# Visual Tracking and the Military Tracking Team Capability: A Disappearing Skill and Misunderstood Capability

> Why did the United States Army let one of its oldest skills fade away? Two soldiers trace military tracking from Rogers’ Rangers and Apache Scouts to Vietnam’s Combat Tracking Teams, compare trackers with scent dogs and sensors, and walk through a detailed example of trackers following insurgents from a roadside bomb site.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2010-hurth-brokaw-visual-tracking-military-tracking/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** John D. Hurth and Jason W. Brokaw
- **Year published:** 2010
- **Journal or source:** Small Wars Journal
- **Full citation:** Hurth, J. D. and Brokaw, J. W. 2010. Visual tracking and the military tracking team capability: a disappearing skill and misunderstood capability. Small Wars Journal, 13 December 2010. Small Wars Foundation.
- **Access status:** Open access (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2010_Hurth_and_Brokaw_visual-tracking-and-the-military-tracking-team-capability.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Humans
- **Tracking:** Blood; Spoor age estimation; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification; Trailing
- **Methods and technology:** Global Positioning System (GPS)
- **Data type:** Review
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Human tracking
- **Year published:** 2010

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: humans (military trackers, and people as the quarry being tracked). Mentioned: scent tracking dogs (tracker dogs); Australopithecus, as a possible early hunter and tracker.
- **Location and habitat:** No study site. The essay is about the United States Army. Historical and current examples: colonial North America (Rogers’ Rangers), the late 1800s campaigns against Geronimo, the pursuit of Pancho Villa, the Boer War, Viet Nam, the British Jungle Warfare School in Malaysia (later the Jungle Warfare Wing in Brunei), Fort Gordon, Georgia and Fort Huachuca, Arizona (United States), Kenya, Cyprus, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, East Timor, Rhodesia, South Africa and Southwest Africa (Namibia) along the Angolan border, and Israel. The worked example is set “somewhere in the current theater of operations”, with grass, a water-filled ditch, a hill, a village and a border.
- **Topics:** military tracking; visual tracking (man-tracking); combat tracking teams (CTT); tracking patrols; tactical tracking; counter-tracking; history of military tracking; United States Army doctrine on tracking; tracking abroad; scent dogs and their limits; sensors, cameras and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV); tracking as intelligence gathering (“immediate use intelligence”); the Time and Distance Gap (TDG); “leap-frogging” teams to cut for sign; footprint impression evidence and battlefield forensics; Counter Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) work; personnel recovery; debriefing.
- **Statistics or models:** None
- **Data type:** Review and position paper: a history of military tracking, quotes from United States Army field manuals (1973 to 2009), and an invented worked example. No new field data. Inconsistencies: (1) Combat Tracking Teams are abbreviated “CCT’s” once and “CTT” elsewhere; (2) the Special Forces tracking manual is “TC 3 1-34-4” in the text and “TC 31-34-4” in the bibliography; (3) in the worked example, the group heading east is said to be eight insurgents, but seven are killed and three wounded and captured (ten); (4) that group is followed east, yet is found at a cabin “west of the target village located on the border”; (5) the Vietnam guide is printed as “GTA 2I-4”.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

The authors, two United States Army soldiers with training in combat tracking, argue that visual tracking is the most misunderstood and underestimated skill in the military. They define it as reading the “physical evidence” a quarry leaves behind: locating, identifying, following and interpreting signs to reach reasonable conclusions. They say it is not a skill belonging only to Native American, San, Iban or Dyak trackers.

Their essay has five parts:

- History. How the United States military has used trackers, from colonial times to the Viet Nam war, and how the skill disappeared afterwards.

- Doctrine. Quotes from United States Army field manuals from 1973 to 2009 that describe tracking and tracking patrols.

- Tracking abroad. Military and police tracking units in other countries.

- Other options. The limits of scent dogs, sensors, cameras and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).

- Modern military tracking. How tracking teams could work today, with a detailed invented example of following insurgents from a roadside bomb site.

### 2. What they found

History

- Colonists learned tracking and scouting from Native American allies. Major Robert Rogers’ “Rules of Ranging” mention tracking. In the late 1800s the United States Army used Apache Scouts to hunt Geronimo, and Black Seminole Scouts tracked “renegade Indians” for over a thousand miles in thirty days.

