Imperial Grunt

Hmm...I see. The camera view would have to be thermal green, however gun and explosion flashes, fires, battlefield illumination, etc.. make for some eerie sights at night. Thermal decoys, etc would also come into play. Thermal sights also have a much narrower field of view. Also, many urban environments would not be all dark, but would still have alot of ambient lighting. Just some thoughts. Night fighting would bring in different tactics.

Another cool sound feature would be military radio traffic. I have no idea how hard it would be to do but it would add alot to the game in my opinion.

Hmmm...I just see the old bannar with one soldier with an M-16.

"...Horn of Africa..."? Still? We have Marines in Somlia? Fighting? Am I out of touch or something? :confused: Michael </font>

When I was a Marine platoon commander I always had an RO who humped the radio most of the time. A few times I carried my own radio for a patrol or raid mission. In one exercise my RO got "killed" so I humped the radio. As casualties stacked up I also picked up a SAW as well. Then I got whacked. Good thing it was just an exercise. The Warfighting Lab sends teams over to Iraq and Afghanistan and to Horn of Africa to document and evaluate weapons, equipment, and TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) continually. The new HE LAW, the six-shot 40mm grenade launcher, etc...are all off the shelf products that came out from some officer tapping a lance corporal on the shoulder and asking him directly what works and what needs improvement.

Actually I have never smelled napalm Peter. Before my time. And everyone who knows what it is like to be shot at loves the sounds I have described. Regarding the game though, it would be great if the effects were as realistic as possible. That was my point.

True, but not as much as equipping battalions of FFW's in two services. But our guys will still be highly trained and motivated, I was just being the devil's advocate. The FFW program is going to turn out some great stuff. But it will not make soldiers and Marines invincible. Infantry work will still be a violent, dirty, messy affair that requires disciplined and well trained troops.

Why no night fighting?

I agree that somekind of powered armor is in the mix for the near future, but at the same time, the ever-evolving weapons technology will change with it. A good rifleman armed with a old M-1939 Springfield .30-06 rifle, firing an AP round instead of a ball round, will probably drop our future force warrior just as dead as anyone would be today, and at 800 yards. Gear and tech is great, but is no substitute for quality training, good tactics, and tough-minded willpower.

RATELO is very intellectual sounding. The Marines shortened it to RO. I guess we gotta just keep things more simple!

I vote for shockwaves if they look cool. I admit I like eye candy in games. But what I am really hoping for is realistic sounds, especially that special "ca-rumph" sound that artillery makes when it lands on target. Warms the soul. Oh and when an AC-130 fires its 20mm chaingun. And when fast movers come on station, and Cobras come in to make a gun run, and the sound of M1A1 main gun rounds being fired, and...

