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GAME OF MODERN TACTICAL WARFARE
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| RESOURCES TacOps
4 Review and Tactics Webpage Flaming
Flaherty Fighting
100 Battles, Major Doug Henry, US Army Excerpt
below from "Fighting 100 Battles, Maj. Doug Henry, US Army" as printed
in the June-July 2002 issue of Armed Forces Journal Training & Simulation
2002. To read the complete article go to: The primary constructive simulation used in TRADOC's Distributed Constructive Gauntlet exercise was TacOpsCav, version 4.01, which was delivered to Ft. Knox on 23 January 2002. The simulation was introduced in 1999, when Captains Course students began using it to develop and direct their orders in a classroom environment. By giving our instructors the necessary training strategies, the students began seeing the results of their actions like never before. On 30 September 2000, the 16th Cavalry Regiment at Ft. Knox contracted for the Army-wide usage and distribution license for a custom version of TacOps, called TacOpsCav. Since then, small group instructors, students, and others have collaborated with developer I. L. Holdridge, Major, USMC-ret., in testing and improving upon the capabilities of earlier versions of TacOps. Significant improvements to this constructive simulation, which is used widely at Ft. Knox, include a network capability that allows multiple computers to fight battles with multiple players. During the TRADOC Gauntlet exercise, 28 computers participated, at Ft. Knox. An additional 13 computers were located at sites other than Ft. Knox. Each player was given an identification number to identify the player's own forces and allow the host/umpire to make rapid task-organization changes, which are absolutely necessary on today's fluid battlefield. Meeting
the demands of the contemporary operational environment, TacOps
can place civilians
- by type (policemen, non-governmental organizations, dignitaries,
and others) - on the battlefield. The host/umpire can control
the
situational awareness of each player by enabling friendly-vs.-friendly "fog of war" scenarios, where players can only observe
each other by line of sight and use what the characteristics of
terrain provide them. The host/umpire also can set the rules of
engagement for each color-vs.-color permutation to either "free-fire"
or "self-defense" modes. In addition, TacOps reflects
a marked improvement in the capability to use engineers to shape
the operation by building or removing obstacles, minefields, entrenchments,
bridges (by [Note: The civilian/retail
version of TacOps v4 is limited to a maximum
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