"Designed for use in pre-deployment planning and in-field reference for a variety of special operations missions"--Page 2 of cover

This book addresses the trends and tactics that criminals are using and examines proven techniques in how to contain, search, and capture suspects on the run. The focus is on whether to chase or contain, how to set perimeters, situation management, physical conditioning, use of available resources, deployment, training and debriefing techniques. The set of criteria for making these decisions are outlined in the conclusion.

Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

Field Command is a first of its kind; a full-length tactical science textbook focused specifically on crisis situations faced by the law enforcement community. It expands on the concepts laid out in Heal's Sound Doctrine: A Tactical Primer. The concepts and principles are taken from tactical texts and military field manuals and are presented as close to how they are used as possible. To facilitate understanding, illustrations are abundant and not only clarify the text but amplify it with new insights and applications.

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.