ArmA 2: Friendly Fire Incident

I was practicing the command and control of fires at the squad level (details to come in a future blog entry) and my command skills were so good that my virtual Marines started shooting each other!

Seriously, this is what happened. I was in charge of a squad of Marines, moving to contact down a road. I was on point when I saw a squad-sized enemy patrol (Russian infantry) at a distant crossroad. I immediately ordered my Marines to hit the dirt and hold fire. I thought I could bag half of the Russians with the first volley if I bring the 3 squad automatic weapons (SAWs) up front. Predicting that the surviving Russian infantry would try to flank us, I ordered a couple of riflemen to stay just behind the SAWs as a maneuver buddy-pair that would block the assaulting Russians and buy some time for the SAWs so they could reposition.

After pointing targets for most of the squad members, I ordered everybody to open fire. It's always nice to see smoke coming out simultaneously from 3 SAWs' ...

And then I heard one of the automatic rifleman in front of me say "Cease fire, #$#@#it!".
Friendly fire, who the hell is messing up?

It was not me, I haven't shot a single round. It was one of the riflemen, whose line of fire had the automatic rifleman in it.

Screenshot taken moments after the friendly fire incident. See image below for an explanation. Image is clickeable.

Captioned image showing the position of the enemy in the far background, the automatic rifleman hit by friendly fire and the offending rifleman who messed up. Image is clickeable.

I'm humbled. This incident shows that I should be very careful positioning the Marines and watching out for their fields of fire. It also speaks volumes of ArmA 2's simulation capabilities.

The automatic rifleman survived and he is recovering from his wounds.

Cheers,