Free New Wargame: "March to Baghdad: Decision at Tallil Air Base"

A new ProSim title, "March to Baghdad: Decision at Tallil Air Base" is availabe (for free!) at the Armchair General's website.

Main menu. Click for an expanded view.

This mini-game consists of two scenarios that allow players to take command of battalion-sized forces belonging to the 3rd BCT (the Hammer brigade) during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The two scenarios included in the mini game focus on the fight around Talil Air Base.

In-game screenshot of the first scenario. Click the image for an expanded view.

The Hammer's Brigade scheme of maneuver near the Talil Air Base. From "On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom". Click the image for an expanded view.

As with previous ProSim titles based on recent conflicts, this is a great opportunity to interactively learn military history.

Congratulations to Pat Proctor (head honcho of ProSim), who by the way has been recently deployed to Iraq. Thanks for your service, Pat! EDIT: and off course congrats to all the crew of ProSim!

Cheers,

Flight simming the air war over Vietnam

Just in time for my new work schedule with almost no free time, a new itch: air combat during the Vietnam era.

I installed my long-forgotten copy of "Wings over Vietnam" (WoV, from Thirdwire) and I took off to the virtual skies of Vietnam. This flight simulator is certainly not the cup of tea of the hardcore crowd out there. WoV doesn't feature detailed avionics, weapons targeting procedures, mission planning or a clickeable cockpit. Hell, you can even land your aircraft in the middle of the jungle!

In my case I am just happy with just some sort of fidelity in the flight modeling and weapons performance. To a certain extent, WoV delivers in those departments. In any case, WoV looks like the only choice I have.

Just as fighter pilots described in the abundant literature about the air war in Vietnam, flying the Phantom II is like flying a brick. Click the image for a better view.

My first encounters with the MIG-17 were not pretty. If you are flying a Phantom, avoid a turning fight with this guy! Click the image for a better view.

If this goes well and time allows, I would like to purchase Yankee Air Pirate 2.

Cheers,

A public THANK YOU to Chuck "Magnum" Ankenbauer, SimHQ

The Land & Armor Combat Editor of SimHQ (a premiere website for simulations fans), Chuck "Magnum" Ankenbauer, has been regularly featuring this blog in SimHQ's "Land Combat News" section.

A big thank you to "Magnum" for pointing simulation fans to this humble blog.

Much appreciated, Magnum! :)

Odd finds at an odd place ...

WARNING. This entry may contain mild references to my personal life. Reader discretion is advised. :)

I'm addicted to military-themed books. My sweet tooth for them has gotten more "gourmetized" over the years and the type of hardcore books I long for are hard to find in the average bookstore. During this past weekend, I was almost floored when I spotted great military history books in a store located at a tourist hot spot, just a couple of hundred yards from the beach.

The bookstore in question is Atlantic Books (see google street view below, the store with yellow letters on top), located in Rehoboth/Dewey beach (DE, USA).


View Larger Map

I walked into it expecting to find the regular beach reading stuff you find at most beach side bookstores. Then I spotted "Tank Tactics: from Normandy to Lorraine" (What the hell? I had to drive all the way down to Washington DC to get my copy of that book!). There was more: this store had no less than seven books from Stackpole Military History series. Some of them I had already, others I couldn't get without alerting the book-addiction rehab officers waiting for me at the beach (AKA wife & kids :) ). So, I settled for "Goodwood: The British Offensive in Normandy, July 1944" and a copy of the Washington Post as a wrap to get it ready for a surreptitious infiltration into the beach tote.

Quite a beach-side catch.

Cheers,

Advancing Through Hilly Terrain (Tank Tactics)

This entry is a continuation from a previous one that dealt with some of the problems of cresting hills while moving to contact or conducting reconnaissance. In that previous blog entry, an M3 Bradley CFV/M1 Abrams MBT hunter/killer team was moving north and had a hill between them and enemy-held terrain. I'm using Steel Beasts ProPE for this write up.

If cresting hills is not a good idea, what is one to do then?

As one of the faithful readers of this blog (thank you Alan for visiting!) commented in the previous entry, the key is moving like the flow of water. Move around hills, not through them. There are many variations of how to do this and I'm going to write only about the one I'm most familiar with.

Please see a graphical representation in the next figure.

