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Every Soldier who deploys uses some type of simulation to train critical Warfighting skills. Simulations help our Soldiers hone their skills, rehearse their missions and return to their families safely when their missions are complete. PEO STRI responds quickly to critical, emerging requirements with innovative acquisition and technology solutions and puts the power of simulation into the hands of America's Warfighters!

The three pilots in Florida continued with their training. Atta and Shehhi finished up at Huffman and earned their instrument certificates from the FAA in November. In mid-December 2000, they passed their commercial pilot tests and received their licenses. They then began training to fly large jets on a flight simulator. At about the same time, Jarrah began simulator training, also in Florida but at a different center. By the end of 2000, less than six months after their arrival, the three pilots on the East Coast were simulating flights on large jets.65

Another free game, never played it. http://www.army.mil/fcs/f2c2/index.html

So now I'm worried that some of these furious men will come after him and will instead throw their rocks through my windows, or worse. I feel like my well-being has been potentially endangered by this guy. What should I do?

Might I humbly suggest this as a potential solution?

A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do good works, and try to save lives.

As written, the "no military use" GPL extension doesn't specifically forbid this type of use, but I'm sure the military isn't going to want to keep track of licenses/usage across its fixed and mobile facilities, so stuff created under this license won't get used at all. Is that a good thing?

A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do good works, and try to save lives.

As written, the "no military use" GPL extension doesn't specifically forbid this type of use, but I'm sure the military isn't going to want to keep track of licenses/usage across its fixed and mobile facilities, so stuff created under this license won't get used at all. Is that a good thing?

One of the unique realities of living in the area of Huntsville, Alabama (MSFC) is that you get contact with people who are actually doing things. If you make the right contacts, you know who and what is going on. Here is what is going on regards to NASA and the original data from the Apollo missions. More precisely what has gone on.

The US officials at NASA ordered the destruction of all of the records associated with the Apollo Missions after the last flight to the moon. The Chief of the Records realized how stupid this was and he conspired with certian persons to have some 8 tons of records moved to a secured location with persons in custody who would not tell where the records were or admit they existed. The reason I know of this is that I had extended contact with the man who set this up. The reason he told me was that the discussion of returning to the moon was coming up about 8 years ago and NASA sent a some men out to see him asking if the rumor was true that he had done this and where they could get the records. He told them it didn't exist but on my arrival he was spitting mad at the idiots at NASA over wanting the records. He feared that they might be destroyed if NASA got them again. He felt they were priceless historic documents and that they must be protected. I do not expect them to appear for 100 years or more due to this.

Contained in these records are films, data stores, and all of the technical documents for operation of the Apollo System. Why these were ordered destroyed he felt was a very malicious act. The real reason for the order was that the US Government at the time wanted to destroy the ability to return to the moon any time in the near future. They possessed about 5 rockets able to go and they wanted nobody able to operate them. The also did not want any more able to be fabricated. This discloses international agreements that involved the USSR and other parties that demanded the destruction of this data.

Believe this or not if you will but this is in fact what happened. This discloses the very dirty nature of the behavior of some "well respected" parties in the world. I cannot hope to have people on this forum believe me, but maybe some will. The reason I was present was I was working as RN at the time and I was making Home Health visits 2 times a day to the home. Frankly I was more trusted than the NASA people by this former high ranking NASA man. My experience with such men has included former German Rocket Scientists and many others. When you meet these people you learn what has really gone on.

This man who was the chief of the record keeping for the Apollow program told me how a year before the Sputnik launch the President of the United States had ordered the entire US Army Missile program lab at what is now Marshall dismantled and taken to the dump. When the Sputnik launch panicked the Americans, He and others had to go to the Base Dump and with their own money buy back the "Scrap" equipment in order to get the lab going again. Even the first test stand they built was built this way. It is now an historic monument!

