Long-Distance Enemy Scouting Formation

Riding out toward Shiganshina, the Survey Corps deploys in Commander Erwin's new arrangement, with riders spaced at wide intervals so the group can watch every direction at once. Red smoke marks a Titan sighting and relays across the line, green signals a course change from the commander, and black warns of an abnormal or a breach. The system exists to avoid Titans rather than fight them, and it has sharply raised survival rates.

Eren remembers the days before departure: rehearsing the plan with his new squad, then reuniting with Armin, Mikasa, and the other 104th graduates who chose the Corps. The joy sours when he asks after Marco and Jean delivers the news of his death. Jean also presses Eren about the report that he attacked Mikasa while transformed; since Eren has no memory of losing control, he cannot deny it. Jean asks only that Eren remember how many people are wagering their lives on him, and Eren promises he will.

Once the expedition is underway, the machinery functions. Sasha's group flags a crawling Titan with red smoke and dispatches it. Then black smoke rises: an abnormal drives toward the formation's center, and with flat terrain robbing them of their maneuvering gear, Ness and Siss still manage to bring it down. Their triumph lasts seconds. A Female Titan bears down on them at impossible speed, snatching Siss out of the air and crushing him, then seizing Ness's grapple lines and whipping him into the earth. Armin grasps that this Titan carries human intelligence, like the Colossus and Armored before it, and flees in a panic as it closes in. Behind it, the right flank lies annihilated, and the rest of the formation rides on with no idea of what is coming.

Erwin's long-distance scouting formation is explained: spaced riders, relayed smoke signals in red, green, and black, and a doctrine of evasion over combat.

Eren learns of Marco's death from Jean, who asks him to carry the weight of every life being risked for his sake.

The 57th expedition departs and the formation initially performs as intended, with Sasha's group eliminating a Titan cleanly.

Ness and Siss kill an abnormal Titan but are immediately slaughtered by the Female Titan, whose speed and technique reveal human intelligence.

The Female Titan wipes out the right flank undetected, leaving Armin alone in its path as the chapter ends.

Long-Distance Enemy Scouting Formation is the 22nd chapter of Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan and the final chapter of volume 5. Japan received it on June 9, 2011; the English edition followed on June 4, 2013.

It opens the Female Titan arc, sitting between Opening the Gate and The Female Titan. The anime adapts it across What Needs to be Done Now: Eve of the Counterattack, Part 3 and Female Titan: The 57th Exterior Scouting Mission, Part 1.

The chapter introduces the series' first mid-expedition intelligent Titan encounter, and the deaths of Ness and Siss establish that even skilled veterans cannot survive an enemy that anticipates vertical maneuvering equipment.