Slashdot Mirror
Army Game Proves U.S. Can't Lose
Alien54 writes to tell us that the latest game in the US Army's recruiting toolbox is an impressive game, simulating both weaponry already in use and some still on the drawing board. The game portrays the nation's military in 2015 but, as some critics have said, may lack even the most basic elements of realism. From the article: "For example, there's no consideration that military power or technology could fail or be jammed, she says. And the enemy doesn't learn, in contrast to a certain real-life conflict where the hallmark of insurgents is their ability to rapidly gain knowledge and evolve."
You are confusing 2 words : "game" and "simulation".
A game is something you can play it to have some fun.
A simulation is an attempt to simulate the real world by including real physics and real world constraints.
A simulation might be a game if you can play it. But a game isn t always a simulation.
For example Need for Speed is a racing game which isn t a simulation. You can drive at insane speed and even if you crash into a wall your car wont notice it (not real world physics). Moreover even if you re the most dangerous guy on the road, its easy to get rid of the police (not real world constraints).
On the other hand, TOCA Touring car is a racing game which is also a simulation. If you go too fast you go out of the track at the first turn. And if you run into your opponents, you will receive some damages (real world physics), and might get disqualified (real world constraints.
Arguably, making failure possible is more important in a game than in a simulation. What makes the game fun is that you don't suffer any consequences from failure, so you can try again and beat it.
Writing a perfect simulation is like writing a piece of software which can prove any theorem. It's not possible in any practical sense.
The key in the simulation are the assumptions it embodies. We currently spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. Presumably this is to cover just about every forseeable circumstance to a sufficient degree that victory can be acheived, if not promptly, eventually. It may well be that under every forseen scenario, the resources we have can be adapted in time to achieve victory.
Wisdom, however, takes into account the unforseen. The respose to overwhelming force is to choose and limit the time and place of conflict carefully, probing the response and discovering oversights, which there always are. This means we shouldn't put too much confidence in our simulations.
Another thing it would be wise to consider is the difference between what you might think you're willing to do in a hypothetical situation, and what you're actually willing to do when it comes up. Nobody can say whether success in Iraq could have been achieved by a different strategy, but I believe we didn't commit resources to establish order in the post invasion phase because of an unwillingness to face up to the economic costs of occupation beforehand. The initial estimates of the war cost were $100 to $300 billion. These figures were amended for political reasons to around $50 billion. We are now well above the $300 billion mark, not because of the unforseen, but our unwillingness to acknowledge forseeable possibilities. In effect, we decided to use the best case scenario in our planning because it would be easier to sell. This is not an unheard of phenomenon. Any geek can tell you tales of project management by wishful thinking.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Its the old Salesmen vs. Engineer problem.
The Salesmen's job is to sell the product (i.e. the politician selling the idea of an easily won war)
The Engineer's job is to actually deliver the product (i.e. the army actually winning the said war)
No-one ever seems to listen to the engineers, it's always the salesman who the client communicates with; the half which has absolutely no experience of what is actually required to get the job done (or whether it is even technically possible).
To me, the parallels between the current Iraq war situation and your typical incompetently specified I.T. project are startling.
Since when was war supposed to be fun and desirable?
Obviously you haven't played THIS game yet. I tried it yesterday, sounded cool, nice intro and then bam: it's all played on a 2D map with icons. Oh the briefing that lasts 8 minutes and contains 98% hardcore military jargon. Tons of fun.
Well, I guess hardcore war gamers will find it fun. I'd rather go back and play another run of Company of Heroes. But thanks to the American tax payer anyway, this is still tons better then the National Guard's crappy "PRISM Guard" FPS that tries to convince us into accepting big-brother style tech.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
Of all the multiplayer FPSs I've found out there, America's Army is the only one I really stick to and play regularly. Despite it's flaws, (and it's hardly a perfectly designed game) it encourages strategic gameplay and teamwork. Perhaps it's because I suck at fast-twitch FPSs, but the idea of actually outthinking your opponents really appeals to me. Quite simply, the game is fun.
