Analyze combat and operational stress reactions (COSRs)
Combat Stress

Controlling combat stress is often the deciding factor between victory and defeat in all forms of human conflict. Stressors are a fact of combat, and you and your Soldiers will face them. Controlled combat stress can call forth stress reactions of loyalty, selflessness, and heroism. Conversely, uncontrolled combat stress causes erratic or harmful behavior that disrupts or interferes with the accomplishment of a unit’s mission. Any uncontrolled combat stress can impair mission performance and may bring disgrace, disaster, and defeat. The art of war aims to impose so much stress on enemy soldiers that they lose their will to fight. Both sides try to do this and at times accept severe stress themselves in order to inflict greater stress on the enemy.

To win, you must control combat stress. The word “control” is better than the word “manage” to emphasize the active steps that leaders, supporting personnel, and individual Soldiers must take to keep stress within an acceptable range. This does not mean that control and management are mutually exclusive terms. Management is, by definition, the exercise of control. Within common usage, however, and especially within Army usage, management has the connotation of being a somewhat detached, number–driven, higher echelon process rather than a direct, inspirational, leadership process.

Stress is the body’s and mind’s process for dealing with uncertain change and danger. Elimination of stress is both impossible and undesirable in either the Army’s combat or peacetime missions

Combat and Operational Stressors
Combat and operational stress will affect you and your Soldiers throughout your military careers. But, as a leader you must learn and teach your Soldiers to recognize the symptoms, and take steps to prevent or reduce the disruptive