The description of some details here is slightly modified so as to keep some nasty people off the trail and to protect the records. The title of the position the man held is descriptive but not the real title. I am not sure if this man is still alive and I don't want to cause him or his associates any trouble. There have been several attempts to secure these records to have them destroyed over the years since 1973.

And there was me thinking that some of the engineers on Apollo were most definitely "imported".
http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/vonbraun/bio. html

Intelligent Munitions Systems

It's the Army's plan for smart mines as part of their Future Combat Systems program. They can do everything this DARPA program described and more. (Including remote activation, deactivation, and detonation)

Check out this text from the Army's web-site:

http://www.army.mil/fcs/factfiles/ims.html

The Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) is an unattended munitions system providing both offensive battlespace shaping and defensive force protection capabilities for the Future Force. The Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) is a system of lethal and nonlethal munitions integrated with robust command and control features, communications devices, sensors and seekers that make it an integral part of the Future Combat Systems network's core systems.

Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) provides unmanned terrain dominance, economy of force and risk mitigation for the warfighting commander. Typical missions include:

        * Isolating enemy forces, objectives, and areas of decisive operations.
        * Creating lucrative targets, and engaging them or cueing other fires.
        * Filling gaps in the noncontiguous battlespace.
        * Controlling noncombatant movement with its nonlethal capabilities.

With its reduced footprint, Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) can be delivered by various means, and once on the ground, locate itself, organize all of its components and report its location to the Battle Command Mission Execution (BCME). It will be under positive control of the BCME, one of the FCS command and control applications. The munition field can be armed, turned off to allow friendly passage, then rearmed to resume its mission. This on-off-on capability allows it to be recoverable, further reducing its logistics footprint. Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) will not become a residual hazard; it will self-destruct on command or at a preset time interval. It will also be tamper resistant.

--Cantinflas

I also received an email from someone who told me military guy's full name and that he gradated on april 27 2006 in D company 795 1st platoon warriors (they seem to have graduated together).

I also received an email from someone who told me military guy's full name and that he gradated on april 27 2006 in D company 795 1st platoon warriors (they seem to have graduated together).

And they just completed Ardent Sentry, a drill where 4 simultaneous catastrophes occur in the US/North America... May 10-16.

Ardent Sentry
And the Command and Control Structure of the JTF-CS

The JTF-CS was the ones running the Live Fly exercises on 9/11/2001.

Next step wont be concentration camps or anything like that, that's got a bad ring to it in history you know. Instead, lets call it "labour camp", and force all dissidents to work there for free! Fantasy or fact?

Fact: http://army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf

very little they can do to stop them

Whaddya mean? They've still got the 7th Cavalry

and don't forget that the French played a significant role in providing military assistance to the anti-British "insurgent" forces... see: Marquis de Lafayette.

Now what motivation would the French have had to undermine the British colonies in the New World and other places around the world? (See: War of 1812, the sequel). Here are a few interesting quotes from a summary of the war of 1812:
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/amh/AMH-06.htm

"The United States entered the war with confused objectives and divided loyalties and made peace without settling any of the issues that had induced the nation to go to war."

"A significant weakness in the American position was the disunity of the country. In the New England states public opinion ranged from mere apathy to actively expressed opposition to the war."

And George Bush wasn't even born yet!

The Army has a historical list of the versions of the oath that have existed since its origin. The words "lawful orders" don't appear in any of them.

Which is why the CIA hired him

They tried to kill each other!

While back in the 1950's the CIA supported the Ba'athists, it did not "hire" Saddam directly. He was part of the overthrow plot, yes, but he was not a hired hitman. Neither was he "installed". And there is plenty of evidence -- like Richard Clarke's "boogie to Baghdad" assessment -- that shows they were not enemies. The recently translated tapes & documents seized from Saddam's palaces add further proof. So watch the History channel. Read a book. Or read this or these or this. But whatever you do, get educated before spouting off nonsense like this again.

What's with the fixation on web servers? Web servers are simple -- if you get to them, it's fair game. Password, stay away. It's perhaps a little blurry if you come to a web server that says "You should not be here, do not click any links" but anyway.

