Tank Gunnery

[TankGunner]

Hello all

Me and my fellow gunners are currently trying to improve the training and education of gunners on the Leo2. In this respect, we would very much appreciate hints and tips regarding this. Gunnery techniques and observation techniques/target aquisation are especially interesting. Any input on how you fellows do this in your army would be very much appreciated!

[DemolitionMan]

Check this thread: http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=11907

If you can repeat it, you are very very good...

[Ssnake]

Whatever you do, Steel Beasts Pro doesn't revolutionize training. Basic principles of training still apply. SB Pro may help giving you more repetitions of certain lessons, but it cannot train your "muscle memory" with respec to the control handle or the control panels and their different switches (you'd need replicas for that).

It is more a question of following proper procedures if you observe a miss, and to work in degraded gunnery mode.

[TankGunner]

Check this thread: http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=11907

If you can repeat it, you are very very good...

Thanks, but that thread doesn't really address anything specific. What we're after are specific exercises/lessons. For instance, any gunner who have ever worked with a hydraulically powered turret have noticed that placing the reticle accurately on the target in a fast and efficient manner takes practice - and exercises that specifically train this skill. We do this by having the TC call out small targets(often no bigger that 0,5 mils), and measuring the time it takes before the gunner can place the reticle on that target. Other exercises include tracking lines on a wall with a laser mounted on the gun, or just lines in the terrain. We also have specific exercises which train observation technique, where one of the sgts will place well concealed objects designed to look like infantry(helmets, jackets) or parts of tanks in the terrain, and measuring the time gunners need to locate these targets.

Obviously, gunners from other armies will have similar techniques, and any insight in these techniques will be of value. Some of you may have designed some exercises that we haven't thought of yet.

@Ssnake: Regarding SB PRO, it's obviously just one out of many tools, but seeing as how many RL tankers frequent these forums, we were hoping to get some insight from other gunners on all kinds of exercises...

[Ssnake]

For instance, any gunner who have ever worked with a hydraulically powered turret have noticed that placing the reticle accurately on the target in a fast and efficient manner takes practice - and exercises that specifically train this skill.

If you are referring to the particular behavior in Beobachten mode (Leo 2A4), Steel Beasts can't deliver that specific kind of experience. We could theoretically increase the joystick's deadzone and start with a high reaction speed beyond that deadzone, but even then I doubt that it would help you memorizing how much force exactly is needed to operate the hydraulic valves with a control handle.

We do this by having the TC call out small targets(often no bigger that 0,5 mils), and measuring the time it takes before the gunner can place the reticle on that target.

Well, that should be easy enough to create on your own in the mission editor. A BMP turret is 1.4m wide, so you need to create BMP targets in hull-down position in 2800m distance from the player's vehicle. Then use the Spawn, if... command from the BMP's context menu to determine the condition when it will appear (e.g. a combination of random factor and mission time). Create routes to two or three different suitable locations and apply the Jump to end, if... command again with a randomization, and you will have BMP's appear in random, distant locations at random times.

With the classroom version you could add specific gunnery scores and measure the line of sight time for each target. In SB Pro PE you can't do that, but you can at least get an average time to kill as a metric.

[112TYR]

I think there may be a small misunderstanding here. TankGunner isn't talking about Steel Beasts, she's talking about training on real tanks. I've tried both the Leo1A5(electric) and the Leo2A4, and there is a very noticable difference even in Stab EIN - the Leo2A4 requires more practice, because the hydraulic traverse makes accuracy harder. The reticle will, in the "hands" of an inexperienced gunner, tend to "wobble" over the target, because of overcompensation from the gunner.

Of course, SB Pro is a great tool for training gunners, but seeing as how this is a forum frequented by RL tankers, it could be useful for exchanging ideas on RL tank gunnery training as well.

[Ssnake]

Ah. OK. Now I get it.

Well, one thing that might be of interest is to record videos of Steel Beasts action with FRAPS or some other tool, and to show quick clips in some sort of a quiz.

One important thing that I took from exercises on the live firing range is that there often is disagreement about whether a shot hit or missed, and where it missed (left/right/over). This is partly a result of cardboard/cloth targets that simply don't have an impact flash. But it also can be attributed to a lack of experience.

The own crew will rarely be able to see anything, simply because of the dust obscuration after firing. So, what needs to be trained is that crews of tanks left and right observe the shot and give information about correction. So you can make records of shots that deliberately miss the target (especially left/right/over), and record the observation from various sights - like GPS daysight, thermal view (12x and 4x), commander's peri (in 8x and 2x), eye sight (and binoculars) both from stationary positions or on the move. Make three to five recordings of each case with different sceneries, then use the video clips to train the observation.