21st Light Assault: Tactical Vocabulary

Fire and Movement – a small unit tactic that utilizes suppression fire to screen
movement.

Base of Fire – the group or individual acting as the suppression element in Fire and
Movement tactics.

Overwatch – a unit or individual who can be set up to watch over the moving assets, and
eliminate enemies that present themselves or who attempt to engage the moving assets.

Bounding Overwatch – aka Leapfrog, this tactic is when one unit or individual
covers another as they move forward to a designated point, and then their roles
switch, repeating this process until they reach their objective.

Center Peel – a retreat tactic, utilizes diagonal movement to give the impression that
larger numbers are joining the firefight on the friendly side. It begins with an infantry unit
facing off with a larger force of enemies. Once the command is called, the soldiers
implement a battle line formation facing into the enemy's midst. The soldiers then begin,
or continue, to use suppressing fire to delay the enemy's attack and advance. Depending
on the direction of the retreat, the second to last soldier on the farmost end, opposite the
retreating direction, calls out, "Peel 1". Now, the infantryman next to him, on the end of
the line, ceases fire, works his way behind the line towards the other side, takes a position
one meter diagonally back from the farmost soldier on this side, and resumes suppressing
fire. Then, the process repeats with the commands being simplified to "Peel", the 1 only
there to signify the actual start of the tactic, and continues until the party has safely
disengaged the target.

Patrol - Small groups or individual units are deployed from a larger formation to achieve
a specific objective and then return.

Fighting Patrol - a group with sufficient size (usually platoon or company) and
resources to raid or ambush a specific enemy. It primarily differs from an attack in
that the aim is not to hold ground.

Clearing Patrol - a brief patrol around a newly occupied defensive position in

order to ensure that the immediate area is secure. Clearing patrols are often
undertaken on the occupation of a location, and during stand to in the transition
from night to day routine and vice versa.

Standing Patrol - a static patrol, probably known as an OP/LP(Observation

Post/Listening post) in US and NATO terminology. Standing patrols are usually
small (half section/section) static patrols intended to provide early warning,
security or to piquet some geographical feature, such as dead ground.
Reconnaissance (recon) - a patrol, usually small whose main mission is the
gathering of information. Generally speaking recon patrols tend to avoid contact,
although it is not completely unknown for recon patrols to "fight for information".

Blitzkrieg – in paintball this means a movement in which an enemy position is

heavily bombarded from longer range, before employing faster units to assault the
weakened position (one way to take a bunker if you can’t leapfrog to it
effectively)

Hedgehog Defense – a defensive position, which allows mobile and fast moving
attackers to attack between the positions (we’ll call em hogs) but leaves each
position still heavily defended and able to fend for itself. Forces the enemy either
to stop and try and root out every individual position, or to keep moving leaving
hostile forces in their rear and flanks.