What field craft is

Field craft is the soldier’s art of moving, observing, and operating in the field with minimum exposure and maximum tactical advantage. Battle craft is the application of field craft to small-team combat — cover, movement, judging distance, fire control.

For NCC cadets, the subject is introduced at the A level (basic concepts), built up at B (techniques), and applied at C (tactical scenarios). It is one of the most practical subjects in the NCC syllabus and one of the most directly transferable to real-world outdoors-craft, even outside a military context.

Most field-craft training in NCC is taught in the open at camps and on parade grounds. This article is a reference; the muscle memory only comes from doing it.

The six S’s of camouflage

The principles of breaking up your visual signature on the ground. Memorise these:

1. Shape — the human silhouette is unmistakable. Break it up with foliage, irregular outlines, irregular kit placement.
2. Shine — anything that reflects light gives you away — watch face, polished metal, plastic, even sweat. Cover or matt all reflective surfaces.
3. Silhouette — never break the skyline. Stay below ridge lines; observe from below the crest.
4. Shadow — use shadow to your advantage when concealing; don’t cross into bright sunlight while moving.
5. Spacing — regularly-spaced objects are man-made. Space yourself irregularly within a group.
6. Smoke / smell / sound — the "extended S’s" — a smoke source, an unfamiliar smell (food, cologne, sweat), or a sharp sound (metal on metal, voice) gives position away.

A camouflaged cadet works through this list deliberately, not by intuition.

Cover and concealment

The two are different:

• Cover — something that stops bullets or fragments (a stone wall, a vehicle engine block, a thick tree trunk).
• Concealment — something that hides you from view but doesn’t stop a bullet (foliage, tall grass, a thin curtain).

The rule: if there’s a choice between cover and concealment, choose cover. If there’s only concealment, be aware that you’re hidden but not safe.

Types of cover in typical terrain

• Hard cover: rock, masonry, vehicle engine, earth banks.
• Soft cover: wooden walls, thin tree trunks, sandbags (good against fragments, marginal against direct fire).
• Improvised cover: ditches, depressions, kerbs, fallen trunks.

Movement

Moving in the open invites detection. The principles:

1. Stop, look, listen, observe — before every movement.
2. Move from cover to cover — not in straight lines, not in the open.
3. Choose the route that uses dead ground (the ground that’s out of the enemy’s line of sight).
4. Don’t cross the skyline.
5. Watch where you place your feet — avoid dry leaves, twigs, scree that crunch.

Methods of movement

• Walking — when concealed.
• Crouching — when low cover is available.
• Crawling — when no cover is available; high crawl (hands and knees) for speed, low crawl (belly) for stealth.
• Rushing — short, sharp run between two positions of cover; never longer than 5 seconds in the open ("up he sees me, down he shoots me").

Judging distance

A skill tested in both written and practical exams. The methods (memorise these):

1. Unit-of-measure method — mentally lay 100 m units between you and the target.
2. Appearance-of-objects method — use visual cues (e.g. at 200 m the eyes can be seen as dots; at 100 m the buttons can be seen).
3. Bracketing method — estimate the shortest and longest the distance could be, take the midpoint.
4. Halving method — estimate to the halfway point first, then double it.
5. Key-range method — use a known reference distance (e.g. a known landmark you’ve measured) as a yardstick.

Combine two methods for a sanity check.

Fire and movement

The basic small-team combat sequence. In a two-team setup:

1. Team A fires to keep the enemy’s head down (suppression).
2. Team B moves forward under that suppression to the next cover.
3. Team B fires from the new position.
4. Team A moves forward.

Continue until the objective is reached. The principle generalises to any number of teams.

The skill: timing. Move when the enemy is suppressed; fire when your partner is moving.

Fire-control orders (GRIT)

When directing fire onto a target, the standard sequence is:

• G — Group: which group fires (the whole section, or a specific cadet).
• R — Range: the distance to the target.
• I — Indication: the description of the target (using a landmark / reference).
• T — Type of fire: rate of fire, number of rounds, etc.

Example: "Section! Range 200! Reference: lone tree! Two o’clock from tree, dark bush — enemy! Three rounds rapid! Fire!"

What is tested at each level

• A: basic recognition of the six S’s, what cover and concealment are.
• B: judging distance using two methods, basic movement under cover, basic fire-control order.
• C: advanced — full fire-and-movement sequence, multi-method distance judging under time, leading a section through a tactical movement.

How to prepare

1. Get outside. Field craft is unteachable from a screen. Practice spotting cover on your way to school.
2. Drill GRIT. Memorise the mnemonic, practise saying full orders aloud.
3. Judge distance daily. Estimate the distance to anything: a tree, a building, a vehicle. Then count steps to verify.
4. At camp, watch senior cadets move and observe. Imitate.
5. Learn the local terrain. A cadet who knows their parade-ground terrain has an unfair advantage in any tactical exercise.

This article is general guidance based on publicly available material from the Directorate General NCC, the National Cadet Corps Act 1948, the NCC Cadet Handbook, and standard NCC training literature. Specific eligibility, syllabus, camp counts, exam patterns, and recruitment rules change with each training directive and each recruitment notification — always confirm current specifics with your unit Associate NCC Officer (ANO) and the official portal of the relevant recruiting body. VSVSV is a private learning platform; it is not affiliated with the National Cadet Corps, the Directorate General NCC, the Ministry of Defence, or any government body.