Now I know the game is propaganda for the US Army and any ideals it holds, but I haven't joined the forces yet, nor do I ever plan to. The game doesn't get too in-your-face about it, and in all honesty, I'd rather put up with a bit of propaganda as opposed to the in-game advertising that's starting to fill most modern games. At least it fits the context of the game and keeps me immersed.
At very least, America's Army is fun, and that's a lot more than can be said for many of the other shooters out there.
As for this new game in the works, well, a lot of the fun in AA comes from the challenge of your limitations. If you remove those limitations, it would make the game a bit too easy to be fun, and that's what I see this as. With futuristic weapons and tech, you can't follow real-world rules because you don't know what those rules will be, and thus you lose some of the limitations out there. (And perhaps make up unnecessary ones.) So while I find this development interesting, I'm going to wait and see what comes of it.
In the end, it is a recuitment tool to lure all those console kids to join, with the promise of "cool weapons".
Its aimed (no pun intended) at the kids.. i hope there is not an adult who would make a career decision based on a game...
Yes, that's a good example. The UK was then a superpower and fielding one of the most powerful and advanced armies of the day. In a straight one on one shock and awe type engagement the US wouldn't have stood a chance but that option wasn't on the table for various reasons and the "terrorists" were able to take advantage of both the UK's engagements elsewhere and the public feeling of most British citizens to avoid unecessary slaughter and bloodshed on their American cousins.
Even if you have the most powerful military forces in the world there will always be areas which people can exploit to achieve their own ends and the bigger a player you are the more of those areas you will expose for your enemies to exploite.
It might be a recruiting tool but setting unrealistic expectations is just daft. Army recruiting in the UK is all about doing exciting stuff and seeing the world, not about being shot at and enduring weeks of boardom punctuated by fighting for your life.
People then wonder why moral is low and troops and their parents are complaining about the support and conditions. If I tried to sell you something by misrepresenting it, I would be liable to prosecution, and you would get you money back.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
In their previous propaganda game, America's Army (which we play a lot at the office because it's free, not because we actually like the US army), weapons could jam. And hitting the enemy is far from trivial; a well aimed shot with a good scope is often worth a lot more than a machine gun. But when you're hit and the bullet doesn't kill you outright (which it might), you move slower, and you can still bleed to death. Pretty convincing game IMO. On the other hand, the game also clearly demonstrates the US view that your own side is always the good guys, and the opponents are always the bad guys: both sides see their team mates as US soldiers, and the other side as terrorists. It confuses a lot of new players who want to know if they're the Americans or the terrorists, and who else is on their side.
Speaking of departing reality...
While I'm utterly aware of the difficulties facing the US military in Iraq (and particularly how mismanaged the post-invasiona deployment has been by the Bush administration) I'm not entirely sure you can say the US is being "whipped" in Iraq.
To conquer a nation of 22 million = 3,000 casualties (the huge majority of which have been caused in occupation operations). Germany's population in WW2 was 55 million. Think about that for a second.
When your opposition has no way to fight back but by using car bombs and IEDs, that's a resistance, not a civil war.
Relevant to the OP, I think the whiz-bang of AA is more than a little sickening, but I don't dispute that as a military force the US is probably man-for-man in the top 5, and in overall combat power is unequalled.
-Styopa
worked for the russians in wwii against a technologically superior enemy
worked for the chinese in the korean war
to quote stalin (maybe)
Quantity has a quality all its own
Except that you have to deliver your horde into the belly of the infidel.
Last I checked there was about 6000 miles of Ocean between the US and China. And the US has a deep water navy, while China does not.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The other irony being that Saddam was helped into power by the CIA when the country was overrun with lefties and we wanted oil from them. (The same lefties had previously nationalised all the oil industry and forced US companies out when they came to power in a bloodless coup in the 70s)
He only became an enemy of the US when he invaded another country with oil to give himself more market share so he could force the price up. If he had stuck with gassing the Kurds the US would have ingored this and carried on buying oil from him until it ran out.
