Battlespace

The Space of Battle

Something of an ambiguous term, battlespace is a contextual picture of the battlefield around you:

The battlespace can be the higher level view platoon is taking of how every element is moving together, from how Weapons Team is supporting Alpha on Bravo and Charlie’s push, to the narrow view of an SL watching how their teams react to contact and maneuver under their own supporting fires.

The take away is to understand that battlespace is a fluid picture of how the situation around you is evolving— there is no static enemy and no static team, every push the enemy makes is going to get a reaction, and every push you make is going to cause change within the enemy line. You always need to be thinking about how the conflict is shifting.

For an FTL, the goal is to understand the context you’re fighting in.

Spacing the Battle

With five people in your team, there isn’t a whole lot individually that you’re going to accomplish on the field. What gets the real results is how your small piece of the puzzle allows the rest of your platoon to fight— by putting suppressive fire on the bunker, we allow A2 to maneuver and clear it. When Alpha neutralizes the bunker, Charlie is free to assault the town.

A lot of that is understanding the plan, but battlespace is when you’re paying attention to the information your SL is passing down and the way your BFT is moving:

To your North, you can see that Charlie is holding a flank as a blocking force while Bravo isolates the Southern section, yet from the way Bravo is moving, you can see that they’re falling back. None of that is your direct concern, but the battlespace is changing and new gaps in your line are opening up. A savvy FTL can intuit that the safest space to maneuver is to the North and not the South as there are no longer any friendly elements ensuring the safety of that position.