Positioning

Stop, Think, Reposition

Positioning is something often left to higher leadership, but it’s something important for an FTL to understand, especially as they adapt plans to the situation in front of them.

When considering the position of your team, you should always be thinking about how you’re operating in relation to the space around you:

• Are you within range of supporting elements?

• Is the terrain around you giving you the advantage that you need?

• If something goes wrong, how am I going to maneuver to get out of it?

Asking yourself just these three questions will help keep you out of a large portion of trouble.

Always keep in mind that the situation can go badly: one tank round can inflict massive casualties in the span of a second, or one enemy poking out of a window can level four members in a heartbeat. When you’re pushed by a squad and a BTR, you might be dead if they’re within 50M and you only have five members to fight back.

Keeping your team within the effective firing distance of other teams allows them to put mutual fire on particularly dangerous elements, or to back up your anti-tank if your RAT misses.

Range is one factor, but ‘spread’ is another: if the situation devolves, are you close enough that the sister fire team can maneuver to your position quickly enough to bail you out. Time and time again fireteams are lost because they get too spread out and are picked apart by greater forces.

By keeping within range, you’re able to retreat under the covering fire of a set defensive team, and by keeping within spread, your sister team is able to sprint to you and double your effective firepower.

You never want to be defeated in detail, and you never want to be so committed to a fight that you can’t break away.