Combat readiness is a condition of the armed forces and their constituent units and formations, warships, aircraft, weapon systems or other military technology and equipment to perform during combat military operations, or functions consistently with the purpose for which they are organised or designed, or the managing of resources and personnel training in preparation for combat.
Most armed forces maintain varying levels of readiness by the troops to engage in combat due to economic considerations which vary from minutes to months. In modern armed forces troops designated special forces are usually those kept at the highest state of readiness for combat, and are often alerted only a few hours before being committed to combat. Where time is of the essence in military action being initiated, the troops, such as pilots of interceptor aircraft, may be kept in constant state of combat readiness.
Famous quotes containing the words combat and/or readiness:
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality—the principle of order versus the split atom.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)