What is a Cavalry Scout? To be a Cavalry Scout is to be the commander's eyes and ears of the battlefield. To do this requires a unique soldier. He must be flexible, intelligent, resourceful, courageous, and crave danger to do the unique job of Scouting. Their units are tightly woven groups, able to depend on one another at any time, irrelevant of rank, which is critical to their survival. They take great pride in both their history and traditions. They must still earn their spurs and it is not an uncommon site to see the occasional brown Stetson and saber worn for certain events and occasions. The number of common and specialized skills that they are required to know, even at the lowest rank, outnumbers any other job on the battlefield. The job of gaining and maintaining contact with the enemy without being spotted, mounted or dismounted, and reporting all this intelligence to the commander so he can mass his forces to defeat them requires this tremendous amount of knowledge. Because the Cavalry Scout is such an invaluable asset on the battlefield, he is not usually used in the traditional combat role. He fights as a last resort and rarely as a combat multiplier, but has a tremendous amount of combat resources available to him to insure his survivability. It is not unusual to see a young Cavalry Scout coordinating both direct and indirect fires to decisively engage and destroy the enemy because he is the one with the eyes on the target. The term "Recon out front" exemplifies the dangerous job and continuous threat of exposure to the enemy while working on or behind enemy lines. The term Recon Scout usually refers to a Cavalry Scout that works primarily in the light mode. They may be Airborne, Air assault (helicopter inserted), or based on HMMWV's and conduct dismounted operations regularly. They take great pride in their ability to move amongst the enemy dismounted, traversing all types of terrain, while carrying all the gear necessary to accomplish the mission. This gear regularly exceeds 100 pounds because of the difficulty to re-supply these soldiers and their risk of exposure while conducting operations.