Designated Marksman story... USMC sniper metes out swift death in Iraq By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press WriterSun Jul 30, 12:57 PM ET He was 5 when he first fired an M-16, his father holding him to brace against the recoil. At 17 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, spurred by the memory of 9/11. Now, 21-year-old Galen Wilson has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq — and another 40 shots that probably killed insurgents. One afternoon the lance corporal downed a man hauling a grenade launcher five-and-a-half football fields away. Wilson is the designated marksman in a company of Marines based in downtown Ramadi, watching over what Marines call the most dangerous neighborhood in the most dangerous city in the world. Here, Sunni Arab insurgents are intent on toppling the local government protected by Marines. Wilson, 5-foot-6 with a soft face, is married and has two children and speaks in a deep, steady monotone. After two tours in Iraq, his commanders in the 3rd Battalion, 8th Regiment call him a particularly mature Marine, always collected and given to an occasional wry grin. His composure is regularly tested. Swaths of central and southern Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, are dominated by insurgents who regularly attack the provincial government headquarters that Marines protect. During a large-scale attack on Easter Sunday, Wilson says, he spotted six gunmen on a rooftop about 400 yards away. In about 8 seconds he squeezed off five rounds — hitting five gunmen in the head. The sixth man dived off a 3-story building just as Wilson got him in his sights, and counts as a probable death. "You could tell he didn't know where it was coming from. He just wanted to get away," Wilson said. Later that day, he said, he killed another insurgent. Wilson says his skill helps save American troops and Iraqi civilians. "It doesn't bother me. Obviously, me being a devout Catholic, it's a conflict of interest. Then again, God supported David when he killed Goliath," Wilson said. "I believe God supports what we do and I've never killed anyone who wasn't carrying a weapon." He was raised in a desolate part of the Rocky Mountains outside Colorado Springs, "surrounded by national parks on three sides," he says. He regularly hunted before moving to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as a teenager. His brother also serves in the military. Guns have long been part of Wilson's life. His father was a sniper in the Navy SEALS. He remembers first firing a sniper rifle at age 6. By the time he enlisted he had already fired a .50-caliber machine gun. "My father owned a weapons dealership, so I've been around exotic firearms all my life," said Wilson, who remembers practicing on pine cones and cans. "My dad would help me hold (an M-16), with the butt on his shoulder, and walk me through the steps of shooting." Technically, Wilson is not a sniper — he's an infantryman who also patrols through the span of destroyed buildings that make up downtown Ramadi. But as his unit's designated marksman, he has a sniper rifle. In the heat of day or after midnight, he spends hours on rooftop posts, peering out onto rows of abandoned houses from behind piles of sandbags and bulletproof glass cracked by gunfire. Sometimes individual gunmen attack, other times dozens. Once Wilson shot an insurgent who was "turkey peeking" — Marine slang for stealing glances at U.S. positions from behind a corner. Later, the distance was measured at 514 meters — 557 yards. "I didn't doubt myself, if I was going to hit him. Maybe if I would have I would have missed," Wilson said. The key to accuracy is composure and experience, Wilson says. "The hardest part is looking, quickly adjusting the distance (on a scope), and then getting a steady position for a shot before he gets a shot off. For me, it's toning everything out in my head. It's like hearing classical music playing in my head." Though Wilson firmly supports the war, he used to wonder how his actions would be received back home. "At first you definitely double-guess telling your wife, mom, and your friends that you've killed 20 people," Wilson said. "But over time you realize that if they support you ... maybe it'll make them feel that much safer at home." He acknowledges that brutal acts of war linger in the mind. "Some people, before they're about to kill someone, they think that — 'Hey, I'm about to kill someone.' That thought doesn't occur to me. It may sound cold, but they're just a target. Afterward, it's real. You think, 'Hey, I just killed someone,'" says Wilson. Insurgents "have killed good Marines I've served with. That's how I sleep at night," he says. "Though I've killed over 20 people, how many lives would those 20 people have taken?" Wilson plans to leave the Marines after his contract expires next year, and is thinking of joining a SWAT Team in Florida — possibly as a sniper.

