ck, doveman is correct. We chose this comms architecture to achieve two goals. The first - let the team members know that their team leader is communicating with command or with other elements so they will keep quiet and let him listen and speak without disturbing him. The second reason was to let everybody know of the plan and the current status without the leader having to repeat everything transmitted to him and turning him into a relay station rather than a leader.
Most of the times, when command issues orders to the team, everybody hear it and the team leader can only say "you heard the man, let's go". No need to repeat stuff, but if the leader did repeat it, I'd like to think he had good reason to.
No comm system is without flaws, look at the current as the lesser evil. What I CAN determine is that using the "silent whisper mechanism" where leaders talk on a separate net without subordinates knowledge is a very bad solution to multi-team management, and I speak from experience. As a team leader you just end up with repeating everything, and screaming on your guys "SHUT UP! I'M TRYING TO SPEAK WITH COMMAND". And as doveman said, when the leader dies someone has to alt-tab and define himself as channel commander to register on the command net. Very cumbersome, very error prone and very non-operational. Doveman, just to explain ck, TS supports whisper Tx/Rx between all who define themselves as "channel commanders".
Regarding the comms on the Syrian Rebellion mission, I agree that this particular mission illuminated the flaws of the "all hear" comm system we use. The command element was acting also as spotters and that alone generated a lot of traffic. Add to that having to deal with insubordination, and we had a medium sized comm clusterfuck. I'll try to take that into account next time and try to limit using the comms when leading multiple teams.
Most of the times, when command issues orders to the team, everybody hear it and the team leader can only say "you heard the man, let's go". No need to repeat stuff, but if the leader did repeat it, I'd like to think he had good reason to.
No comm system is without flaws, look at the current as the lesser evil. What I CAN determine is that using the "silent whisper mechanism" where leaders talk on a separate net without subordinates knowledge is a very bad solution to multi-team management, and I speak from experience. As a team leader you just end up with repeating everything, and screaming on your guys "SHUT UP! I'M TRYING TO SPEAK WITH COMMAND". And as doveman said, when the leader dies someone has to alt-tab and define himself as channel commander to register on the command net. Very cumbersome, very error prone and very non-operational. Doveman, just to explain ck, TS supports whisper Tx/Rx between all who define themselves as "channel commanders".
Regarding the comms on the Syrian Rebellion mission, I agree that this particular mission illuminated the flaws of the "all hear" comm system we use. The command element was acting also as spotters and that alone generated a lot of traffic. Add to that having to deal with insubordination, and we had a medium sized comm clusterfuck. I'll try to take that into account next time and try to limit using the comms when leading multiple teams.
The fewer men, the greater share of honor