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 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'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 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.

I am a Marine. And in all my time in Infantry and teaching other Marines about combat, I've never even heard of this. My guess that this is only being used by some officers in some designated building in Quantico to rehearse large scale battle drills. The Marine Corps is poor. We can barely afford proper weapons and gear, much less computers. I can liken learning to fight like learning to swim. There are far too many intricacies to learn on a computer. You need to actually get in a pool. In the Marine Corps, Marines learning infantry learn by the use of pain. This is why we respond so unflinchingly in combat. Any Marine can learn all the tactics and strategy in school. That doesn't need to be rehearsed. It's applying this in real life that needs to be done in real situations.

Yes, it's necessary to prepare for situations in real life. Â And the training in the Marine Corps reflects that. Nothing can replace the training that comes from spending days in the swamplands, hours of kicking in doors in shoothouses. Â The feeling of getting shot at by paint-sim or RPG sims while wearing gasmasks is priceless compared to sitting at a computer. I just don't see the point of using a computer when one can do this in the real world with real boots and real guns and real packs on our backs. Â Training needs to come with pain and physical stress. Â That's where you seperate the men from the boys. Anyone can play a videogame, and they can be fun. Â But it has no application for actual training. Any fresh "boot" Marine straight out of school can tell you how to tactically react in any battle situation. That's what the classroom time teaches you. The Army can choose to train with these "computerised simulations" if they want. The Marine Corps does all it's training the old fashioned way and it serves us well. It's why Marines are today and will always be recognised as an elite fighting force. Â Â I can take a group of Marines, put them in a local library or someones private home, with no weapons or gear AND in civilan attire with some rocks and imagination, and teach them in 20 minutes about combat better than any computer could. Just tell me then, what is the point of using a computer?

Meh, tactical games will never be useful as a real training tool, and I've never actually seen this in real life other than on gaming websites. Â I only see it useful for planning and setting up specific missions. But then, that's what terrain models are for. Just my .02 cents

Wow. If only I could recount every amusing thing that happens in the Corps. Unfortunately Marine Infantry units suffer more anger and misery that slapstick humor found in alot of pogue units.

This is a good statement. This technique would probably transfer well into a video game environment as well, and it does well IRL too. I don't know much about video games, but a bud of mine showed me a game called Battlefield2. The characters ingame are small enough to allow a large field of view, and this game would make good use of strategic/tactical gameplay. Has anyone here tried it? @Ryankaplan, sorry but I just couln't help but take offense at your statement.

Dude, you havn't got a clue about how things are run in real life. Do you honestly believe that a squad of 10 Marines have "no clue" what eachother are doing? We know exactly what we are doing with NO comm AND almost ZILCH visibility. The level and intensity of training that individual Infantry Marines go through in order to be able to coordinate and maneuver together would make your head pop off. You seem to think we're all a gaggle of morons with guns rushing through a battlefield shooting at everything. If that were the case I would wonder how we ever made it this far as a nation. Yea, it's nice if we had good comm all the time, but we don't and the training we go through allows us a certain type of situational awareness that none of you understand. Marines are foremost riflemen, and the very fundamentals of training boil down to individual action and movement. Any grunt on the battlefield is able to care for, defend, and maneuver himself if he were to become isolated or cut off, blind. TTPs(tactics, techniques, and procedures) are hammered in at the individual level, and built up from there. Seriously, don't assume you know anything about this profession because most of you seem completely oblivious.

Since when does real life tactics mean getting all troops in one mass formation?? That is a surefire way to get everyone killed. IRL it is told over all throughout to keep individual men far from eachother, diffused throughout the landscape. Having all your men walking near eachother is not necessarily teamwork and will only make them vulnerable. Yes, a lone gunman or small group can inflict heavy casualties in an ambush against a larger squad of troops, but That is where reaction drills and IA drills come into play. Plus a small group or individuals wouln't be able to hold out against a much larger one most of the time unless they are very well protected/entrenched. Yes, things such as IEDs and booby traps are very effective and minimizes alot of risk for the bomber. .. unfortunately. Rules of combat are never strict, they change constantly, they bend with the situation.

Ok, I just reread your question. I have a few more comments. In your example you stated that side A would be a blob of targets vulnerable and exposed while side B kills them using tactics and enveloping side A. This example re-enforces my previous theory. Video game players simply don't understand real combat tactics and maneuvers. In real life, a squad of grunts don't simply move as one massive blob. It's not like you think, we use individual movements, individual cover and concealment, and ALOT of dispersion between individual Marines. Often enough so that to the untrained observer it appears that there is only 1 lone Marine out there while in actuality there is a whole squad out there hidden and moving in sync with eachother. There have been numerous occasions with my own squad where I have not been able to even see the Marines in the formation next to myself due to dispersion and individual movement through the terrain. I just know where they are due to intense training, understanding of tactical conditions, and heightened situational awareness. It flows in real life.

Hmm, good question. I have never really played much "online" war games although it definitely seems like it would be fun. Most of my experience with games are done in singleplayer type mode. Anyhow being that this is my actual profession I will say the reason Marines use teams and squads in real life is because it WORKS. I honestly don't fully understand your question. How would a professionally organized squad be easier to kill than a few lone players? Think about it. Would you rather have only yourself and maybe 1 or 2 other guys with you in an ambush, or would you rather have the firepower of a whole squad with you? All those guys with you should be able to eliminate a few select enemies pretty quick. I imagine that the reason most players get killed using team tactics is because they just simply don't know real life tactics/strategy, OR they are restricted by limitations of the game. Not to mention that your field of vision is severely restricted in most video games. Are you making sure you and your squad/team are using enough dispersion? Honestly I have not really seen many games where if tactics and strategy are professionally employed, they would not succeed. I dunno dude, it's late right now but if you have any specific questions just ask.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22007049/?GT1=10547 Just wondering what the rest of you folks think about this.