This case DOESN'T involve web servers. It's not like he typed in http://computer1.topsecret.ufos.army.mil/ or whatever, he was using other software.

Yes it's true that it's laughable how bad security was, that doesn't change the right / wrong nature of this case.

I just can't get beyond this--if you're at store, in a mall, etc, and a door that SHOULD be locked isn't, do you have a right to go in? If there's a front desk somewhere where somebody SHOULD be sitting behind it, do you have the right to go behind the desk and look through files? I don't see how an electronic medium is different.

I agree it is stupid that there were no passwords on the system, but just like a yard without a fence, the fact the fence is there does not imply permission to run around there and dig up the flowers.

I'm strongly against computer owners who take no steps to mark the territory as private who then sue and/or lay charges. Anything I can access using a typical browser or ssh/telnet/ftp/whatever client is public property. As soon as it prompts me for a password, or even displays a notification that this is private, then anything beyond that is unauthorised access.

Note that shopping centers are private property, and yet we assume we can enter and move about freely. Sure, they can ask us to leave, but we work under the assumption that since the door is open, we are free to enter.
Once inside, there are often doors that are either locked or marked for no entry, and again, we assume that these areas are off-limits, but the rest of the area is 'public' (of course, not in the legal sense)
So, if from my computer I can access a remote computer belonging to the US Army, am I breaking the law?
Those who immediately say 'yes' forget that the US Army has a very public HTTP server which anyone can access freely.

So now the questions are (much more correctly) how does one tell whether one is on 'private property' out in the wilderness? Because that is what the internet is - a giant otherwise unmarked wilderness. Sure, parts of it look like the burbs with the on-line shopping and home-pages, but there's a whole host of other computers out there performing tasks, responding to credit, time, stocks quote, system update and various other queries. Which of those is public? Which is private?
It's only by putting up signs and locks that people can know which computers are public and which are not ... in my opinion the onus starts with the computers owner. If you attach a computer to the public network (aka the internet) and you fail to take a minimum of steps to state that this computer is private, than you should have no recourse if someone accesses it without your expressed permission.

http://www.smdc-armyforces.army.mil/SpaceJournal/A rticle.asp?AID=10 http://www.ostp.gov/NSTC/html/fs/fs-5.html http://www.smdc-armyforces.army.mil/ for anyone wanting to read up on why and whither the u.s. feels it needs space technology

http://www.smdc-armyforces.army.mil/SpaceJournal/A rticle.asp?AID=10 http://www.ostp.gov/NSTC/html/fs/fs-5.html http://www.smdc-armyforces.army.mil/ for anyone wanting to read up on why and whither the u.s. feels it needs space technology

Not a lot of time for a full response so I'm just poting the first couple of links I found when searching for LOGCAP.

The LOGCAP site (warning, government website designed by 15 year old in 1992)

A bit on Cheney/Halliburton relationship (a ver detailed breakdown with lots of stuff I hadn't seen before).

A bit more on the Haliburton government contracts.

I think I've already said that I'm pretty sure that Haliburton abuses it's near monopoly in the industry for their own benefit, and I'm not debating that. All I'm saying is that the fact they happen to get all these contracts has more to do with the fact they are the only group in town than the fact they are connected to the VP, as displayed by the same 'favoritism' they received under the Clinton admin.

It takes a real man to drive a sword into somebody.

By man, I mean psycho.

> Standard answer: the last time Canada and USA were at war, it was not Canada's capital that burned.

Actually, both were:

"Meanwhile, in April 1813, Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn's expedition captured Fort Toronto and partially burned York, capital of Upper Canada." link

Be content with throwing back the American invasion; given the relative sizes of the populations and militaries (15-to-1).

> Standard answer: the last time Canada and USA were at war, it was not Canada's capital that burned.

