Combat Breaching and Combat Engineer Author:Department of Defense A great value! Two military manuals combine into one book. If you purchase both books separate you will pay more for the books plus shipping cost. Breaching operations are conducted to allow maneuver despite the presence of obstacles. Obstacle breaching is the employment of a combination of tactics and techniques to advance an attacking forc... more »e to the far side of an obstacle that is covered by fire. It is perhaps the single, most difficult combat task a force can encounter. Understanding breaching theory is the first step to understanding breaching tactics. Breaching is a synchronized combined-arms operation under the control of a maneuver commander. Breaching operations begin when friendly forces detect an obstacle and begin to apply the breaching fundamentals, and they end when battle handover has occurred between follow-on forces and a unit conducting the breaching operation. Bulling through or forcing through is not a breaching operation. Bulling through is a decision made when a commander must react immediately to extricate his force from an untenable position within an obstacle and no other breaching operations are possible. Battlefield Operating Systems (BOS) as a framework: * Intelligence. * Maneuver. * Mobility and survivability. * Fire support (FS). * Air defense (AD). * Combat service support (CSS). * Command and control (C2). Each BOS is not discussed in detail. Instead, they are used to outline considerations for how the engineer platoon supports the total combined-arms (CA) effort. The bulk of the platoon's missions concentrates on mobility, countermobility, and survivability operations in support of the mobility and survivability BOS. However, the platoon leader and sergeant must have an understanding of the role their platoon plays in supporting all the BOS. More importantly, the platoon leader and sergeant must understand the impact of all the BOS on platoon planning, preparation, and execution.« less