Close Air Support Video - The Real Deal

This video brought to my attention by blog reader BO. Thanks!



Those of you who fly DCS A-10C will be able to figure out the tactical situation from seeing the targeting pod video. Note the background shooting in the radio chat from the tactical air controller. Scary stuff.

Cheers,

ArmA 2 BAF - Are Grenades the Modern Bayonets?

I'm in a strange tactical land, folks. I'm reading Paddy Griffith's Forward into Battle and it's quite a journey of critical reading. Griffith gets very controversial in this book. His main point is about how virtually every major decisive victory in military history can be attributed to shock action. Napoleonic massed volley fire? Just to wear down the enemy and then deliver the (only thing decisive) bayonet charge.

I'm not of the intellectual stature to challenge anything that I'm reading, but it looks to me that close combat is the last option in modern combat. Killing the enemy from the distance with superior firepower looks like an SOP nowadays.

Enough digression. Griffith mentions in several parts of the book that the cold steel of the bayonet has been replaced by the hand grenade. I confess that when I am in virtual combat, grenades are the least thing in my mind. So here is this entry, to reinforce the habit of safe close combat.

Tigers Unleashed (HPS Simulations) - Gameplay Notes - Opening Moves

The opening moves of this battle left me completely humbled by the friction and subtleties of command.

This is a continuation of the previous entry where I edited a battle from scratch. Quick refresh: a company-sized team of German PzIVs and PzGr. against a computer controlled Soviet infantry battalion reinforced with a company of AT guns.

The battle is unfolding and the simulation is showing  more data that I can shake a mouse at, but that window that displays my tactical shortcomings is painfully missing.

Red Orchestra 2 - Mexican Standoff with the Involuntary TeamKiller

No matter how big the claim of being realistic, tactical or [put your favorite euphemism here], for the most part the multiplayer experience in mainstream first person shooters (FPS) is just a bar brawl with guns. Which is a pity in the case of Red Orchestra 2, because there is very solid stuff in it.

Prompted by a very positive review by Michael Peck at the Training and Simulation Journal, I installed my copy of Red Orchestra 2 and went right into the hell of urban combat.

Stalingrad, 1942 ... Here I come.

Tigers Unleashed (HPS Simulations) - Gameplay Notes - Starting a Battle from Scratch

Tigers Unleashed ships with some 34 tactical scenarios covering the invasion of Poland and the first two years of the invasion of the Soviet Union. There is also a battle making utility that allows you to pick a map, opposing forces and play that scenario.



I'm simplifying things, because the level of detail and available options in Tigers Unleashed is just incredible. Here is an scenario I built from scratch. Nothing too thrilling, just to get my hands dirty with this great simulation.

Combat Mission Battle for Normandy - Tactics Video Series from Armchair General

The second episode is up at the Armchair General website, gents. This time a frontal attack over a bridge!



This video series is by Lt. Col. (ret) Jeffrey Paulding, game editor at Armchair General.

Cheers,

It's the Man, Not the Machine

Sorting out pics we took with my brother during his visit from Spain I found these of the Supermarine Spitfire HF at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Unity of Command - Review

Let me paraphrase the opening paragraph of a professional game reviewer elsewhere. Before I got Unity of Command, I made the mistake of glancing at a few screen shots. They worried me. Those unit's busts instead of NATO icons, the barren interface lacking recognizable buttons for all things sacred in hardcore war gaming, the list of unit's stats shorter than my bank savings account deposit records. Oh no, it's going to be one of those games isn't it? One of those "spiritual successors" trying to bank on the genius of designers of great things we grew up and moved on from? One of those generic turns and hexes "war game light" clones that keep sprouting like mushrooms on a rainy day?

Unity of Command (UoC from here), turned out to be neither. A lean, fast and fulfilling operational level war game with a computer opponent that will hurt your martial ego and keep you in the edge of your seat to the very last turn is the best way to describe it.

Pat Proctor in National Public Radio

What a surprise yesterday when I heard Michel Martin say in her program Tell Me More that Pat Proctor was her guest. Pat has published Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq and is finishing his Ph.D. studies in military history. You may know him from the ProSimCo line of tactical games.

Pat's blog is in our blogroll, down below in the side bar.

Cheers,

ArmA 2 - Asymmetric Warfare Components Mod Needs Testers

Iraq and Afghanistan veteran (and fellow reader of the blog) BO is modding ArmA 2 from his experiences with the real deal.



Now looking for testers of his mod.

Cheers,