Michael Yon: Bird's Eye View
A Tactical Operations Center (TOC) is the headquarters for a unit. Company-level TOCs are the smallest I have seen. A typical infantry company has about a hundred or more soldiers. The commander will normally be a captain. A company-level TOC often consists of a radio and a map, and one person on duty 24/7. It might have a coffee maker, too. In fact, there is a company TOC at the other end of the tent in which I now reside with a company called C-52. C-52 is the smallest company with only 54 men, who all live in this tent with a huge amount of weapons, and great combat experience to back them up [to whit: Superman.]
The simplicity of some TOC’s was noted when I wrote about how the 1-4 CAV transformed an abandoned college into COP Amanche in one Baghdad neighborhood.
The next highest level is the battalion TOC, which consists of many radios enabling communication with and between all companies, helicopters, jets, laterally (to other battalions) and vertically (up to brigade.) Often a few monitors hang on the walls, maybe a flat-screen television normally dialed to a news channel, and one with a live feed from the battalion’s UAV.
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