Regarding names of soldiers/Marines in a unit, when the Marine module is published, you could add a LCpl by the name of McCain. Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 Like Father, Like Son Vietnam hero and Senator JOHN MCCAIN has unyieldingly backed the Iraq war. Now son Jimmy is heading to boot camp and, maybe, to battle By MASSIMO CALABRESI This September, Senator John McCain's youngest son, Jimmy, 18, will report to a U.S. Marine Corps depot near Camp Pendleton in San Diego. After three months of boot camp and a month of specialized training, he will be ready to deploy. Depending on the unit he joins, he could be in Iraq as early as this time next year, and his chances of seeing combat at some point are high. Of the 178,000 active-duty Marines in the world, some 80,000 have seen a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, and 25,000 are now bearing the brunt of some of the worst fighting in Iraq. About 6,000 Marines have been wounded there, and about 650 have been killed. "I'm obviously very proud of my son," says the elder McCain, "but also understandably a little nervous." At 70 years old, McCain might have thought his days of living in the shadow of family military men were behind him. His grandfather, Admiral John S. McCain Sr., served in the Pacific in World War II and was present at the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. His father, Admiral John S. McCain Jr., commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific during Vietnam, when the young McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi. But if the old men cast long shadows, McCain is about to learn, the young ones can too. Jimmy McCain's deployment will affect more than his family. His father is a leading contender for the White House in 2008. If Jimmy deploys to combat, it appears that McCain will join Franklin Roosevelt to become one of the very few American presidential candidates to have had a son at war. And even the prospect of Jimmy's service will shade the race. Iraq is the most important strategic and political issue facing the U.S. Many Democrats are calling for troop withdrawal to begin immediately, and the Bush Administration is struggling to reduce troop strength by the end of the year. McCain is the leading voice calling for increasing the number of U.S. troops there. In the way that happens more frequently in fiction than in life, a McCain family drama is replaying itself. As a prisoner of war, Senator McCain declined an offer of early release by his Vietnamese captors, extending his stay at the Hanoi Hilton by almost four years and nine months. During that time, his father continued to approve air strikes against Hanoi, knowing his son was there. Now comes Jimmy McCain, putting himself in the line of fire even as his father calls for more troops to be sent to war. Named after McCain's father-in-law, James Hensley, Jimmy is the lively, happy-go-lucky member of the clan, friends say. During the 2000 campaign, a Boston Globe reporter spotted Jimmy, then 11, chasing his older brother Jack around the house, calling him a "pork-barrel spender"--a deep cut in the McCain home. During that year, when McCain was on the road in New Hampshire, the candidate proudly read aloud from a school report on General George S. Patton Jr. by Jimmy that he had faxed to his father: "The Tanks Will Roll On." McCain's personal influence on Jimmy appears to have outweighed the privileges that came with being his son. McCain is rock-star famous, and his wife Cindy came to the marriage with money as the daughter of a Budweiser distributor. While others have signed up for duty--the sons of Senator Kit Bond of Missouri and Tim Johnson of South Dakota have served combat missions in Iraq--it is nonetheless unusual for children with their background to enlist. By comparison, at least 32 congressional family members were found to be lobbyists, in a recent study by Public Citizen's Congress Watch. Jimmy knows the risks of war from his father's descriptions of battle, imprisonment and torture in Vietnam. The Senator's book, Faith of My Fathers, dryly relates the experience of "small pieces of hot shrapnel" tearing "into my legs and chest" and tells how, in solitary confinement, "the first few weeks are the hardest," as "the onset of despair is immediate." Not exactly a prime recruiting tool for your kids. Still, when it comes to them, McCain the elder is stoic. "I don't think there's anything unusual about Jimmy," he says. "There are, thank God, lots of young men and women like him." In some ways, though, Jimmy is breaking with tradition. His brother Jack, now 20, has just finished his plebe year at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather went before him. And McCain, the Navy aviator and keen interservice competitor, has been known to crack more than a few jokes at the Marines' expense. McCain says he doesn't read much into Jimmy's decision. "I know that he's aware of his family's service background," he says. "But I think the main motivator was, he had friends who were in the Marine Corps, and he'd known Marines, and he'd read about them, and he just wanted to join up." McCain says his son's service won't change his position on the war, and claims it won't even affect how he feels about it. "Like every parent who has a son or daughter serving that way, you will have great concern, but you'll also have great pride," McCain says. But it will be hard to ignore. If Republicans retain control of the Senate after November's midterm elections, McCain is due to become chairman of the Armed Services Committee in January, a position he has long aimed for. There he would have day-to-day responsibility for oversight of the war. And then there's 2008. McCain already has strong national-security credentials. His son's service only strengthens his position. It will neutralize the assertions of the left that Republicans are "chicken hawks," pursuing the war for ideological reasons without any connection to the pain of it. And it will probably have a broader effect on McCain's credibility. Critics have accused McCain of pandering to the right in order to solidify his front-runner status, but the power of that argument would be diminished if McCain were seen steadfastly supporting a war even as it endangered his youngest son. More than anything else, though, the country may find itself viewing Iraq through McCain's eyes as it follows his son's progress. And nothing is more powerful for a candidate than sympathy. Nothing, too, is more irritating to McCain, who sounds annoyed by the interest in his son's enlistment. In mid-June, he asked TIME not to run this story, and relented only when it appeared that other organizations might break the news. In response to most of the heavier questions about Jimmy's motivation and the influence he may have felt from his family, McCain doesn't want to play. "He's an 18-year-old kid," he says, and he no doubt remembers what that means. The Senator was such a hell-raiser as a plebe and a pilot that he was nearly forced out of the academy. Whatever Jimmy's enrollment says about him, his father or the country, candidate McCain is letting it speak for itself, for the most part. Often the clan gathers for a popular July 4 barbecue at McCain's cabin in Arizona. But this year McCain canceled the picnic, and the Senator, his wife Cindy and Jimmy went to the Quinault Indian reservation in Washington State. "We went fishing and hiking and enjoyed the rain forest there as well as the salmon fishing, although we didn't catch any salmon," he says. "Cindy and I were able to spend a weekend with him. And it was fine." With reporting by Reported by Melissa August, Sally B. Donnelly/Washington

Regarding US infantry squad firepower, I wonder if a difference in range, accuracy, and lethality is going to be modelled between a M-16A4 rifle and a M-4 carbine. The US Army is issuing M-4s, usually with Aimpoint reticles, as a standard infantry weapon while the Marines deferred to the M-16A4 rifle with 4X ACOG scopes. I think that all of the Army light infantry and Stryker formations have M-4s. The M-4 is very mobile in urban environments and for CQB. It is also very convient when mounted in vehicles. But the shorter barrel reduces muzzle velocity and there have been plenty documentation about reduced performance, especially at beyond 300 meters. Would this matter in game terms?

