Situation Reports / Headquarters
TFCO SITREP/2 - August 20
Welcome to this month’s monthly SITREP from Headquarters. If you're joining us in the last 30 days or so Welcome to UNITAF - I hope you're enjoying your time here so far. This SITREP contains a range of changes both past and upcoming as well as the discussions and focuses from up and down the chain of command, it's designed to keep everyone up to speed with the thoughts of the senior Chain of Command.
So without futher ado, let's get started.
For more meat on the below summary, you'll find it further down in this SITREP.
- We are looking at changing 'Basic Infantry' to 'Core Skills' and to put a much greater focus on it.
- We are concerned about FPS on Operation Ember and are working hard on a solution
- There are open NCO positions and applications are currently open
- We reviewed the 2019/20 annual survey
- A 2020/21 roadmap will be published this month
- Changes are coming to the rank system, specifically around NCOs
- Changes are coming to the practice system
- We continue to support smaller mid-week operations
Activity and Recruitment
I'm happy to report July saw a 13% increase in active personnel and a 30% increase in total slots deployed. Which is encouraging to see as the world exits lockdown, as I mentioned in the last SITREP. Much of this great work can be attributed to 1 Section (SFC Kevin, Cpl Sharkhouse) as well as our dedicated GMs and Field Leaders for putting on another 20 great ORBATs in July. It reports a encouraging trend line (post COVID-Curve) of course.
Due to our unique ORBAT system, I tend to not look at per-mission attendance since the size of any given operation is not a good indicator of activity, below is the main metric I concern myself with when it comes to growth, which is to show how many unique personnel deploy in any given period, and will roughly correlate to the size of the active force, as seen on the live organisational Chain of Command. (Typically we'll deploy half of this number at most at any given time)
Promotions
This month, I was pleased to be able to order the following promotions:
| Private First Class | Jari | E-3 |
| Private | Norseman | E-2 |
| Private | Luke | E-2 |
| Private | Squids | E-2 |
| Private | Pak | E-2 |
| Private | Real | E-2 |
| Private | Gaz | E-2 |
| Recruit | STORM | E-1 |
There are a number of Private First Class, edging toward eligibility for Specialist, and I look forward to reviewing these soon.
NCO Applications
I'd also like to remind you all, that I have asked all Section Commanders to send recommendations for a number of NCO positions we are considering. Due to changes in SOP also addressed in this SITREP, there are likely to be NCO positions opening, please contact your Chain of Command to apply. Irrespective of whether you are a NCO already applying for a more senior position or a non-NCO applying to become one.
More information on the process can be found here: https://unitedtaskforce.net/training/sop/field-leadership/nco-unit-policies
After Action Review
With the exception of performance issues with Operation Ember, which I assure you we are working on, AARs throughout July have been on trend.
Acknowledgements
As I'd mentioned above, I'd really like to Acknowledge Sergeant First Class Kevin and Corporal Sharkus, for the outstanding work in 1 Section - as this has been a big focus of the Command Staff over the last 2 months, to ensure we continue to have enough boots on the ground for regular operations.
UNITAF Strategy
Recruitment while a major focus last time, takes a back seat this month, in August we will continue to keep our efforts on tick-over with NCOs managing multiple sources, and we expect to see a steady growth from this.
Roadmap 2020/21 I hoped to have more information on the roadmap for you this SITREP, but due to scheduling of UNISTAFF meetings this will likely happen in the next SITREP. Nevertheless, any of you who've been with us a while will be familiar with the Roadmap we published when UNITAF was born some 17 months ago, (you can find it here) suffice to say, I'm happy to report that we've achieved most everything we set out to do, and then some. Part of the Roadmap 2020/21 strategy is that we will be publishing a brand new roadmap over the next month or so, which all our plans and intentions for the next year at least. The roadmap will contain improvements across the board, from suggestions, the annual survey results as well as discussions at NCO and UNISTAFF meetings. Suffice to say, having a long-term roadmap is vitally important and doing it is what has catapulted our efforts over the last 17 months.
You can expect to see improvements and changes to Ranks, NCOs, FTX's & the Practice system as well as a raft of SOP improvements as part of a long-term strategy to provide better progression to more experienced members, as well as more effective leadership and organisation. Suffice to say we remain commited to being the best in class.
NCO Policy Changes - I have been discussing with the staff proposed changes to NCOs and the Organisational Chain of Command. In a nutshell, we look to solidify the NCO position to be looked at less as a rank in itself, and more of a position of responsibility. What I would like to happen is for those who are dedicated in game leaders to apply to and become NCOs, where their time commitments allow, and should NCOs not be able to lead any longer, that they return (either permanently or temporarily) to enlisted ranks - as I think those who put that little bit of extra time and effort in, really do produce the best operations and missions. This will result in most NCOs, SNCOs and Officers leading in their grade around 50% of the time. We'll continue to allow anyone with the applicable Training Requirements to lead in grade, but expect us to put a much bigger focus on NCOs leading, and there will be new guidance and SOP published soon on this. We expect that the roster of NCOs will change more frequently due to this and while at first this may seem odd this will I think naturally become a very healthy exercise, as we rotate leadership on a more frequent basis.
Standard Operating Procedures and FTXs while part of a longer-term exercise, perhaps the biggest takeaway from the annual survey was we must put a bigger focus on Core Skills, having our primary role category called 'Basic Infantry' is not representative of what I'd like to see over the next 12 months. Subjects like movement, team theory and CQC are vital core skills that must be practiced outside of 'Basic' training. We have already launched a more in-depth practice for CQC and you should expect to see a raft of T-II and T-III Core Skills SOP and FTX Updates over the coming months, hopefully forming the majority of Practices.
Casual Operations are taking a back-seat for now, I don't believe they have much of a place outside of special events, such as TvT or Special Occasions.
New Mission Development and Game Master SOP we a have begun the process of summarising the requirement to develop your own UNITAF campaigns and operations, as well as provide clear guidance to Game Masters, you can find that information here: https://unitedtaskforce.net/training/sop/mission-support - there is also a Mission Support FTX upcoming on the schedule, if you've not seen it already.
- LAMBs Danger.FSM remains in-core, we're happy with the difficulty but are monitoring FPS and will continue to test other options for difficulty and AI
- CUP Units, Vehicles and Weapons was approved for use
- We've lifted the lid on the mod set, and have a raft of mods pending approval (we'll do this in the minor SITREP later this month)
- All default loadouts have been switched to USMC-WD for Ember, and the M27 becomes the standard Rifle
- Cpl Wilson has produced a full framework for British Special Forces (BAF-SAS) which is approved for use on official operations
Nothing to report.
- Please ensure that if you can no longer attend a mission that you are on the ORBAT for, that you unslot as early as possible, or use the Reserve Feature. Note that we are now actively tracking all no-show instances and also any lateness. While we have no concrete responses to this in place, don't be surprised if your Section Commander get's in touch, or if 1UP requests are denied. Be considerate of others, we remain reasonable but this has been getting out of hand recently. I'd also like to add, that we will be changing the deployment system somewhat to allow operations to have dynamic closing times. For larger ORBATs, in the future expect that you can slot right up to the hour that it starts, but that pulling out of an ORBAT on the day of the deployment while possible, will automatically issue you with a no-show warning.
These tweaks are being discussed, but we want to ensure that operations are as smooth as possible.
- If you are interested the NCO positions as mentioned in this SITREP, then contact your Chain of Command.
All in all, a fantastic month with increases across the board, some great Deployments and it's always great to Welcome new blood. I look forward to providing future updates on the Roadmap as we look to our plans for 2021.
Major James
Chairman
UNITAF
