Broken Transmission, Two Nets
You are second-in-command of a nine-person section on a night navigation exercise in wooded, rolling terrain. Radios are line-of-sight and the net is congested. At 14:20 you receive a broken transmission you transcribe as '...hold ... grid 482 619 ... resupply ...'. Platoon headquarters, on a different net, has told your commander that the whole platoon must be at the rendezvous by 15:00, and your commander is 300 m ahead and out of shouting distance. A second, clearer transmission from company logistics says resupply will not arrive before 16:30. One radio operator has a flat battery, the spare is at 40 per cent, and terrain is masking signals unless you move 150 m east onto higher ground, away from the direction of travel. Cpl Adeyemi, an experienced member, tells the rest of the section that the 'hold' order is obviously correct and that you are ignoring it; two members have already stopped walking.
1. What do you do in the next five minutes? Address message handling and battery management.
Read the worked answer
Do not act on an unverified broken transmission. In order:
- Read back. 'Station calling, say again all after hold, over.' Standard prowords, not a paraphrase. A message you have had to guess is not a message.
- Authenticate and identify. You do not know who sent it. If the sender cannot be authenticated, treat the content as information, not as an order.
- Write it down verbatim with the time received - 14:20 - and what was missing. A written log is what lets you reconstruct the decision later.
- Go to high ground once, deliberately: send a two-person team 150 m east with the good set for a single short transmission, rather than repeated failed calls from the low ground that flatten the battery.
- Send a runner to the commander in parallel. 300 m at night is roughly four to five minutes. This is the reliable channel and it does not depend on the radio at all.
- Battery: short transmissions at lowest effective power, spare held at 40 per cent and reserved for the commander's net.
Meanwhile the section holds in all-round defence, not strung out on the line of march.
2. Two sets of instructions appear to conflict. Which prevails, and how do you decide?
Read the worked answer
The commander's order on the platoon net prevails. A logistics transmission about resupply is information; it is not an order to hold, and it is not authenticated from your chain of command. Different nets carry different authority, and rank or clarity of reception does not create authority.
Test the content against the commander's intent. The stated intent is the whole platoon at the rendezvous by 15:00. Resupply cannot arrive before 16:30. Holding therefore delivers no logistics benefit and guarantees missing the rendezvous - the action does not serve the purpose it is supposed to serve, which is the strongest possible argument against it.
Set a decision point rather than drifting. At 14:35, if there is no clarification, the section moves to the rendezvous and the runner reports the ambiguity on arrival. Waiting indefinitely on an unverified net is the one option that fails both courses of action.
Report, do not conceal. Tell the commander which transmission was received, that it could not be authenticated, and what you decided and why. An ambiguity that is reported is a decision; one that is hidden is a trap for the next person on that net.
3. How do you handle Cpl Adeyemi's challenge in front of the section, and what do you do afterwards?
Read the worked answer
In the moment, separate the person from the problem. He heard a real transmission and he is not imagining it; saying so costs nothing and lowers the temperature. Then restate the verified facts, state the decision, and give him a job that uses his experience: lead on the bearing, or carry the spare battery and manage the net. A member with a task stops campaigning.
Do not win the argument in front of nine people. Do not raise your voice, do not repeat yourself, and do not let the section vote - a decision by consensus in front of the group is how command dissolves.
Privately, within the hour: explain the message handling - why a broken transmission was not acted on, and what authentication means. Invite him to read back the next transmission, which converts a critic into a check on my error rate. He may well be right about the content, and I should say so if he is.
If he continues to countermand me openly after that, it becomes a discipline matter for the commander, not a contest to be settled on the track. Afterwards, debrief on what happened and why, keep fault out of it, and check that the two members who stopped walking understand the sequence.