.50cal SLAP is something different entirely. You might be right though. I thought I had read somewhere that the green top 5.56mm NATO round was originally designed for use against the Soviets in the 80s, with the penetrator put in to allow M-16s and SAWs to be be more effective against the sides and rear of 1980's Soviet vehicles. The US M855 5.56mm round's penetrator can penetrate up to 3 mm of steel. I do not know how it performs against the ceramic SAPI plates. I know for a fact that it will go through a US kevlar helmet, I witnessed that first-hand as well. (7.62x39 AK rounds usually do not penetrate kevlar helments). I have pried the penetrators out of tree trunks and they are very small. It also does not have the ability to do the damage a lead ball round would on soft tissue, unless a vital organ was hit. No deforming, no internal fragmentation. I am not a ballistics expert, just a grunt.

The standard US body armor is designed to stopping 9mm ball submachinegun and pistol ammo and fragmentation. With the SAPI plates, it can stop 7.62 NATO ball ammo, however the plate fractures where hit. The SAPI plates cover the chest and back. New side plates have been issued, but most guys do not wear them since they make the vest too heavy. For drivers and gunners, the side plates make sense. You can see the coverage of the SAPI plates in this pic: You can see the coverage of the side plate in this pic: There have been several accounts of soldiers and Marines being hit square in the chest and rebounding right back up into the fight. Just like the soldier in the video. He was shot by a 7.62mmX54 round fired from an SVD at relatively close range and he not only came up at the ready, but participated with his unit in their actions to eliminate the sniper team. He then provided medical attention to the wounded insurgents (he was a medic). The bruising, etc..does not usually impact until after the firefight/battle. There have been several accounts of the enemy using AP ammo, especially with RPDs. The SAPI plates will not stop AP rounds. AP ammo usually does not cause the wounds that ball/soft tip ammo does, but that will not affect game results. US 5.56mm ball military ammo has a steel penetrator inside the round, made to penetrate the sides of Soviet BMPs. That penetrator, while very small, goes through things that the rest of the lead bullet will not, such as kevlar helmets and light armor. While US soldiers and Marines should be a little harder to kill and wound in game terms, unarmored Syrian soldier's mobility should be greater in both speed and endurance. While I am a true believer in the SAPI plates, there is no doubt that they inhibit mobility.

Wow, this thread degenerated quickly. That Time magazine article reminded me why I don't read Time. Exact same slant they had when OIF 1 kicked off. I remember reading about thier version of Nasariyah and I had to throw the magazine into a fire. While I do not think that Israel's offensive is going exactly as planned (what military operation does?), they are facing an enemy that is fully entrenched, both militarily and politically, in their positions. The bid to quickly remove Hezbollah with airpower and raids by special operation forces only was wishful thinking,(they have an airforce general in charge, and the flyboys tend to believe that airpower can win ground wars) the IDF will adjust and march on. It is going to take Fallujah-style assaults with combined arms forces. That is something that is very much a CM:SF subject. I think an IDF module would be very interesting to play if it is made. There are many great CM:SF titles that could be made, just pick a place. Chechnya, Korea, Taiwan, Africa, etc...

I saw the first episode on TV when it aired and hated it. The producer and director put in way to much Hollywood drama and typically did not listen enough to their military advisor. I refuse to watch any more of that show, just like I refue to watch the movie Jarhead. (I read that pile of trash of a book and I cannot believe it was made into a movie).

I was not so much thinking about simulating house to house combat and room clearing, but simply being able to put infantry inside of buildings to stay out of sight and for protection. The interior combat may be simulated in an abstracted way if you send a squad into an occupied building.

Understand about the phased introduction of infantry into the game. Have you thought about UAVs and UGVs? They could even look like infantrymen... Tetra Vaal What about military robots with somekind of advanced AI? The AI gone bad as been a very popular scifi theme for a long time and if you ever wanted to introduce a non-human force into the game, I think that option is not too "unrealisitic". You could even call the robot leader "Hal"!

Oh yeah, where are the bayonets?

OK, next round of infantry questions: -Do they have the capability to emplace mines, especially command detonated mines? -Can they occupy buildings? -Can they dig in and camouflage their positions? -It would seem to me that a futuristic infantry squad would also be able to use some kind of small UAV for R&S and an armed UGV for scouting and to supplement firepower and carry additional ammo, etc... Is this possible?

Space Vikings? I say they are Marines!

That looks really great! I will have my new Dell XPS soon and will be joining the ranks online ASAP.

It looks like the game is coming along great and it is a huge leap forward from CM. It will not be long until CM:SF looks just like real life!