Actually, both were:

"Meanwhile, in April 1813, Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn's expedition captured Fort Toronto and partially burned York, capital of Upper Canada." link

Be content with throwing back the American invasion; given the relative sizes of the populations and militaries (15-to-1).

You got to head hunt if you want the pick of the litter without too much training. You can contract them out or you can have a recruiter on staff.

Also, it seems that many people going to college for computer science/engineering aren't even learning the basics -- what colleges have you recent graduates gone to that have taught you real consulting skills, business sense and responsibility?

UAH did a pretty good job. Last two semesters are spent on a large scale engineering projects. The first semester is 4 people to a team, the second semester is a 10-12 person IPT (integrated product team) project for AMRDEC, a government customer. When I went through it we were designing a guided bullet, we did the conceptual design, modeling and simulation, and actually handed them a finished product (just a mechanical prototype). We went through all the stages of development, PDR, CDR, etc. Good school, highly recommend it to anyone pursuing MAE/AE.

(by the way I am 1 in a million ... I actually want to get back to the midwest someday... my wife and I miss it. But not today. Got to finish my masters/PhD)

https://cpolst.belvoir.army.mil/public/resumebuild er/builder/Logon

Not all UAV's are all that expensive really. The Raven UAV used by the US military costs about $35,000. Less than the average squad car and probably much more useful. This is probably the closest thing to what they are talking about using in current use by the US government. It's been used with great success in the field http://www.1id.army.mil/1ID/News/September/Article _06/Article_06.htm . Also, as they are used more widely and production increases, costs to produce them will drop.

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-docex/I raq/Released-20060317/CMPC-2003-012666-Translation .pdf

This document I found is an executive order from Saddam telling the army to put Kuwaiti POW's in buildings that will be targets of US air strikes. This is Dated March 14, 2003.

Unless you served in Starfleet, I think you mean Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

That report smells like a hoax. It's written about as well as your typical post on /. Samples:

Production peaks for non-OPEC conventional oil are at hand; many nations have already past(sic) their peak, or are now producing at peak capacity.

...the Army must insulate itself from the economic and logistical energy-related problems coming in the near to mid future. This requires a transition to modern, secure, and efficient energy systems, and to building technologies that are safe and environmental(sic) friendly.

The quotations are followed by a note of suspicion from the author of the EnergyBulletin column:

The fact that the document does not seem to be online is puzzling. Searching with Google yielded no results. According to a note on page 4 of the report, the report should be available at http://www.cecer.army.mil/, a URL which seems to be obsolete or inaccessible.

The US Armed Forces use a *lot* of energy, so it is plausible that they are actively pursuing energy efficiency technology. It also makes sense that they would seek localized generation and fuel independence to reduce exposure to breaks in supply lines. Nevertheless, I question the authenticity of this paper.

Would that we were that clever. Unfortunately, this move appears to be purely political. It was instigated by ideologues Stephen F. Hayes and Pete Hoekstra, who have been demanding that the documents be released publicly so that all the brilliant Arabic translators in the right wing blogosphere can mine them for "evidence" that Saddam had WMD and ties to al-Qaeda all along. It's a canard; Negroponte's office has already looked through the documents and found nothing that interesting, and they warn that there won't be much beyond historical interest here. It is doubtful any of the documents have much to say about the current insurgency, since they are mostly older. This is a political move by Republicans desperate to justify the Iraq war in the face of recent evidence; as one intelligence expert pointed out "It looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq." (see the LATimes article). The right wing blogosphere already has its underwear in a bunch about this though - with absurd readings of several documents they are claiming these documents prove everything from WMD to Saddam being behind 9-11. Several sites were really up in arms about one document in particular that they thought was a secret Iraqi Intelligence manual, but actually turned out to be a printout of a web page in English by the Federation of American Scientists from 1997 (the page has the FAS logo and everything on it). It's all pretty silly, actually.