• Of all the members of the hunter/killer team, I've chosen the main battle tank to move and watch ahead. It's always better to make contact with the enemy with the most survivable platform. You may be wondering where all the buzz about the M3 CFVs acting as hunters went, but remember that this situation the hunter/killer team has a moderately small area to cover and is moving ahead as a team instead of separating themselves into different roles
  
• Below the hill, the tank moves following a contour line of the hill, preferably the lowest one. In the figure below the movement path of the tank is represented by the big blue arrow. The small blue arrows fanning out the big blue arrow represent the orientation of the turret.
• The two M3 CFVs provide over watch while the tank moves. They cover the terrain in front of the tank's axis of movement and the right flank. At this stage of the drill, the two M3 CFVs are represented in the figure by big blue arrowheads. The small blue arrows fanning out from the blue arrowheads represent turrets orientations
• As the tank moves across the countour line, successive sections of enemy-held terrain can be scanned with the tank's TIS. The first terrain sections to be visible will be the ones around the "C" label in the figure, then the ones the "B" label
• If enemy units were located at "A", "B" and "C", the tank would make contact with each, one at a time. Compare this to cresting the hill and making contact with all enemy units simultaneously
  
• Once the contour line around the hill changes direction, so does the the direction of movement of the tank. The tank re-orients along new direction of the contour line, stops at the tip of the big blue arrow and waits for the M3 CFVs to occupy new overwatch positions (red arrowheads in the figure)
• The tank now moves again along the contour line (big red arrow in the figure), scanning the western side of the terrain labelled "B" and eventually the terrain labelled "A"

"Tank Rush", the US Cavalry version. Click the image for an expanded view.

There is catch to this. If contact with the enemy is made the tank will be showing not its front but its left hull side to the enemy. Always keep in mind that the tank's best armor is located in its front. So be ready to quickly pull back into cover when contact is made (see figure below). This will allow you to re-orient behind the cover of the hill and then engage the enemy from a hull-down position.

It's better to be nagged about a damaged gearbox than to be awarded a posthumous Purple Heart. Click the image for an expanded view.

Cheers,

DCS Black Shark Controls Lockup? Try this.

The latest patch for DCS Black Shark has implemented a new and default trimmer implementation. It works like this: once you hit the trimmer button, any input from your joystick and rudder pedals will be ignored until you center them. Most of the times this new trimmer implementation works like a charm, but if you fail to center your joystick and rudder any further input from them will be ignored (controls lockup, yikes!).

If your joystick and rudder pedals are not properly calibrated/centered, these lockups will happen when you least want them. Joysticks and pedals generating a moderate amount of "noise" will also produce these lockups.

To avoid these lockups, I suggest you go into the game's option suite, controls tab, axis commands and click on the "tune axis" option. Once in the axis tune panel, provide a small amount of "dead zone" to the axis of your controllers. The amount of "dead zone" depends on how noisy your controls are.



Cheers,

Where's All That Nagging Coming From: the Black Shark's ADF

I'm compulsively trying to figure out instrument landings in DCS Black Shark.

This entry, though, is about one capability of the Black Shark that I bumped into while experimenting with the instruments. After some manual reading, I found out that this feature is actually documented there (warning, this is not a discovery of any sort!). Flipping switches and then go to read the manual to understand what the hell just happened is not the optimal way to learn, but alas the manual's style will never engage me in a cover-to-cover reading madness.

Anyway, here is the thing. The Black Shark has an electronic system to find the direction of radio transmissions. It's called the "ARK-22 ADF" (ADF stands for automatic direction finder). The ARK-22 ADF controls the Radio Magnetic Indicator (RMI) needle on the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI), pointing it in the direction of the transmitting signal. The ARK-22 ADF is vital to point the pilot towards airport radio beacons that transmit a radio signal with all the information needed for instrument landings.

It turns out that the ARK-22 ADF can be used to find the direction of incoming regular radio transmissions. Who ever talks to you by radio, you can see in the HSI where the transmission came from.

Talking with the guys at the FARP. The red caret (actually named RMI-2) at the HSI (horizontal situation indicator) wheel (right panel, ABRIS screen) shows where the transmission came from. Click the image for a better view.

Another example. This time my wingman is answering my request to change formation. Note how the red caret in the HSI wheel (right panel) shows the direction from which the wingman is transmitting. Click the image for a better view.

