10-04-2021, 07:01 AM
Quote:4. Clear communication of the plan
That final mission last night was a communication nightmare, hell a nightmare would be a downgrade, it was fucking hell.
My teams vehicle was shot to hell and I reported that we had lost the engine and half the tires. I was then told to, "drive over and meet up with Alpha". I said, "That'll be interesting with no engine or wheels".
I then kept in touch with Alpha reporting that my team was going to move up the ridgeline to scout and see if we could locate any stragglers from the target convoy. We got to the ridge and spotted a Ural in the checkpoint town. I reported this multiple times but got no confirmation that we were heard.
Another team's technical drove past us on our left and was driving right up to the town with the Ural. I couldn't reach them as they had lost their long range. I was under the impression that Alpha was somehow communicating with them however, (using their short range channel maybe), and once again reported to Alpha, "We've located a straggler from the convoy, there's a friendly technical just 50 meters to our left if you tell them to move up to our position they can see the truck and have a perfect shot on it". I was just told they had no comms with that team, so I said fuck it and ran down the hill to the truck myself shouting in local "Can you guys hear me in local!" no answer. I saw the passenger seat was empty so I jumped in their vehicle and shouted, "Guys if you turn and go a few meters up the hill on your right you can see the last truck from our position" neither the driver nor the gunner were responding or speaking. I thought they possibly might be AI at that point and jumped out of their truck and went back to my guys on the ridge line.
It took a while but the other truck finally bumbled up to the Ural and destroyed it on their own the hard way. At this point the task hadn't ticked and their had been reports of a T-55 in the briefing. I told Alpha, my team would move east to the next ridge line and see if we could spot it or whatever straggler was left from there. We did this, and then we repeated (after communicating intent) by moving to yet another ridge line after that.
The task finally ticked and I asked alpha "How many spare seats do the remaining teams have in their vehicles? My team is all alive but we will need to be picked up." I got a response along the lines of "You don't have a vehicle?" I almost lost it, I reported back "Yes we lost the engine and wheels a half hour ago, we've been repeatedly moving on foot from ridge to ridge as reported multiple times." I was then informed their might be some civilian vehicles in the town we could commandeer, so we moved towards the town.
This is where I finally lost it and snapped, sorry about that. But as my team moved NW to the town I saw two friendlies moving from the west on foot as well. I asked Alpha about them and was informed they were the team with no long range. I said, "Tell them to switch to my channel to they'll be in a team with a long range. Alpha responded "OK", a few minutes later me and my team are on the main street and in the intervening time no one switched to our channel. I then hear over long range a report that the two man team has a Red Land Rover now. I asked "My guys are on the main street, the other team still hasn't switched to our channel can you have them come pick us up." The answer I got was "Go ahead and run to where your vehicle was knocked out we'll rendezvous there." as he said that I spotted the red land rover about 200 meters away driving away from us. I lost it and shouted on the radio "No! My team has done more than their fair share of walking, I can see them right now you tell them to pick us up now!"
I'm sorry I snapped but we had just land humped over a quite significant distance at that point including three tall ridge lines, and I wasn't happy to be told we would have to march an unnecessary additional distance simply because of inane comms bullshit. The Rover was redirected back to the town, and I had to repeat several more times that we were "on the main street, right on it can't miss us." and just as the rover finally came into view we found a red pickup and I reported "We found our own wheels, were taking a red pick up, we don't need the land rover anymore."
The whole mission was a comms nightmare. In hindsight I should have just had my team switch our short range over to Red Rover's channel when they never joined ours. They probably never were informed by Alpha to switch to our channel to begin with, and to be fair they may have never heard anything from Alpha and were simply making do as best they could in a communications blackout.
But what got me most was every five minutes or so I'd get questionable orders about "take your vehicle to" when I had reported many times we had lost our vehicle, and had been for around 20 minutes reporting our "foot" movements such as "my team's marching to the next ridge line" only to hear over the radio when I asked for a pickup much later "you guys don't have a vehicle?"
Sorry for the long After Action Report, and I really don't know what to say or suggest. My team was communicating fine using the standard mix of local and short range. But as far as Longe Range net communications were going, I'm not sure what more I could have done. It's pretty disheartening to make reports and send messages and they seem to fall on deaf ears.