Look at Saudi. They are a corrupt and non-demcratic kingdom. They fund terrorism (9/11 - Osama Bin Laden is a saudi). Yet they still have US support as long as they pretend to be our allies in public and sell us oil.
I dont read
Actually that's not quite true either. At the time, the British considered the US citizens members of the British empire so they were recruiting them for the war against France - that explains the taking of citizens off of merchant ships (I dont agree that was right, but the British did not recognize the soverignty of the US at the time). Britain didn't want the US trading with France because of the ongoing war with France and Napoleon - the Hitler of the day.
The US invaded Canada (BNA at the time) because they saw a strategic value of owing all of North America - and some arrogant US polititians thought that they would be freeing the Canadians from British rule.
But yes, the battle of New Orleans utterly failed..
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The US doesn't own the sea; it's actually a lease that'll be terminated as soon as anyone gets annoyed enough with us to use their stealthy diesel boats and anti-ship missiles to take out.our carriers.
For a possible preview of this scenario, look up the Malvinas War (or the Faulklands War, if you would prefer), where the UK lost two ships to what everyone assumed was an ignorant Third World country, and never did manage to locate all of Argentina's submarines.
Anti-missile technology has advanced since then, but missile technology has advanced more.
Also, aside from munitions production, most war equipment takes an awful long time to build. Gone are the days of WWII and Detroit pumping planes and tanks out by the thousands. I don't care who's building them, but production capacity would be less of an issue in this theoretical war. We'd use up everything too quickly.
One more thing to consider is that most of the world uses some American built equipment. The F-16 is everywhere; along with a multitude of other US produced equipment; like the F-14s that Iran flies. Certainly the Russians, China, the EU make their own jets/tanks/stuff, but a significant portion of the world's military equipment is stamped with a made in the USA sticker. After all, we are the world's biggest arms dealer. The last I checked, we had the rest of the world beat; combined. No, I am not proud of that fact.
The last problem is that we would lose. In just about every war game that we had in Germany during the Cold War, we pretty much always had to resort to using Nukes to hold back all of those Russian tanks. The A-10 was built to help with that, but even lots of them didn't really tip the equation.
So, yes, we'd lose, but it's would be difficult to consider the situation without nukes flying.
Still, in a recruiting tool, and that game is one, why would anyone expect that the Army would allow a situation that it could lose? To me, even though it is far from realistic, it is just good marketing on their part. They'll get more recruits that way. After all, the oldest joke in the US military is "How can you tell when a recruiter is lying?
For the record, I am a veteran of the USAF, as is my father and my grandfather was a Army soldier. That, and I think the poster you're replying to was trolling. Me, I'm just wasting time!
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
the US would totally use nukes way earlier than anyone else in full on military conflict. why do you think we are so desperate to stop the rest of the world from getting them? the US wins wars by using *way* more firepower than the enemy. that's why grunts say "if at first you don't succeed, call in an airstrike". in the case of japan, the firepower escalated to the atomic bomb because we were not sure we could succeed in a full scale invasion of the japanese mainland. that's how our boys play the game, they fight until they are worried about losing, and then they double the amount of firepower. pretty much all US military doctorine involves bringing artillery to gunfight.
that is also why the US *sucks* at policing actions... our war machines are designed to enable a realtively small number of troops to inflict massive casualties in situations where they are greatly outnumbered. you can't police people with the same weapons and tactics that you use to hunt and kill them. look at the 2003 invasion of iraq, or fallujia, mogadishu or even the american invasion of afghanistan. in all of those cases, US servicemen died, but the enemy and civilian casualties were significantly higher. that is to be expected when you are using laser guided bombs to fight people armed with AK47's. coincidentally, that's why iraq has become such a sore subject, the world's most sophisticated military can't keep control over a bunch of guys who make bombs in their basements.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.