Do You Have What It Takes to Command a Whole Corps?

Although I never declared myself a fan of this simulation, I keep coming back to it at least twice a month.So many things to learn from it ...

Suppressive Fire in ArmA 2 v1.05

It works!
Messing around with a US Marines fire team (FT) yesterday, I was trying to take out a single MG nest. I ordered my automatic rifleman (AR, #2) to stay back and lay some fire into the enemy position while the rest of the team and me close with it. When I got there the enemy machine gunner was already eliminated so just for fun I ordered my AR to lay suppressive fire into the MG nest. Do you see the dust kicked out of the sandbags (arrow in the right)? It's my AR's suppressive fire coming from the right of the screenshot.

For using suppressive fire, it's important to keep in mind ...

Gah ! I've joined the Angle of Attack Church!

A time ago I posted an entry about how lousy of a virtual pilot I am.

I've lost count of how many virtual skies I've flown. Smolensk, Moscow, Okinawa, the Coral Sea, Korea, Great Britain, France ... I've chatted with fellow air combat simmers about energy and angles dogfights. I've been such a pedantic idiot that a couple of years ago I thought that I was done with combat flight simulators.  The truth is that after 10 years of on and off combat flight simming, I was not able to fly an airplane straight and level without continuously moving the stick back and forth.

(Click here or "read more" below for the full story)

"Armored Brigade", A Free Wargame that Mixes the Best into Something Unique

What do get when you combine a bit of TacOps, Armored Task Force, Close Combat, Point of Attack 2, Combat Mission and Conquest of the Aegean?

ArmA 2 Gets Patched to v1.05

Yeah! Just in time for the Holidays break!

Not All Human Conflicts Are Created The Same

Apparently. The latest issue of the journal Nature has a paper detailing the statistical analysis of insurgencies that strongly suggests that, casualty-wise, insurgencies follow the same trend as conventional wars yet they are significantly different in terms of the frequency of casualties and the underlying mechanics generating them. (Click read more below to read this entry)

Badass War Game AI: Be Careful on What you Wish For ...

I bought "The First Blitzkrieg" (HPS Simulations) a while ago and I played it on and off for a while. Reasons why I don't play that much with this war game:

First, I have the attention span of two year old. Second, the bloody computer opponent kicks my rear end. Every time. It makes me kind of sick. :)

I'm such an hypocrite! I can't even remember how much I bitched in the past for good computer opponents in war games ...

Straight into the Teeth of the Lion: Hermann Balck's Attack on Martelange, 1940

The campaign Germany unleashed against France in 1940 is one of the few clear examples of the so-called “blitzkrieg”. The details of this campaign at the operational level can be checked out in the widely available literature. Today,  a combat vignette of one of the tactical battles that was pivotal for the success of the German Army. A few considerations on the operational level are given to understand the context ...

(An expanded view and explanation of this figure is in the body of this entry, click "Read more" below)

Flight Safety for the Ka-50: Autorotation with both engines out

Two failed attempts to report today:

1. To autorotate and make a decent landing after a dual engine failure
2. To make a decent video

Cheers,

The Showdown Between "Virtual Battlespace 2" vs "America's Army 3" Featured at Training and Simulation Journal

Well folks, the last issue of Training and Simulation Journal (TSJ) came packed (as usually happens when I/ITSEC is near), so bear with me.

Today I want to give a heads up on Michael Peck's article "Battle of the Video Games" (page 32 of the print version, December2009/January2010 issue) ...