Zarqawi's Jordanian prison file:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-do cex/Iraq/ISGZ-2004-019920.pdf Afghanistani documents:http=http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony_doc s.asp Iraqi documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm an index to some of the documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm#iraq Then there is this basic analysis that was done years ago:http://www.atheists.org/Islam/mohammedanism.ht ml more later

Zarqawi's Jordanian prison file:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-do cex/Iraq/ISGZ-2004-019920.pdf Afghanistani documents:http=http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony_doc s.asp Iraqi documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm an index to some of the documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm#iraq Then there is this basic analysis that was done years ago:http://www.atheists.org/Islam/mohammedanism.ht ml more later

Zarqawi's Jordanian prison file:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents-do cex/Iraq/ISGZ-2004-019920.pdf Afghanistani documents:http=http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony_doc s.asp Iraqi documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm an index to some of the documents:http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/product s-docex.htm#iraq Then there is this basic analysis that was done years ago:http://www.atheists.org/Islam/mohammedanism.ht ml more later

Server software: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Base Content Location: http://leavenworth.army.mil/fmso/fmso/index.htm HTTP Version of Server: HTTP/1.0 Request Time: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:05:46 GMT The power of open source is not being used here. Move along.

The Chile is the official state vegetable and they can get pretty hot, err, picante. More info here

So I thought that NM might have a low rate of cancer mortality especially prostate (because I know more men versus women who like hot chiles). Well my quick search uncovered no such pattern. It seems that NM ranks fairly high in mortalilties from cancer. I can only think this is so because of the number of *poor* in rural areas and lack of medical care available.

That and we have LANL and people LIVE there! Also White sands missle range. I'm surprised this whole state isn't all glowy at night.

Maybe Bush really wants to wipe out all those annoying voters who are messing up his approval ratings....

No need to kill them... just send them to prison camps.

Someone should tell the Army to at least have the url http://army.mil/ work. ;-)

(It seems only http://www.army.mil/ works...something about sites are configured like that bugs me.)

Someone should tell the Army to at least have the url http://army.mil/ work. ;-)

(It seems only http://www.army.mil/ works...something about sites are configured like that bugs me.)

How many of these are server machines running Apache and OpenSSH? Only a tiny percentage -- OS X Server has something like a 0.2% marketshare last I heard.

But the ones that do run OS X Server are pretty high-profile targets.

Well, obviously it's interesting they can make a tetrapod walker, but its tactical applications at this stage are pretty obviously jack shit.

A mark I Mule is still better; they have been used extensively in war before. You can all find this shit yourself as you all can type, but here's an example;

http://www.qmmuseum.lee.army.mil/WWII/mules_of_mar s.htm

They're quieter and have far greater range than Big Dog, are easier to service in the theatre of operations, are cheaper, They are also duel-use (although Mule don't taste good it's better than steel). Sort out decent power for Big Dog and maybe you have a better solution, but I just have images of Jihadi's hiding behind rocks making jokes as the 31st Foot & Mouth come by on a search and destroy operation as covert as teenage boys on mopeds doing wheelies in a car park... ... and when you do get better power sources, the cost factor will still be a little icky; mules will always be an order, if not several orders of magnitiude cheaper.

But as war has always been a damn fine way for 'the man' to make money (even the 'just' wars), I can see it happening eventually. I can see now the Joint Committe on Rough Terrain Transport spending $160 million to 'prove' the superiority of a fuel-cell tetrapod walker over 'traditional organic transports', and kinda missing that a mule costs $ hundreds and the fuel-cell walker would probably come out at $ hundred thousand... or 'missing it' as the factory was somewhere a good buddy needed votes.

Oh this tangled web we weave...

Before claiming the feds were not responsible, you may want to investigate the Army Corps of Engineers and their responsibilities. They were the ones responsible for the levees that broke. They took them over after a rather large flood in 1927 when congress decided local control wasn't working.

Well actually, Man is encumbered by second thoughts about using animals for warfare, at least the United States has a clear record of caring for thier war animals, honoring thier deaths and caring for them.