- The Native American Scout-Trackers were not used in either world war and were disbanded in 1947 at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

- In 1966, impressed by British trackers in Malaysia, General Westmoreland sent a team to the British Jungle Warfare School. About 240 United States trackers were trained there. Combat Tracking Teams were first deployed in February 1967 to re-establish contact with the enemy and gather information.

- The Army’s own Combat Tracking School at Fort Gordon, Georgia closed by the end of 1970. The tracking field manual came out in 1973, when the Army no longer had the capability.

Doctrine

- Tracking appears in Army manuals from 1973 to 2009, covering tracking patrols, snipers, long range surveillance, special forces, counter-insurgency and counter-tracking. One manual calls tracking “one of the best sources of immediate-use intelligence”.

- Even so, tracking has faded from use. The authors suggest four possible reasons: over-reliance on technology, commanders not understanding tracking, no qualified Army instructors, and no Army Center of Excellence willing to take it on.

Tracking abroad

- The British, Malaysian, Australian, New Zealand and Fijian armies kept tracking skills. Rhodesian, South African and Southwest African (Namibian) units had strong tracking capabilities. The South African Police unit Koevoet combined tracking with police investigation, mine-protected vehicles and air support.

- Since 1948 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have employed Bedouin trackers, and they have started to employ trackers of Ethiopian descent.

Other options

- Scent dogs can usually work only 20 to 30 minutes at a time, then rest 10 to 20 minutes, and repeat this no more than 5 or 6 times in 24 hours. Heat, dry ground, low humidity, wind, heavy rain, rugged terrain, distracting smells and an uncertain starting point all make scent tracking harder, and a dog can give a patrol away.

- In the authors’ view, sensors and cameras have been used to replace people on the ground rather than to help them. They show people have passed but have not led to catching them.

Modern military tracking

- Every member of a tracking team is a trained visual tracker. Technology (digital cameras, small printers for sharing footprint images, GPS units and rugged portable computers) only records and shares information; teams can work without it.

- At an incident site, a team can judge the size of the group and its direction. Several teams can “leap-frog” ahead to cut for sign, closing the “Time and Distance Gap” between trackers and quarry.

- In the invented example, trackers follow a command wire and footprints from a roadside bomb, find an ambush position with 12 fighting positions, tell from shell casings and ground impressions what weapons were used, find a blood trail, read stride length to work out when the group travelled, and pick out one distinctive boot print among tennis shoe prints. The group splits in two, one group is followed into a village, and the people hiding there are identified by their footprint evidence.

### 3. What they concluded

- Tracking has recently been taught as a way to counter roadside bombs and as a battlefield forensic tool, but the Army has still not recognized its full value, even though its own doctrine describes it.

- Tracking is valuable for finding bombs and booby-traps, gathering information about the enemy, counter-tracking, recovering missing personnel and pursuing an enemy to regain contact, whether done by one person or a team.

- The Army still lacks the formal tracking capability its doctrine suggests. Only by training soldiers in visual tracking and using them as teams will the Army be able to pursue the enemy wherever they are.

### 4. How tracking was or was not used

No tracking was done for this paper. The whole essay is about human tracking in military settings. The worked example shows tracks and signs identification (boot and tennis shoe prints, a command wire, litter, shell casings, bipod and magazine impressions, blood, flattened resting places), judging how old prints are (no more than 12 hours), reading stride length, and trailing the group’s track line to its destination.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Digital cameras for photographing footprints and other evidence.

- Small portable printers for sharing footprint images with other team members and teams.

- Global Positioning System (GPS) units for recording where evidence was found and the team’s position.

- Rugged portable computers for recording and sharing information.

- Orange surveyor tape, with the time, date and grid coordinates, to mark where a group split so another team can pick up the trail.

- Debrief reports entered into military intelligence databases.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The essay treats tracks and signs as evidence: in a military setting they become intelligence about the size, direction, speed and intentions of the people who left them.

- The skills used to follow people, such as aging prints, reading stride, interpreting resting places and picking out one individual’s print, are the same skills wildlife trackers use with animals.

- The paper describes training and tracking schools, but reports no test or certification of trackers’ skill.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Visual Tracking and the Military Tracking Team Capability: A Disappearing Skill and Misunderstood Capability (Hurth and Brokaw, 2010). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2010-hurth-brokaw-visual-tracking-military-tracking/