Combat Tracking - Employment Situations
Reasons to use Combat Trackers.
It is a common misconception believed by most people that trackers or tracking teams are solely employed to find the tracks, proceed to hunt the enemy down and either kill or capture him. Nothing could be further from the truth. The staff of the Tactical Tracking Operations School, Combat Division, have identified close to 20 different roles that can be allocated to a Tracking Team, each one different in itself but one that can and has played a vital role in the GWOT or Conventional military operations. These roles can be subdivide into high and low risk categories with the ACTIVE, high risk missions involved in tracking and annihilating enemy combatants and the PASSIVE, or low risk tasks utilized when low risk missions such as post operational Intelligence collection sweeps are undertaken.
Situations Suitable for the Employment of Combat Tracking Teams
- Pursuit to Contact
- Patrol to Contact
- Locate or detect IEDs, mines and boobytraps
- Locate arms caches
- Recover wounded, lost or out of contact/comms personnel
- Route reconnaissance, convoy security
- Counter surveillance
- Fixed location Force Protection (FOBs, Expeditionary Air Bases, etc.)
- Information/intelligence gathering
- Combat Search & Rescue (CSAR)
- Backtracking to source
- Identification and investigation of infiltration or smuggling routes.
- Analyze ‘traffic patterns’ of infiltrating enemy
- Counter drug operations
- Site selection for sensor or OP placement
- Area interpretation and analysis
- Forensic analysis (MP/SP/OSI/CID/CI/SFI/OGA, etc.)
- Border patrol/security; corridors and routes
- Clandestine operations – movement to recon, sniping or hide position
- Location of mortar/rocket firing sites
“…In 1967, during Operation Nickel (August—September), the need for skilled and determined trackers was apparent. Savory commented, ‘The talk of lack of trackers and the need for Army trackers which came out at the…debrief appalled me after all we had tried to do’. Reid-Daly recalled both Robinson and Savory spent many hours passing their knowledge on to trackers, especially from the SAS. “The SAS suddenly became the trackers and bushmen of the Army and nearly lost their true role’, particularly after Operation Cauldron (December 1967—March 1968) when tracker teams from the SAS were in great demand. Similar operations with the South Africans in Rhodesia and the Portuguese in Mozambique also began in 1967…Concrete results were the formation of a specialized Tracker Combat Unit in 1968 and a Tracking Wing of instructors in 1969. The SAS was tasked to administer both initiatives, but the Army Chief of Staff noted, ‘I don’t know enough of SAS classified activities’ to judge if this was workable. Continued border control and hot-pursuit operations between 1969 and 1972 called for SAS tracking teams along with those of the regular Rhodesian Light Infantry…Rhodesian African Rifles…and territorial Tracker Combat Unit…”
Top Secret War: Rhodesian Special Operations Charles D. Melson
Reasons to Use Combat Trackers
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