0311

But I don't want to play a game where the only thing I do is wake up at some random early ass time; then stand around for 12 hours waiting for something to happen just so the First Sergeant can come rushing out of his office pissed off that we didn't do whatever we were supposed to do (which he forgot to disseminate to platoon sergeants) and spend the next 6-8 hours doing what we could have been doing during the work day, just to get home, collapse in bed, then get woken up at 0300 to be told to come in even earlier than the day before for a UA. No thanks. LOL, I love this post. So true, So true. The good old days. Haha.

Those arn't Army ACUs. They're Marine desert cammies.

I'm just checking the site today. And yes happy birthday to us. Too bad I will be missing the birthday ball this year. Semper Fi 0311

I'm not going to say who I'm rooting for, but Obama's going to win. He's just way too popular. He's ahead in all the polls. I see Obama bumber stickers everywhere I go.

All good points. I am really worried about having to download patches. I'm moving to a new house this week and I wont have any internet there for some months. So I will have to use the wireless internet at starbucks or somewhere just to check my email. I'm guessing OPF GOTY straight out of the box should run just well without any internet since it IS the final version. Arma might need quite a bit of patching? I dunno. I really enjoyed playing OPF. And with my new machine I should be able to enjoy it at max settings. But I do think I will give Arma another try maybe once I finally DO get internet in the next year.

I remember playing Operation Flashpoint back in the day at it was an extremely fun game. I tried Arma on a friends computer and it was so buggy I couln't even order my men to do anything. Not only that, none of my fully automatic weapons would fire. I have a decent computer and I think I would be able to run OPF at full capacity on it. I'm just wondering if I should buy OPF because ARMA seems so buggy to me. I don't want to have to download a million patches just to run Arma.

I thought the website was interesting, ... up until I saw the video. The dialogue seemed too .. fake. They seemed too happy. Not angry and exhausted like most Marines in combat. Most Marines don't talk that much anyways. Another thing I noticed in the video is that they were mostly in vehicles. In my unit squads always move out on foot. I really don't think they're gonna do this right. Unfortunately most people are completely misinformed about the Marines, and this would only exacerbate that. I really hope they do it right, but I'm not optimistic.

What you say here is all too true. Myself and my peers have had personal experience with this. Suicides and marriage breakups are all too commonplace. Thankfully there is help out there for vets. The hardest part is acknowledging this. It's made worse by ignorance about this in todays society. Some people just have no clue.

I admitted that there are certain applications where sim is useful. I still believe however that there is no way to fully reproduce real training by comp sim. I'm wary of this. Certain situations yes, but most - no. Anyways, with the way the Corps is run, most infantrymen will never see it, atleast they don't right now. I suppose we'll have to see what the future brings in terms of computer technology.

Well yes I admitted there are certain applications that simulation could be used for such as CAS and arty/mortars. But most of our training involves movement on foot. We did all of our operations in Iraq on foot. Also rigging up realistic scenarios to train in isn't really that expensive. The most expensive part of alot of training is the price of ammo(blanks or live), that and sweat and blood. The military always has trucks going all over the places on bases, so a ride out to a range isn't going to be such a big deal. Even then, we can always "hump" out to the range on foot.

Yes, we do and HAVE done full company level assaults, convoy ops, etc multiple times in a day, plus several times at night with live ammo, for days at a time if not weeks. Whenever the range is completed, we just "reset" and run it again, though completely exhausted. And often enough we have our own cameramen recording how it goes down for evaluation. Â It all makes for a great training package. We do all those things you mentioned for days at a time perfectly well IRL. Yes, after some thought I do admit there are certain specialized tasks such as calling for indirect fire, or forward observation that are better suited to a sim. Â None of them are the kinetic force on force training that most of infantry requires. My best buddy just made it through the combat climbers course in West Virginia. He reports the same things you say. But I doubt he would ever relegate the training to a computer sim. I concede the fact that ISMT training can be used to teach certain basic SOPs. But when it comes down to it the only way to tell if you can handle it or not is when you are actually doing it. Â That's what makes or breaks a good field Marine. Â My main point is that some Marines can handle it, but alot of good Marines can't. Â I've just seen too many Marines break down the hard way. It's better that this happens in training instead of combat. Â This is why I have little faith in sims, as good as they may be.