Not bad for an helicopter that doesn't have a radar warning receiver! ;)

Cheers,

Thou Shalt Not Crest ... (Tank Tactics)

Yes, the title of this entry was a bit overboard. There are no ten commandments for tank tactics. There are not even fixed rules in tactics. The tactical level of war is full of paradoxes and contradictions. You are told to advance and attack without pause but if you do it you expose your flanks. You protect your flanks but you divert forces from your main attack force, weakening your advance. C’est la guerre! As Robert Leonhard once wrote in “Fighting by Minutes”, waging war will require you to “sit and walk at the same time”.

One of the oldest adages in war is “always hold the high ground”. The high ground gives you a vantage point from which to see and shoot the enemy. This blog entry is a friendly reminder that carelessly stepping into the high ground also gives the enemy an opportunity to see and shoot you.

The simulation I’m using for this entry is Steel Beasts ProPE.

A US Cavalry M1 Abrams MBT/M3 Bradley CFV “hunter/killer” team is on the base of a hill. Enemy is likely to be on the other side.

Map showing the hunter/killer team (pink icon in the center) and the line of sight (red/white areas) from their position. At this point the team is in the base of the hill and the line of sight is good to the flanks and to the rear. Since no enemy forces are at the team’s flanks or rear, there is no danger so far.

The hunter/killer cresting the hill. Given the small size of the team and the unknown strength of enemy forces ahead, this wonderful view of the valley is quite dangerous. The reason for this is explained in the caption of the next figure.

Map showing the hunter/killer team (pink icon in the center) and the line of sight (red/white areas) from the crest of the hill. Note how the team can see more terrain than before (good), yet it can also be seen from more enemy-held territory (bad). If weak enemy forces are encountered, the team may survive by firing back. But if equal or superior enemy forces are encountered ... You get the idea.

The crest of hills sometimes make great battle positions. But moving through them while on the march/attack/etc, or stepping on them while on reconnaissance is most of the times not advisable.

In the next installment: what to do instead of cresting.

Cheers,

Steel Beasts ProPE to be updated today!

The release of a new patch for Steel Beasts ProPE is imminent according to this post by Ssnake at the official Steel Beasts forum.

This patch will take the simulation to version v2.483.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The patch has been released! Info and link courtesy of Alan Giasson (see comments below). Thanks again, Alan.

Irregular Warfare Simulations: More Like SimCity than War Games?

This is the last time I will bore you with an article on Training and Simulation Journal TSJ, I promise. At least for this month. :)

The TSJ article in question is "Future imperfect: U.S. Army struggles to model irregular warfare scenarios."

In a nutshell, the article says that fighting irregular wars in extremely difficult and that simulating them is a nightmare. A tremendous effort is in place and the results are mixed. The article features one simulation in development, UrbanSim, that looks very promising.

The buzzword du jour in the article was "human terrain", a conceptual space where the interactions between troops, the civilian population and the insurgents take place. Navigating through this "human terrain" is quite challenging and the commander of a regular force has to deal with the approval ratings, informants, information operations, infrastructure, etc. The strenght of the expression "human terrain" in irregular warfare makes it equivalent to the geographical terrain that is so important to use tactically in regular warfare.

I've seen this "human terrain" expression before in the book "Urban Warfare in Iraq 2003-2006". In a chapter entitled "People: the key terrain", this book presents the tricks of the trade on how the US Army has dealt with the "human terrain" in Iraq.

This book is not written as a conventional book, but rather reads as very detailed notes from a PowerPoint presentation. Nonetheless, the amount of information presented is huge. Recommended for those servicemen being deployed.

A simulation model the "human terrain" in irregular warfare will have to model societies, infrastructures and military forces. Sociology, urban planning and military science mixed all in one simulation.

The TSJ article mentions that the US Army is looking for some sort of predictive value on a future simulation of irregular warfare. Given the incipient state of the field of computational sociology, the goal of a simulation of irregular warfare with predictive value sounds too ambitious. A model of the penetration of armor-piercing ammunition is relatively easy to formulate, but a model of how a neighborhood will react to a new checkpoint in their main street is a totally different story.

A computer model with great predictive value would be great, but why not starting with formulating a framework with cheaper, less precise models of societies.

SimCity maybe? :)

Cheers,