What each billet actually does

Rifleman is what most of an operation looks like. You hold your place in the formation, watch the sector you were given, and move when your team leader tells you to.

Most of what happens in an op happens to a rifleman rather than because of one. Someone has to go where the plan says, hold the ground once it's taken, and cover the arc nobody else is watching, and that is most of the squad for most of the night.

No course gates it. Recruit training gets you here and everyone starts here, whatever they're aiming at later. It's also where you learn the things nobody teaches you afterwards: how a fire team holds spacing, what a squad leader is listening for, when a contact report turns into a flank.

You can stay a rifleman as long as you like, and plenty of people do for years. If you came expecting to run the show in week one, you will be starting here like everyone else.

Each fire team carries one automatic rifle. The job is suppression: keeping the enemy's heads down while the rest of the team moves.

You carry more ammunition than anyone else in the team and you're expected to manage it with short bursts, a clear arc of fire, and enough left for when the team needs it.

No course gates it. If the slot's open, you can take the gun on your first op.

A rifleman with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Your rounds arc, so you cover the ground rifles can't reach: trenches, rooftops, the far side of cover. You also carry smoke for marking and screening, which gets used more often than the HE does.

The main skill is judgment about when to fire. HE lands near friendlies if you're careless with it.

No course gates it, and you can take it whenever the slot is open.

The belt-fed medium gun, run as the squad's base of fire. A well-sited gun can lock down a road or a treeline, so where you put it matters more than how much you shoot.

You hold your sector and displace on order.

It is entry level with no course, but the slot only exists when the operation's structure includes a gun. Ask what's being carried before you plan your night around it.

Indirect fire support from behind the line. Fire missions come in over the radio as grids and corrections; you plot them, lay the tube, and adjust until the rounds land where the ground element needs them.

Expect long stretches of waiting and short stretches where accuracy matters a lot. The people you're supporting are close to the impacts.

It is entry level when it runs, but it only runs when the operation calls for mortars.

A designated marksman walks with the squad. You're not off on a hill by yourself.

What changes is your sector. You carry a rifle built for range the rest of the squad doesn't have, so you get the treeline, the ridge, the ground the riflemen beside you can't reach. You still hold formation and take direction from the same team leader as everyone else, and nobody hands a DM authority to pick targets outside the plan.

An exceptional score on the shooting range gates the billet. Range estimation, wind, and knowing when not to shoot matter more day to day than raw accuracy.

The job rewards patience, since you wait for the right shot instead of taking the first one available. If you're picturing a lone sniper working away from the formation, that isn't this billet. A DM who freelances ends up as a rifleman with a slower rate of fire and worse options up close.

A corpsman moves like everyone else, in the same formation and spacing, with a sector to watch while nobody is hurt.

The job starts when someone goes down. You get to them, under fire if you have to, and treat what the medical system models: bleeding, morphine and splints. Then you get them back up, or stable enough to wait for extraction.

For most of an op that call never comes, and you are a rifleman carrying a medical bag.

Combat Life Saver gates it, and it runs as a waitlist rather than an open billet. Ask a recruiter where the queue stands before you set your heart on it.

The billet needs someone who stays switched on through long stretches of nothing. Ten seconds after a casualty isn't the moment to be fumbling. If you want to be busy for three straight hours, this is the wrong job, because most of it is watching people who are fine and hoping they stay that way.

You carry the launcher that deals with enemy armor, and only a few rounds for it, so each shot has to be worth taking.

Most of the work is positioning: a flank the vehicle isn't watching, a clear backblast area, and a way out afterwards. Between armor threats you fight as a rifleman with a heavier pack.

A qualification gates the billet, covering the weapon system, target identification and shot discipline.

Engineers handle demolitions, breaching, and clearing mines and IEDs. You get called forward for a locked compound, a wire obstacle, or a road that might be seeded.

It's careful, procedural work, usually with a squad waiting on you to finish. The rest of the op you fight as a rifleman.

A qualification gates it, covering charges, breaching, and clearance procedure.

A fireteam leader runs a team of three. The squad leader gives you a task — take that building, watch that flank — and you decide how your team executes it: who moves, who covers, where everyone's looking.

In contact, the squad leader talks to you, and your riflemen act on what you pass down.

Qualifications gate it, and beyond those it depends on an open slot. It's also the usual first step toward squad leader.

A JTAC controls aircraft for the ground force: talking a pilot's eyes onto a target, keeping them clear of friendlies, and clearing them to engage.

It's radio work and it has to be precise, because a mistake here puts ordnance on the wrong grid.

Qualifications gate it, and slots depend on whether the operation carries air.

ACV crew aren't on foot. You're in the vehicle with 3rd Platoon, carrying dismounts to the objective and supporting them once they're on it.

Your seat decides the job: driving, gunning, or commanding. You work the vehicle net with your crew and with whatever squad you're carrying that night.

Much of it is positioning. You need somewhere useful that isn't somewhere you'll be killed, and then you hold it. A destroyed ACV takes its crew and its cargo with it.

The billet is selective and it sits with 3rd Platoon. It isn't a side qualification you pick up alongside a rifle squad.

Crewing suits people who'd rather work a machine with two or three others than move with eight. The flip side is that your fight looks nothing like a rifleman's, so if what you want is to take ground on foot, this isn't the billet for it.

Flying for MAG-36 means transport and close air support for whoever needs it. You insert a squad, hold for extraction, and run CAS when someone on the ground calls for it.

Much of the job is waiting. You orbit at altitude or sit at a rally point until the radio tells you where to be. The ground fight sets the schedule.

The billet is open. Commissioning to 2nd Lt needs a flight test, flown to the standard the job demands rather than the one that gets you by on a public server.

Support work has to be enough for you. A pickup that arrives on time matters as much as anything the rifle squads did that night, but it rarely gets noticed. Pilots spend much of an operation circling and waiting on a call that hasn't come, which takes a particular kind of patience.

MSO doesn't replace your billet. It stacks on top, with its own recon operations on Thursdays.

A rifle squad op is built around contact and holding ground, and recon runs the other way: small numbers, eyes on the objective, and reporting back rather than engaging. That asks for patience and for discipline about noise and movement.

Selection is open to anyone in the unit, but it is highly selective and the standard is set high deliberately, so expect a fair number of people not to pass.

It costs a second night a week on top of the one you already commit to, so take it if you want more of the unit than Sunday. Don't take it until you're solid in your primary role, because arriving at selection without your fundamentals is the quickest way out again.

Operations staff build and run the operations instead of playing them. Missions get made ahead of time — terrain, enemy composition, objectives — and during the op you're in the Zeus seat, running the enemy and adjusting as the night unfolds.

It takes time outside op nights, since every mission is built on your own time before Sunday.

Skill and availability gate it. A weak Zeus costs the whole unit its evening, so the standard is high.