[AT A GLANCE: Find the jist of this post by reading the bold text]
How many times has everyone heard the following type of conversation over TeamSpeak ?
Unknown voice over TeamSpeak says: "uhhh....there's some guys in the woods over there... uhhhh... they're coming this way now .... uhhh... I don't think they see me yet... uhhhh ... should I shoot them?"
.......then silence, followed by a message on your own chat computer screen saying "Bravo is down"
Obviously, there's a lot of missing information about the enemy threat, such as .... who was the friendly call sign that engaged, 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 are left in the dark to draw their own conclusions as to the impact on the mission and what they should do next. 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 gameplay world we dont use actual military radios, but with TeamSpeak, virtually the same methodology can be utilized.
Example:
Unknown voice over TeamSpeak says: "Leader, CONTACT, southeast of Bravo , enemy infantry , moving north through woods."
Lead responds over TeamSpeak: "This is Lead, copy. Team disperse, go GREEN"
Transmittor should then respond verbally or preferrably by using the "cc" in game chat giving the team direct confirmation that the message was received and understood the transmission.
The form of the 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?
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 nine man 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 Grid References and possible enemy intentions might prove useful. The key is to use one's own best judgment. It should be noted that if there was a higher command structure above the nine man GR team we play in this game, then even if the team were all together, the Team Leader would send a proper radio Contact Report to that higher authority regardless.
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 in any game, to utilize this standard NATO SOP methodology for Contact Reports as much as possible.
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