""Thousands and thousands of dogs have given their lives for their handlers," said John Burnam, president of the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association and author of Dog Tags of Courage, a book detailing his experience as a handler in Vietnam. "They should be honored for their bravery and courage. A national memorial will honor all dogs in all wars."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/07 25_020725_wardogs.html

"One such hero pigeon, "President Wilson," died in June 1929. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, "President Wilson" flew twenty-five miles in as many minutes under heavy machine gun and artillery fire with a shattered leg and a badly wounded breast.

Found dead at the age of eleven, he was stuffed, mounted, and donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

The last of the World War heroes, "Mocker," died at Monmouth in June 1937. Badly wounded, Mocker homed from the vicinity of Beaumont France on September 12, 1918 with a message giving the exact location of enemy heavy artillery batteries."

http://www.monmouth.army.mil/monmessg/newmonmsg/se p022005/m35pigeons.htm

http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mam mals/
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mam mals/veterinary.html

Oddly enough, buying a 5 subject notebook per semester did the same thing for me through my BS. And I did computer science, with minors in math and physics... Fortunately, most of my profs put dry erase marker to the board rather than powerpoint mind-death (Edward Tufte had an interesting paper about this).

No worries about crashes, running out of battery, no expensive tablet to draw non-text stuff (handy since much of cs and physics includes graphs and "circle&line" information). All for a couple bucks a semester :)

While I adore my powerbook and ibook, I can't seem them as being useful in attending lectures (I attended one today at work, a prof from dartmouth came to talk about the riemann hypothesis, and left the laptop in my office, favoring a small notebook and pen).

As others have said, a computer is merely a tool. A highly over-used tool that too many people rely on for every tasks better served by other tools. And I write software for a living :)

--
*P.S.: your sig sucks. *harass harass harass*

It's entertaining that that this kind of nonsense could be promoted on a site so dedicated to dicussion and understnding of technology. The notion that anyone had anything to invent in the alleged firld of "wireless e-mail" is preposterous, and a distortion of anything resembling reality. The beginnings of the ARPA internet are to be found in the ALOHA net work of the University of Hawaii, which networked Universities in the Hawaiian islands wirelessly and developed the basic shared-channel packet based communication system that was continued in development by literally thousands of honest, hardworking, patriotic citizens to the benefit of our nation and to provide for the national defense.

By the late seventies, globe spanning networks comunicating both wired and wirelessly had benefited freely from these technologies for scientific, edcutational and defense purposes and our armed forces were developing field systems for command, control and communication that provided for vastly greater capability than these alleged "inventors" are capable of describing to this day. The "inventors could have become aware of these facts simply by having any interest whatsoever in computer data networking, since these developments were widely and notoriously published. See for instance this publication from 1987:

http://www.gordon.army.mil/AC/articles/fiedler/dfa npsc2.pdf

If these alleged "inventors" had gone to their public library, they would have had access to all of the information that they purport to "teach" in their patents. The fact that the judge in this case ignored and suppressed the testimony and evidence presented by the actual inventors of wireless data internetworking (including Dr. Norm Abramson the primary investigator in the development of ALOHAnet) and the actual ownership of the technologies enabling "wireless e-mail" by the People of the United States makes this case a travesty of the highest order and an insult to the judicial system.

Why is the company that is at the forefront of intelligent vehicles collaborating with the U.S. army!?

Umm... the US Army is part of the Department of Defense , and DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

I never had to shot someone, but I know that in a combat situation I would have done it without hesitation.

For most armies, the most important and difficult task they face is in training their young soldiers to accurately and deliberately fire their weapons at enemy soldiers. S.L.A. Marshall's classic work "Men Against Fire" first addressed this issue over 50 years ago, and although the statistics he cites in the book have been vigorously disputed, the gist of his argument is still true. So modern armies spend an awful lot of time and energy doing the sort of training you mentioned - running around in the rain and dirt and snow and mud, creating situations that are as close as possible to real combat. If you want to talk about successful training, don't look to video games. Look instead at the NTC and JRTC.

