luna

The following Tactical Gamer Standard Operating Procedure has been adapted from Badger's Ghost Recon SOP of the same name.
Adapted by Luna.

The Contact Report

Via TeamSpeak:

How many times have you heard the following type of conversation over TeamSpeak?

Unknown voice over TeamSpeak says: "uhhh....there's some guys in the woods over there... uhhhh... near me .... uhhh... I don't think they see me yet... uhhhh ... should I shoot them?" ..then silence, followed by a message that a member of your team is down?

Obviously, there's a lot of missing information about the enemy threat. Who was the friendly that called in the report? What type of enemy? Where are they? What appears to be their intentions and what are you doing about it? The rest of the fire team is left in the dark to draw their own conclusions as to the impact on the mission and what they should do in response. All in all, this is not a workable solution for any real life special forces team.

All military units are trained to use a standard NATO form of radio procedure for reporting encounters with enemy forces. The reason for standardizing the format of for contact reporting is to minimize extraneous radio traffic by creating a clear and concise common approach. Therefore, everyone listening on the radio net understands exactly the nature and scope of the enemy threat. In our virtual gaming world we don’t use actual military radios, but with TeamSpeak, virtually the same methodology can be utilized.

Let's use the example above and send a proper Contact Report using Badger reporting to Luna who is the Fireteam Leader. The fireteam is presumed to be under status condition “RED”(Team members are in a "Fire Hold" condition and they DO NOT engage or fire on the enemy without a command order, usually from their Fireteam Leader):

Unknown voice over TeamSpeak says: "Leader, this is Badger, CONTACT, approximately 200 meters to the north of our current location, lightly armed enemy infantry in patrol strength, moving north east through woods, threat imminent, am observing, awaiting orders."

Luna says over TeamSpeak: "Badger, this is Fireteam Leader, ENGAGE, team disperse, fire condition GREEN (Fire at will)."

Badger responds by hitting F10, then 1 resulting in Luna seeing and hearing “Affirmative” which gives her direct confirmation that Badger has received and understood her transmission.

The form of the proper Contact Report answers the following questions:

1. Who is sending the report?
2. Where are the enemy?
3. What is their estimated strength, type and armament?
4. What appears to be their intentions and/or direction of travel?
5. What are you doing about them?
6. What are your recommendations?
For obvious mission critical reasons, Contact Reports are classified as Priority radio transmissions. In other words, when you hear the operative word “Contact” over TeamSpeak, the entire radio net should go quiet and be listening for the reporting call sign to send his information. Often in real life Contact Reports, one hears the phrase "Leader, this is Badger, CONTACT... Wait ... Out". It usually causes the radio net to go silent waiting for the sending call sign to come back on the air and send the full report. It's a good way of getting the net cleared while the sender examines his maps and prepares to send full report.

Please Note: Contact Reports can be abused and over used. They're most useful in a situation where various fire teams are geographically separated performing individual mission tasks. If the entire fire team is geographically on the same ground and everyone sees the same threat, often it's redundant to send a Contact Report, except if you believe that other team members can't see the actual threat. Therefore, information such as enemy location and possible intentions might prove useful. The key is to use one's own best judgment. It should be noted that when a higher command structure above the individual fireteam is being, the Team Leader would send a proper radio Contact Report to that higher authority regardless.

Via In-Game Radio Messages:

Joint Operations has a method of calling in contacts that requires no radio communication whatsoever. By aiming your rifle at the enemy you have spotted and pressing F10 then 7, you are able to place a designation on the commander’s map as to where you have spotted enemies. This is especially useful when radio chatter must be kept to a minimum. Making full use of Target Designators also helps to keep unnecessary communications to a minimum.

After a bit of practice using this technique, it becomes almost second nature and makes it much easier to communicate enemy threats, providing the team leader better command and control capability, plus improving the overall SA (situational awareness) of the entire fire team. We would encourage all players on any Tactical Gamer Joint Operations server to utilize this standard NATO SOP methodology for Contact Reports as much as possible.