How about an actual real rifle firing real rounds at a screen projecting a combat scenario in VBS2? Did you know that was possible? Surprise, it is. I'm sure you've used the ISMT in your time - imagine that, except much more robust and able to represent any number of varied scenarios with relative ease. If you discount the value of such training, I'm afraid you're a lost cause - I have plenty of hands-on experience with such things, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they have had a real, measurable, positive influence on my marksmanship. My entire job is off of the premise that that sort of training is valuable, trains effectively, and ultimately saves lives. We hear it from our customers on a very frequent basis. I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Walker already covered the depth to which simulation "in a computer" is used to "reproduce" combat. I won't go over it again, since he nailed it already. The majority of your posts so far are crammed brimming full of chest-thumping "OORAH MARINE CORPS INFANTRY" stuff that is 100% motivation at the expense of reason. It's great that you're moto, and I know the feeling - I'm prior service USMC myself. However, you need to recognize that this type of training is actually useful, has saved lives in the past and will in the future, and allows for an ease of training and a depth of analysis that cannot easily be reached in any other way. Are you familiar with the DVTE? If you've been on a recent float, you should have had had a set of DVTE equipment & laptops there - to include VBS1 or 2 depending. If you can explain to me how you could find another way to do convoy operations while cooped up on a ship, I'm all ears. That's just one of countless examples of how VBS2 and similar simulations can provide valuable training to Marines. Who ever said anything about abandoning real-world training? You're using this as a straw-man argument. If you want to learn to shoot, firearm simulators are a very valid and recognized step of the process. By this I mean sims where you are holding a real (or 'close to real' weapon and are using actual sights to fire at targets, with recoil and everything. This is good training. VBS2 facilitates this. As to melee, of course you would not train for such things in a game. There are no sims available to this date that can offer any reasonable representation of that. However, there ARE sims that can provide firearms training, tactical training, etc, and VBS2 is one of them. Sounds like you should be asking your command some rather pointed questions. There are many, many skills that can be trained via VBS2 aside from "kicking in doors" and other similar things that you are almost certainly alluding to with your "combat is too complex to simulate" comments. Examples have already been posted - CAS coordination, artillery forward observing, convoy operations, firearms training - but it's up to you to think about that and decide for yourself what the value in such training. It will require a bit of open-mindedness, though... edit: I just re-read the post prior to the one I responded to (from you, 0311), and man... you are quite simply ill-informed of how this stuff works. Your comments about "substandard" training via simulations are flat-out wrong and show clearly that you have no concept of how VBS2 is used by the USMC, or what value it has. Yes, I've played the ISMT games.  Alot of my peers who are getting out work there at the ISMT giving instruction on things such as CAS, calling for IDF etc. For certain tasks, the ISMT is great. I already mentioned CAS and arty. Let's not get into other jobs in the Corps.  I already know tankers use sims like this all the time, that's fine.  Infantry work is different. I've seen the grey war training "shoot or don't shoot" sims too. They don't  hold a candle to having a real AK armed coyote screaming at you as you scream back at him. As for learning to shoot. Nothing beats ranges.  We've all seen grunts be "ISMT snipers" but flunk out on the range. Sure, ISMT training can be ok to grade certain skills, but at the loss of quality.  Convoys, assaults, raids.  These things can be rehearsed multiple times a day and at night for weeks at a time, and we do.  Aside from certain specialised skills, there's nothing that can be done in sim that can't be done BETTER in real life. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention.  An ISMT or certain "wrap-around wall projection sims" are a far cry from a mouse and keyboard game, no?

You say the Marine Corps uses it? Where? I have never heard of this the whole time I have been in Infantry. Ask any Infantry Marine about this and he will say "WTH is that?". So if some officers are playing with this in some secluded office in Quantico it doesn't really count. As for the rest. You either train hard or not at all. You do it right because training the wrong way can build bad habits. We will spend millions of dollars setting up huge mock cities for us to train in. It's only a 10 minute ride or a 5 hour hump to them, so why would we abandon them for a computer screen? Would you use a computer to teach yourself to box?? Or would you go to the gym and get in a ring? Same concept. I've played games like these before and they don't hold a candle to REAL training. Technically speaking the Marine Corps uses the game "first to fight" as a training tool also. It even says so on the box!! But noone actually "uses" it if you get what I mean. Probably laying in some dusty bin somewhere. The Marine Corps has always opted for better training instead of better technology. The Marine Corps emphasizes fundamental military skills that other more "high tech" armies have lost. There are just too many complexities in combat to be reproduced in a computer. You ever heard of Airsoft? We would be better off using Airsoft rifles for training than sitting down and manipulating a mouse and keyboard. That's all I have for now. C ya'll later.

You say all that training would be prohibitively expensive in real life? Well that's what the Marine Corps spends its money on. Better to do it right and be properly prepared than to practice on a computer in some substandard training regime. When you lower the quality of training, you risk individual Marines lives. Â The Marines are primarily a combat branch. Â The most important Marine in the Corps is the individual infantryman. So Marines can rig up or buy their own gear. We've been doing this all along and we're quite crafty at it. Â But the Corps takes training seriously and we don't cut corners there. The Army can cut corners by implementing computer games if they want. In the Marine Corps we "train like we fight". And we spare no expense on all the mockups and training environment. The Corps won't compromise the standard of training for mere convenience.

The modern battlefield itself is becoming more and more a computer game, so it's not that simple. Even before the VBS flight sims were used, I'm not sure about steel beasts though. It has no application for actual training? How do you want to train a Predator operator then? Even as a gamer, I can see some benefits of spending hours playing simulators...those guys probably know what they're doing. It's good even as a form of entertainment, kinda "learning while playing" thing. Ok, unless you've been to battle you can't claim to know anything about it. I don't care what the airforce ads say on TV. These air drones were useless for us in Ramadi. The insurgents knew how to outsmart them. Battle is still very old fashioned despite what you hear. All that new agey tech crap is alot of propoganda. I know firsthand how political this is. It's about money and contracts. In a warzone, the only thing that matters are boots on the ground with M16s and SAWs and frag grenades. I've first hand watched so called "guided bombs" miss, and helos light up the wrong target. What does hit is my M855 62 grain ball round out of my M16 or 203 round.