Unit-wide Announcements / Headquarters
TFCO MAJOR SITREP/25 - Force Manual / Anti-vehicle Tier update

As outlined in the UNITAF 2024: Strategic Launch and Vision Livestream on Saturday, today we launch the Force Manual, the start of our Future Training System. This update will summarise the changes made today - but I would encourage you to watch the update below to understand the full extent - we will over the course of the coming days, publish more information and guides to the new systems.

 

 

Whats happening?

• UNITAF is starting to phase out practice hours from Tier requirements.
• Practice hours are being replaced with Skills from the new Force Manual (FM)
• The transition is being done in phases as combat areas move from the Legacy Training System (LTS) to the Future Training System (FTS)
• In the FTS practice hours are replaced with skill proficiency where other players determine your skill level through a crowdsourced weighted feedback loop and a peer-to-peer training system
• The transition from LTS to FTS is expected to take most of 2024, with most combat areas moving before July 2024
• Grace periods will be extended to enable LTS acheived Tiers to continue to be used as FTS is adopted.

 

What is the Force Manual?

The Force Manual is a Wikipedia style documentation system which will become the central location for all UNITAF Guides, Policies, Doctrine and Training content. It's managed by J6/TC and over the course of the next 6 months we'll be moving all of our SOP into the Force Manual and retiring our current SOP. You can visit it now, but it only currenly contains some of the General Unit Policies and Anti-vehicle.

 

Changes to the Anti-vehicle

As the first Combat Area to move from LTS to FTS the following changes have been made today to the anti-vehicle combat area:

• Removed Operation Hour requirements for Tier I and Tier II
• Removed all Practice Hour requirements for all Tiers
• All roles have been re-Tiered
• Added skill requirements for Tiers I through Tier VIII
• Removed the ability to create Anti-vehicle L-Slots on ORBATs
• Updated the Tier Progression pages for Anti-vehicle with the new FTS requirements

If you currently hold a Tier in Anti-vehicle, you'll continue to hold that level for at least 45 days (see grace period below). If you don't currently hold a Tier in anti vehicle - you can now use the FTS requirements to advance your Tier instead - LTS requirements do not apply to you.

 

Why are L-Slots being removed?

As areas move from LTS to FTS the ability to create L-Slots in those areas will be removed, as in FTS L-Slots are not required because it's possible to attain Tiers without needing any deployment or practice hours, so long as you are proven in the required skills.

 

Will there still be Anti-vehicle FTXs?

• J7 is no longer be required to run official FTXs for FTS areas (but will continue to do so for LTS areas).
• However we will be launching a 24/7 training server to facilitate peer-to-peer training, and J7 will encourage and facilitate it
• Experienced players can still conduct group training sessions and FTS areas do not require Lesson Plans and the FM should be used instead.
• Skills can be assessed in any environment and therefore there is no requirement to attend specific trainings in most instances in FTS areas.

 

What is a grace period?

• In FTS it is possible for Tiers to go down as well as up
• When areas move from LTS to FTS each area will have it's own grace period in days, for anti-vehicle it's currently 45 days
• Because FTS is new, nobody will meet the requirements for any anti-vehicle Tier right away, therefore a counter will begin on your Tier progression page, counting down from 45 days
• If the counter reaches 0 days, then on the next daily tier update, your tier will be corrected
• If you meet the requirements for your current tier while the countdown is active, then the countdown will stop
• If in the future new skills are added to this combat area or major changes are made to existing skills, or your proficiency level changes - the countdown will reset and start again, giving you another 45 days to meet the requirements before correction.

We'll review grace periods on a regular basis as we move from LTS to FTS and adjust as we feel needed.

 

What is a Skill Card?

• A skill card is a collection of blocks from the Force Manual which relate to a combat area
• The skill card contains all the skills required in an area and the level in which they are required and it's designed to set a clear level of expectation for each Tier level
• You can rate people on skills by going to their dossier, navigating to Anti-vehicle and opening the Skill Card
• To advance Tiers in FTS, you'll need to collect ratings in skills from other players and provide them in return.
• Your skill proficiency level is determined by
  • The number of ratings you've received
  • How recent the ratings are
  • How experienced the people rating you were
  • How many unique people rated you
  • The level of agreement between those rating you
• In short, in FTS the most proficient people in any given area en-masse determine how proficient everyone else is
• Complex formulas are used to determine your proficiency level and we'll be adjusting these as we learn more about how it's used.

 

What is a Skill rating/assessment?

• In FTS a skill rating is someone elses opinion of your proficiency (or yours of theirs) based on skills set out in the Force Manual
• You don't need to be in an FTX or a specific session to use this system and like an AAR it's your chance to have a say
• The system will balance your ratings with your proficiency, so if you are of high proficiency then your ratings count more
• You can change your ratings at any time
• The system will consider all the ratings submitted by weighting them based on a number of factors and determine proficiency levels for all players in skills in the Force Manual
• Ratings are anonymous, you can't see who rated you and they can't see who rated them
• However J7/TC will oversee ratings and therefore in the future will have the ability to investigate ratings if required
• The system is entirely automated and will methodically determine ratings based on crowdsourced data
• Skill proficiency is what matters for Tiers in FTS

 

Why should I?

The FTS will become a integral part of UNITAF in the coming months and we'll be providing a number of benefits as with the LTS

• A series of new medals will be released shortly for skill acquisition as well as skill rating
• We'll be enabling fatigue bonuses for rating other players regularly in an area
• Like with AARs, your input combined with others - helps the unit improve. 

 

What's next?

• We'll be putting out very regular updates to the FM/FTS as we monitor it's use in the early days, nothing is set in stone (and do let us know your thoughts and questions)
• Medical and Marksmanship are up next and we've pencilled the end of January to launch these in the FM/FTS and this includes KAT Advanced Medical
• Anti-vehicle is launching as the test-bed and we expect issues so we will review our timelines if we feel that it's needed.
• We'll announce at the end of January the next combat areas for transition as we know more.

 

How can I help?

• We're hard at work both updating the system as we observe it's use so firstly, keep firing your thoughts and questions at us
• We're building force manual development groups (FMDGs) for every combat area as we start the transfer process, so if you want to speed things up, or really care about a specific area and are excited by this change, then get in touch with J6/TC or generally in the Policy and Training channels.

 

Finally

Please do give the video at the top of this SITREP a watch for the full picture, there are no stupid questions or comments, so do hit me up on Discord (please use the public channels, in case others have the same question as you). The FTS is a big change for UNITAF, but as explained in the recent strategy update - bringing the crowdsourced success of AARs and Observations to Training is the logical step and I'm confident that once it's embedded, understood and refined - you'll start to see that in action.

 

See you in the field soon,

Major James
Chairman
UNITAF

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