Skirmisher Skirmishers are infantry or cavalry soldier s stationed ahead or alongside a larger body of friendly troops . They are usually placed in a skirmish line to harass the enemy . History . Pre - modern . In ancient and medieval warfare , skirmishers typically carried bows , javelins , slings , and sometimes light shield s . Acting as light infantry with their light arms and minimal armour , they could run ahead of the main battle line , release a volley of arrows , slingshots or javelins , and retreat behind their main battle line before the clash of the opposing main forces . The aims of skirmishing were to disrupt enemy formations by causing casualties before the main battle , and to tempt the opposing infantry into attacking prematurely , throwing their organization into disarray . Skirmishers could also be effectively used to surround opposing soldiers in the absence of friendly cavalry . Once preliminary skirmishing was over , skirmishers participated in the main battle by shooting into the enemy formation , or joined in melée combat with daggers or short swords . Alternatively , they could act as ammunition bearers or stretcher - bearers . Due to their mobility , skirmishers were also valuable for reconnaissance , especially in wooded or urban areas . In classical Greece , skirmishers originally had low status . For example , Herodotus , in his account of the Battle of Plataea of 479 BC , mentions that the Spartans fielded 35 , 000 lightly armed helot s to 5 , 000 hoplite s yet there is no mention of them in his account of the fighting . Often Greek historians ignored them altogether , though Xenophon distinguished them explicitly from the statary troops . It was far cheaper to equip oneself as lightly armed as opposed to a fully armed hoplite – indeed it was not uncommon for the lightly armed to go into battle equipped with stones . Hence the low status of skirmishers reflected the low status of the poorer sections of society who made up skirmishers . Additionally , " hit and run " tactics contradicted the Greek ideal of heroism . Plato gives the skirmisher a voice to advocate " flight without shame , " but only to denounce it as an inversion of decent values . Nevertheless , skirmishers chalked up significant victories in this period , such as the Athenian defeat at the hands of the Aetolian javelin men in 426 BC and , in the same war , the Athenian victory of Sphacteria . Skirmisher infantry would gain more respect in the subsequent years as their usefulness was more widely recognised and as the ancient bias against them waned . Peltast s , light javelin infantry , played a vital role in the Peloponnesian War and well equipped skirmisher troops such as Thureophoroi and Thorakites would be developed to provide a strong mobile force for the Greek and Macedonian armies . Celts did not , in general , favour ranged weapons . The exceptions tended not to include the use of skirmishers . The Britons used the sling extensively , but for siege warfare , not skirmishing . Among the Gauls likewise , the bow was employed when defending a fixed position . The Celtic lack of skirmishers cost them dearly during the Gallic Invasion of Greece of 279 BC , where they found themselves helpless in the face of Aetolian skirmishing tactics . In the Punic Wars , despite the Roman and Carthaginian armies ' different organisations , skimishers had the same role in both : to screen the main armies . The Roman legions of this period had a specialised infantry class called Velites that acted as skirmish troops , engaging the enemy before the Roman heavy infantry made contact , while the Carthaginians recruited their skirmishers from native peoples across the Carthaginian Empire . The Roman army of the late republican and early imperial periods frequently recruited foreign auxiliary troops to act as skirmishers to supplement the citizen Legions . The medieval skirmishers were generally armed with crossbows or longbows wielded largely by commoner s . In the fourteenth century , although long held in disdain by Castilian heavy cavalry manned by the aristocracy , the crossbowmen contributed greatly to the Portuguese victory at the Battle of Aljubarrota . Similarly , English archers played a key role in the English victory over French heavy cavalry at Crécy . In the next century they largely repeated the feat at the Battle of Agincourt . Such disasters have been seen as marking the beginning of the end of the dominance of the medieval cavalry in particular and heavy cavalry in general . The Americas . The Seven Years War and American Revolutionary War were two early conflicts in which the modern rifle began to make a significant contribution to warfare . Its accuracy at relatively long range increasingly offered advantages over the smoothbore musket in common use among professional armies of the mid - 18th century . In both those wars many American frontiersmen served in the militia . The Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War included many such irregular troops . They engaged in skirmishing tactics , firing from cover rather than in the open field engagements customary at that time . Their tactics were largely influenced by experiences fighting native Americans . The character of Natty Bumppo in James Fenimore Cooper ' s novel " The Last of the Mohicans " was notably called " La Longue Carabine " by the French due to his skill with the long rifle common among the Colonials . Napoleonic Wars . During the Napoleonic Wars skirmishers played a key role in battles , attempting to disrupt the main enemy force by firing into their close - packed ranks and by preventing enemy skirmishers from doing the same to friendly troops . Because skirmishers generally fought in open order they could take cover behind trees , houses , towers and similar items , thereby presenting unrewarding targets for small arms and artillery fire . Such tactics often made them vulnerable to cavalry however . A skirmish force screening the main body of infantry became so important to any army in the field that eventually all the major European powers developed specialised skirmishing infantry . Examples included the German Jäger , French Voltigeur s and British riflemen . While muskets were the predominant weapon at the time , the British Army experimented with rifles which though slower to reload and more costly to produce were more accurate and had a longer range of effective fire . Rifles were so successful in the Peninsular War that British riflemen could selectively target and decimate the officers of often superior French forces . In the American theater , American riflemen again contributed to British casualties but now had to contend with revised British light infantry tactics . A consequence of experiences during these wars was a trend to training line troops to adopt tactics that until then had been used only by skirmishers . American Civil War . The treatise , " New American Tactics " , by General John Watts de Peyster advocated making the skirmish line the new line of battle , a revolutionary idea at the time . During the American Civil War , it was common for cavalrymen to dismount and form a skirmish line to delay enemy troops advancing towards an objective ( for example , the actions of the Federal cavalrymen on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg ) . Modern . By the late 19th century , the concept of fighting in formation was on the wane , and the distinctions between skirmishers and heavy infantry has now disappeared . The former Soviet Army , however , had lighter wheeled BTR - equipped motorized rifle regiment s fighting on the flanks or secondary sectors of a motorized rifle division on the offensive , while heavier tracked BMP - equipped motorized rifle regiments would fight in the division ' s sector of main effort . In the early 21st Century , the U . S . Army has also adopted this doctrine by having light rapid deployment Stryker Brigades on wheels and heavier Mechanized and Armored units with tracked Bradleys and Abrams as main combat forces .