# Profiling and Tactical Tracking

> How do the United States Marines teach new officers to read tracks? This student handout from The Basic School breaks a footprint into its parts, sets out the measures of human gait, and lists the signs a tracker looks for, from overturned stones to displaced dew. It pairs tracking with “combat profiling”, reading people’s behaviour against a baseline of what is normal.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2015-corps-school-profiling-tactical-tracking/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** United States Marine Corps, The Basic School
- **Year published:** 2015
- **Journal or source:** Student handout B2A0225XQ, Basic Officer Course, The Basic School, Marine Corps Training Command, Camp Barrett, Virginia
- **Full citation:** United States Marine Corps, The Basic School. 2015. Profiling and tactical tracking. Student handout B2A0225XQ, Basic Officer Course. The Basic School, Marine Corps Training Command, Camp Barrett, Virginia. 27 pp.
- **Access status:** Hosted: U.S. government work, not subject to copyright in the United States
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2015_United-States-Marine-Corps_profiling-and-tactical-tracking.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Humans
- **Tracking:** Blood; Gaits; Scat; Track measurements; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification; Trailing; Urine
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour
- **Data type:** Protocol or guidelines
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Awareness; Human tracking
- **Year published:** 2015

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Humans only: the “quarry” being tracked, and people observed in combat profiling. No other animals are discussed, apart from a passing mention that changes in the normal life of insects and in spider webs may show that someone has passed.
- **Location and habitat:** Training material from The Basic School, Camp Barrett, Virginia, United States. No study area. Examples refer to Afghanistan and Iraq, marketplaces, roads and convoy routes, and United States settings (gang territory in Los Angeles and Detroit, biker bars, police stations, veterans’ clubs). Tracking examples mention soft moist ground, heavy vegetation, rocks, streams and dew.
- **Topics:** combat tracking; tactical tracking; combat hunter; human tracking; spoor; follow-up; quarry; active and passive tracks; time and distance gap; how tracks are seen (texture, outline, shape, colour, shine, regularity in nature); dynamics of a footprint (primary impact point, foot roll, terminal point); human gait (stride, straddle, pitch angle, pressure, dwell time, rhythm and balance); observable indicators (displacement, ground spoor, regularity, flattening, transference, sign, disturbance, litter, booby traps and buried explosive devices, blood spoor, body waste); track-line; combat profiling; baseline and anomaly; Boyd’s decision cycle; “rule of threes”; explicit and tacit knowledge; template and prototypical matching; perceptual fill; channel capacity under stress; emotion and memory link in training; cultural context; the six domains of combat profiling (heuristics, proxemics, geographics, atmospherics, kinesics, biometrics); natural lines of drift and pathways; legal, moral and ethical limits.
- **Statistics or models:** None
- **Data type:** Protocol or guidelines: a military training handout, not a research paper. No new data. No date is printed in the handout; 2015 is the date the PDF file was created (8 October 2015). Inconsistencies in the handout: the gait section says footprints leave “six observable elements” but then lists seven names (stride, straddle, pitch angle, pressure, dwell time, rhythm, balance), described under five headings; “Sign” is defined as anything other than “ground or aerial spoor”, but aerial spoor is never described; the adrenaline and pupil paragraphs repeat text from the paragraphs before them; the atmospherics list ends mid-sentence; learning objective TBS-CMBH-1001e is missing from the list.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

This is a student handout from the Basic Officer Course at The Basic School, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) school for new officers. It is teaching material, not a study. It covers two skills the Marines teach together: combat profiling (reading people’s behaviour to spot threats hidden among civilians) and tactical tracking (reading the tracks and signs people leave on the ground).

The lesson sets out learning objectives: officers should be able to watch an area, establish a “baseline” of what is normal, detect “anomalies”, decide whether they are a threat, and identify spoor using combat tracking indicators.

The tracking part covers tracking terms, how tracks are seen, the parts of a footprint, the characteristics of human gait, and the observable indicators a tracker looks for.

### 2. What they found

Combat profiling

- Everything has a baseline, and an anomaly is something that rises above it (something there that should not be) or falls below it (something absent that should be there).

- Baseline plus anomaly leads to a decision. One cue is usually not enough; once three anomalies are found, a decision must be made (the “rule of threes”).

- The handout describes six domains for reading people: heuristics (mental shortcuts), proxemics (distances between people and how they move towards or away from others), geographics (how people use places, including “natural lines of drift”, the paths of least resistance that become pathways), atmospherics (the mood of a place), kinesics (body language) and biometrics (involuntary body reactions such as blushing, sweating and pupil changes).

- Every reading must be made in the context of the local culture.

Tactical tracking

- Tracking is described as gathering information from the “forensic evidence” an enemy leaves in the natural environment, to build a picture of their size, activities, location, unit, time, equipment and intent. A tracker asks: how many are there, how well trained, how armed, how healthy, what is their morale, and do they know they are followed?

- The handout quotes a tracker’s saying: “One step a word, several steps a sentence, a whole line of steps a paragraph”, so that a set of tracks tells a story.

- Terms: spoor (tracks or sign), follow-up (a trained team following spoor), quarry (the person tracked), active track (the quarry is still moving), passive track (cold tracks, followed for intelligence), and the time and distance gap between team and quarry.

- How tracks are seen: changes in texture, unnatural outlines and shapes, changes in colour and shine, and regular spacing that stands out from nature’s irregular rhythm.

- The footprint: the primary impact point (usually the heel when walking forward; the toe when walking backwards, sprinting or climbing), the foot roll, and the terminal point.

- Human gait: stride (about 30 inches on average), straddle, pitch angle (outward, inward or neutral), pressure, dwell time, and rhythm and balance. Good rhythm and balance suggests purpose; a lack of it suggests uncertainty. With constant training, a team can work out things such as age, gender, load, pace, mental state, attempts to hide tracks, and whether the person moved by day or night.

- Observable indicators: displacement (such as footprints in soft ground, cut vegetation, crushed grass at rest stops, box marks from loads), ground spoor (shown by regularity, flattening and transference), sign (colour changes on overturned stones, broken dirt seals around rocks, displaced dew, water on stream banks, disturbed insects and spider webs), litter, signs of booby traps and buried explosives, blood spoor (showing where and how badly someone is wounded), and body waste (urine, faeces, vomit; faeces can show the quarry’s health).

### 3. What they concluded

The handout’s summary says these are tools to help Marines observe and operate in their environment: staying alert, remembering what they see, and judging what is normal and abnormal. It presents profiling and tracking together as ways to keep the initiative in attack and defence, and stresses that all decisions must be legal, moral and ethical.

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

No tracking was carried out; this is training material about tracking people. It teaches tracks and signs identification (footprints, gait, disturbance, blood, body waste, litter) and trailing (the “follow-up” of a quarry by a tracking team, on active or cold tracks). It says tracking is learned through practical application and constant training, and that tacit knowledge is best passed on hands-on, with a mentor.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Optics and other observation devices are mentioned in the learning objectives.

- The profiling method draws on ideas from psychology: Boyd’s decision cycle (observe, orient, decide, act), explicit and tacit knowledge, template and prototypical matching, “perceptual fill”, channel capacity and emotional memory in training.

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

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

- The way the handout describes seeing tracks (texture, outline, shape, colour, shine and regularity) and the parts of a footprint and gait apply just as well to animal tracks and signs.

- Its “baseline and anomaly” idea is close to how many trackers describe reading the ground: knowing what is normal so that a disturbance stands out.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Profiling and Tactical Tracking (Corps and School, 2015). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2015-corps-school-profiling-tactical-tracking/