2.
Prioritize Tasks.
In order to complete your mission in a timely manner, you must
prioritize the tasks involved.
In analyzing the mission order, you must
determine what items of information are most critical. Normally, anything
that will seriously impair traffic flow is going to be critical. If, for
example, there are bridges along the route, they will be critical.
The items that need to be reconnoitered should be listed and assigned
a priority. Such a list need not be from one through the total, but may be
grouped. For example, you may group various items together as top priority,
medium priority, and low priority. The top priority group consists of those
which absolutely must be accomplished. Those in the medium group are those
that should be accomplished if at all possible.
Low priority are all
others.
3.
Scheduling.
a.
Before you depart, you should fully understand how critical time
is to the mission.
The information may be more important than the time
factor. It is important for you to determine how much leeway and under what
circumstances it exists.
Sometimes the information may be more important
than the time. In other cases, the time may be the most critical element.
You must have a complete understanding of the situation before you depart.
b.
As a part of your planning, you should lay out checkpoints along
the route.
Use those checkpoints to monitor the progress of your patrol.
If you begin to fall behind where you should be, you will have to make
adjustments.
This is the purpose of the priority list.
In order to get
yourself back on schedule, you will have to determine from your priority
list which items to concentrate on. Based on your situation, you may also
decide to redistribute tasks to the members of your patrol.
On the other hand, if you find you are ahead of schedule, you can
take more time to gather more detailed information. How you achieve these
goals depends on your leadership ability and good planning.
c.
Arrangements should be made before you depart as to what action
to take should you be unable to complete the reconnaissance in the time
specified. What those actions are will depend on the situation. It may be
as simple as making a radio report. On the other hand, tactical conditions
may dictate radio silence. In such a case, your orders may state you are to
abandon the mission at a certain time and return with whatever information
is available. Equally, you may have been instructed that if time becomes a
critical factor to ignore certain items of information.
d.
Critical factors in planning your schedule are the information
you gathered ahead of time and the personnel available.
The more
information you gathered, the more familiar you will be with what problems
you might encounter along the route.
This allows you to more effectively
plan the amount of time it will take. If, for example, there are a large
number of bridges along the route, it is going to take a greater amount of
time than if there were not.
2-3
MP1028
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