Combat Orders format

Introduction. Combat orders instruction at TBS is a detailed, rigorous package that strives to develop and evaluate your ability to arrive at a tactical decision, communicate that decision, and execute your plans in a time competitive environment. The focus throughout will be on action. Your tactical actions and necessary communication for action will be evaluated under the dynamic, chaotic, and uncertain lens espoused in MCDP-1. You will be required to brief and/or write numerous combat orders throughout the course. Significant events from the combat orders package include

• Tactical Planning I • Tactical Planning Sand Table Exercise • Combat Orders Format • Patrol Order • Combat Orders Discussion
Use mission orders whenever the situation allows. Never assume, however, that they are a license to avoid careful thought or to relax discipline.

Sun Tzu says that speed is the essence of war. Orders must also be timely. General Patton’s observation “that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week” bears repeating. In describing some lessons learned by the U. S. Army in the First World War, General George C. Marshall wrote:

In studying the examples of the orders issued to our troops in France, several important points deserve consideration in determining the relative excellence of the orders issued. It is frequently the case that what appears to have been a model order was actually the reverse, and a poorly and apparently hastily prepared order will often be erroneously condemned. Many orders, models in their form, failed to reach the troops in time to affect their actions, and many apparently crude and fragmentary instructions did reach front-line commanders in time to enable the purpose of higher command to be carried out on the battlefield. It is apparent that unless an order is issued in time for its instructions to percolate down throughout the organization sufficiently in advance of an engagement to enable each commander to arrange his unit accordingly, that order is a failure, however perfect it