next to you, which will wake them, but also it allows you to be in close contact to whisper instructions and pass the word if word needs to be passed.  And you can keep track of your team mates so no one gets left behind.

  As for daylight and in the open, again this should be automatic.  The unit should keep wide dispersion, this team should have a circle of about 50m at least in diameter.  This again should be AUTOMATIC!  When you stop, the members face outboard and drop to a knee or even utilize existing cover when available.

  And the patrol leaders should not stop them in wide open areas or places that would be good places for attack or allow them to be observed and targeted.

  I would also suggest that since we are moving along a road, our route of march will follow it and be in more of a column formatuion, we do not adjust our positions to much.  Instead, we form more or less a cigar shape along the road.


  When we do stop, the patrol leaders should go to the center of the circle for a meeting to determine the pace, the direction etc.  In open terrain and following roads this should be done eh, hourly, or even at specific locations.  In jungles, woods or urban this should be done from bend in the road to bend in the road, or from specific location to location, thus we move in short bounds.  And we should stop eh, every fifteen minutes to half hour since the chances of getting misdirected is much greater.

  And then we also have to consider where the support weapons are in the route of march.

  In our case support weapons are;  Automatic Rifles, Machineguns, Grenadelaunchers and RPGs.  They should NEVER be in the very front, they should be in the slack position.  The point man or element will engage, boom!  Firefight begins,  These support weapons will immeidately lay down fire on the enemy in order to gain fire superioroity, to defeat or drive off the enemy, or to act as a base of fire to pin them down and then allow the rest of the team to withdraw or manuver  to hit whomever we engage from their flanks.

  Now, what does the team do if they need to break contact?

  What are the signals?  What do we do?

  We get ambushed?

  Near ambush?

  Far Ambush?

  Mechanical?


  What about a meeting engagement on the road?  We encounter a patrol by the barron as we come around a bend and neither of us are expecting it?

  We run into civilians on the road?

  Those are considerations we should think about, plan and know what to do before hand.

Like, who is on the search team in an ambush.  ie, who goes forward to search and secure the enemy dead, wounded and POWs.

  Cover team, who autoamticaly goes to take a cover position while the other members of the teamdo their thing.  <The snipers and machinegunners>

  When caught in an ambush or surprise engagement,

  Macheingunners:  return fire immediatly while everyone else attacks or withdraws which is shouted!  When the other team members have cover they cover for the machinegunners to withdraw.

  When setting up a camp,  team goes to 25% on watch, with the cover personel being the first to watch.  OR, the machinegunner set up to watch and cover, snipers autoamticaly go to scouting the area while the others set up camp.

SOP on equipment.  Machinegunners and radiomen carry their primary weapon/radio other team members hump the sustainment gear,  like e-tools, sleeping bags etc.

Next discussion:
  Mines and boobytraps!
  What happens when we hit them?

According to Blackadder, the protocol is to jump 50 feet into the air and scatter yourself over a wide area...