One of the things that no video game (in particular) or sterile target range training environment will ever reproduce is the uncertainty of combat. You are not operating in a pre-defined, bounded killing zone. Your squad leader is shouting something and you're trying to hear what he's saying. You hear the crack of an AK nearby, but your hearing is so screwed up that you can't tell where it came from. You're hot. You're tired. Sweat is running down into your eyes, forcing you to swipe at your face every few minutes with the back of your free hand. Your flak vest is trying to strangle you. There is dust all over the place, making it that much harder to see. There are friendlies nearby. They're supposed to be on your flank, but are they? There are enemy combatants to your front, but they've hidden in a crowd and they don't wear uniforms. Is than an AKS or just a big stick in that kid's hands? Your ears are ringing from the M60 being fired right next to you, and when you can't hear things, it takes one more of your sensory inputs away from you. Now you're relying purely on your vision. What if that guy waving at you at the intersection 100 meters away is a friendly, who lost his helmet somehow? Is he shouting? What is he shouting at you?

All of this business about virtual combat training is crap. There's a reason small unit combat courses aren't virtual. There's a reason Ranger School, BUD/S, and the Q Course aren't virutal. You train to fight. The closer you can replicate the real experience in training, the more likely you'll do the right thing reflexively in real combat.

Still, even with all that training, I find it difficult to believe that anyone truly "knows" what they will or will not do when forced to fire a weapon in combat. The military training makes it more likely that you will react as you have been trained, but there is only one way to find out for sure.

I never had to shot someone, but I know that in a combat situation I would have done it without hesitation.

For most armies, the most important and difficult task they face is in training their young soldiers to accurately and deliberately fire their weapons at enemy soldiers. S.L.A. Marshall's classic work "Men Against Fire" first addressed this issue over 50 years ago, and although the statistics he cites in the book have been vigorously disputed, the gist of his argument is still true. So modern armies spend an awful lot of time and energy doing the sort of training you mentioned - running around in the rain and dirt and snow and mud, creating situations that are as close as possible to real combat. If you want to talk about successful training, don't look to video games. Look instead at the NTC and JRTC.

One of the things that no video game (in particular) or sterile target range training environment will ever reproduce is the uncertainty of combat. You are not operating in a pre-defined, bounded killing zone. Your squad leader is shouting something and you're trying to hear what he's saying. You hear the crack of an AK nearby, but your hearing is so screwed up that you can't tell where it came from. You're hot. You're tired. Sweat is running down into your eyes, forcing you to swipe at your face every few minutes with the back of your free hand. Your flak vest is trying to strangle you. There is dust all over the place, making it that much harder to see. There are friendlies nearby. They're supposed to be on your flank, but are they? There are enemy combatants to your front, but they've hidden in a crowd and they don't wear uniforms. Is than an AKS or just a big stick in that kid's hands? Your ears are ringing from the M60 being fired right next to you, and when you can't hear things, it takes one more of your sensory inputs away from you. Now you're relying purely on your vision. What if that guy waving at you at the intersection 100 meters away is a friendly, who lost his helmet somehow? Is he shouting? What is he shouting at you?

All of this business about virtual combat training is crap. There's a reason small unit combat courses aren't virtual. There's a reason Ranger School, BUD/S, and the Q Course aren't virutal. You train to fight. The closer you can replicate the real experience in training, the more likely you'll do the right thing reflexively in real combat.

Still, even with all that training, I find it difficult to believe that anyone truly "knows" what they will or will not do when forced to fire a weapon in combat. The military training makes it more likely that you will react as you have been trained, but there is only one way to find out for sure.

http://jtrs.army.mil/

Linux has been fielded in several systems that are in Iraq and Afganistan right now. FBCB2, BFT and TIMS are all running on some variant of RHE.

http://peoc3t.monmouth.army.mil/FBCB2/fbcb2.html