Reporting: the codified report and the observation plan

Observation is worth what it manages to transmit, and units codify the report because under pressure free memory always forgets the same things. The classic format answers, in order, six questions: how many (size of the force observed), what they are doing (activity), where (location, by reference point or coordinates), who they are (uniform, insignia, distinctive equipment), when (the time of the observation, not of the report), and with what (weapons and equipment). Six spare lines containing everything the recipient needs to know in order to decide, and they are drilled exactly the way the trigger press is: by reporting, at every exercise, in the format, until the format becomes the natural way of looking.

Over the long haul, observation becomes a plan: surveillance lasting hours or days is organized in short turns on the spotting scope, because attention at maximum magnification decays fast and changeovers every twenty or thirty minutes are the team’s norm (§38.1 and Chapter 37), with the observation log filled in continuously on the form in Table D.7: time, event, reference point, including the “nothing significant” that documents coverage. The plan includes conditions: the hours of raking light that reveal (and those that blind your own sector), the switch to the night devices of Chapter 28 with their different logic, by which thermal finds and the intensifier identifies, and the periods when the mirage of Chapter 22 degrades long observation and it is better to work short. Professional observation is not looking for a long time: it is an activity planned with the same care as the shot.