Combat Regulations

official instructive documents that define the goals, missions, methods, and principles of employing subunits and units of various combat arms (or naval forces) to conduct independent and joint combat operations. Combat regulations are compiled from combat experience and the study of the particularities of army personnel and the technical and tactical characteristics of the newest means of war. A constant accumulation of new experience creates the need for the periodical recompilation of combat regulations in conformity with new demands.

The term “combat regulations” was established in the Red Army in 1924, when the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR examined the general plan for the publication of manuals and regulations. In the following years there were implemented the Armored Forces Combat Regulations of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA) (1924, 1925, 1929), Infantry Combat Regulations (1927–28), Artillery Combat Regulations of the RKKA (1927–29), Cavalry Combat Regulations (1927–29), Air Force Combat Regulations of the RKKA (1929–30), and Naval Forces Combat Regulations of the RKKA (1930).

In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) the Infantry Combat Regulations (parts 1 and 2, 1942) were in effect along with the Armored and Mechanized Troops Combat Regulations (part 1, 1944), Artillery Combat Regulations (1938), Antiaircraft Artillery Combat Regulations (1941–44), Cavalry Combat Regulations (part 1, 1944), and others. Combat regulations for ground forces deal with combat arms subunit operations.

The armed forces of foreign countries also have analogous field regulations, but they have other names. In the USA they are known as field service regulations; in Great Britain, as field service manuals for conducting combat operations of ground forces; in France, regulations for maneuvers; and so forth.