CAF Doctrine 2 - Section Battle Drills

Dent 2025.

Series

1. Prepare for Battle

Prepare for Battle is one of the most important battle drills as it allows the section to establish comms, organization and leadership roles.

Section leader will assign a role to each member as needed for the tasking.

Have the section line up and "fall in" on the section radio with the following information:

name
role
team
assault group

for example:

dent, rifleman, charlie 2, assault group 2

dent, 2IC, delta one, assault group 2

Note: using a nearby wall or fence makes this simpler to arrange, rather than telling people to line up without any direction in the open.

See CAF Doctrine 1 - Section design for more information on structuring the Section.

2. React to Effective Enemy Fire

Effective enemy fire is fire which would cause casualties if the section continued on its course, this drill deals with how to react to it.

Double Tap roughly in the direction of the contact
Dash a few steps
Down
Crawl into a baseline with the section
Observe both enemy and friendly locations
Fire engage the enemy
Communicate the enemy position using the [GRI/GRIT] format

3. Locate the Enemy

This drill is carried out when the section has come into contact with the enemy, but the exact enemy location or size is unknown.

4. Win the Firefight

Once the section has taken cover, located the enemy and has begun to return fire, the section commander must now take control of the section and win the firefight.

Have the members crawl into a "baseline" position aligned against the enemy and prepare to approach.

See Firing rate.

5. The Approach

Once the section has suppressed the enemy enough to allow movement, the section commander must give a set of quick orders to get the section moving towards the position from which they will directly assault the enemy.

Utilize suppression and quick bounding maneuvers to close with the enemy.

This can be executed with Skirmish Movement Orders.

6. The Assault

This drill commences when the section arrives at the assault position or to within grenade throwing range of the objective.

Depending on the ground and the enemy use your discretion.

The traditional example of "Charlie take the trench" would be having the Charlie Fire team enter the target trench and clear it while the rest of the section isolates the target and provides local security.

7. Consolidation

Regrouping is the final stage of any assault. The section commander retakes command and control of the section as a whole.

The section should consolidate past any objective assaulted.

Consolidation should never happen on a position the section has just assaulted. The enemy knows their own positions and could hit you with IDF if you linger. Complete the assault and move on a further 100m or more to consolidate.

Once in a consolidation position, the section should set up in a defensive posture, while the section IC retakes command and does the following:

Orders the section in a defensive posture. He may also move the section
forward some distance to other cover
Radio a situation report (SITREP) to Platoon HQ
Observes and prepares anticipatory orders for possible counter-attack
Radio up the administrative report (ADREP) with the 2ICs data

2IC does the following, concurrently:

Gather ammo consumed reports from the fire teams for the ADREP

Appendix

GRI/GRIT

Group What individuals or part of the organization is to fire
Range Range to the target
Indication Direction to target, landmark, trace rounds, etc, (Annex D)
Type of fire (rate)

Firing rate

Rate of fire

Rapid 1 round every 3 seconds
Normal 1 round every 6 seconds
Slow 1 round every 12 seconds

For the SAW, instead of a round, fire a burst of 3 to 5 rounds.

Skirmish Movement Orders

Once the target and direction are indicated, the section is capable of managing their own movement.

A bound is normally 5 to 10 meters
You must avoid converging, maintain spacing as you advance

The three movement commands are:

SECTION SECTION SECTION

Movement by Assault Groups within the Section.

GROUP GROUP GROUP

Movement by Teams within the Assault Groups.

TEAM TEAM TEAM

Movement by members within the Teams.

Contact Report, formal

Extract from B-GL-309-003/FT-001 page 3-2-28

Contact Reports. Contact with the enemy must be reported at once. If involved in a fire fight, the short radio message "CONTACT -WAIT OUT" gives warning to other call signs on the net who must then minimize radio transmissions. This must be followed quickly by a full contact report.

Figure 3-2-4 below describes the sequence

Contact Report by radio:

1, THIS IS 11. CONTACT WAIT OUT

Wait out Serves as a warning to clear the air.
This initial report is enhanced as quickly as possible.

1, THIS IS 11. CONTACT

Introduction

GRID REFERENCE 12345678

Grid reference of the enemy - never encode.

FOUR TANKS MOVING SOUTH ALONG ROAD

What, how many, what are they doing?

1130 HOURS

Give time of sighting if there was a delay in reporting the contact.

OBSERVING

State the action that the observer is taking

Contact report, informal (the three Ds)

The basic contact report needs three pieces of information:

Direction : Which way
Distance : How far
Description : What is it and or where is it

Some examples of hasty contact reports:

"Contact North 200 meters, right side of the red house".

"Contact man, 100 m north"

More formal contact reports for radio traffic would normally provide a 6 or 8 figure grid reference and any additional information about the target you can provide.

Authors

Dent