Welcome to this month's SITREP, If this is your first SITREP - which I know it will be for many of you, a very warm welcome to UNITAF - I hope you are enjoying your time here thus far.

The SITREP is the primary communication detailing roadmap progression and changes to SOP - it contains key updates from the senior staff and from across the senior chain of command.

• Unusually for a SITREP, most changes mentioned within will be effective from Monday 18th October, rather than immediately, unless otherwise indicated.
• If you have any queries or questions about the rank review - please speak to your chain of command.

 

This months STIREP is primarily targeted at the rank review, and we'll follow up with a minor SITREP in a few weeks time, for anything that didn't make it on this one, such as;

• Joint fires SOP
• Mod review
• Lessonplans

 

Rank review

In the latest TAFFCAST episode we talked about the rank review that has been taking place over the last month and as an organisation we've been looking at how our rank structure supports our operations and ensuring it's fit for purpose into the future. The current structure, which has been in place since 2019 in its current form was deemed to be unfit for purpose. When we make strategic changes we're looking at our current structures, systems and standards and applying those years ahead to determine if they are working as intended.

Now that this process is complete, we're in a position to communicate the changes that will now take place and how they will be implemented over the coming days. These changes are designed to support UNITAF into our next platform, beyond Arma 3 and into the next 5 years of growth - in realistic terms to a total force size of 500 which we feel will be required to support higher limits of concurrent players and operational scale that would be permitted in future games.

 

Enlisted rank review

This change is effective Monday 18th October 2021

Enlisted ranks cover all ranks below the rank of Corporal. In the review the focus was on three key areas;
 

1. Increasing the time taken to achieve the maximum rank to provide better long term progression to aid the long-term vision of UNITAF

2. Increase the experience and dedication/loyalty gap between ranks so each has its own more defined meaning

3. Provide more ranks for so that more progression opportunities arise, especially as time goes on
    

To understand this better, let's look at the current structure and some information about it.

 

Current structure

Our structure comprises a 5-step progression from acceptance of application to Master Specialist, the highest rank which was added last year.

In the table below you can see the current structure, alongside a statistic: ATIU (average time in unit), this indicates on average how long the current people active in this rank were when they were promoted to this rank and therefore will give you an idea of typical progression times. The numerical requirements in the requirement column, refer to operation/practice hours.

 

 

The focus for the enlisted review is relating to the statistical ATIU. Overall, the ATIU for PFC and below is in line with what we would want to see. With ATIU being an average, this means there will be some people who reach these ranks much sooner and some much later - so what I want to achieve here is make the current ATIU more of a minimum at its current figures rather than an average.

ATIU for SPC and MSP is much lower than we'd like. In our current structure in 5-years time a Master Specialist today would have been in rank for 5.5 years with no progression and that would also result in a large group of people in the same rank with wide ranging TIU and experience. Any update must also address the highest ranks and progression into them.

Thirdly, it's important to understand that the current system was designed when UNITAF was deploying on average 2 deployments per month. To put that in perspective, when this was published our slot hours per month were 132 SHPM, today UNITAFs average is 2,520 SHPM - an increase of 1800%. There is a substantial activity difference now, versus when we set these requirements. When I set the rank of MSP, in place the target TIU for that rank was 3 years, and due to the increase in deployments per month, the first MSP was awarded at 10 months TIU.

 

Future structure

Previously, the minimum requirements for each promotion were not public, known only to NCOs, however as part of this update, we will make the minimum requirements for all promotions public. Before we look at the details of the changes, we need to define some new statistics that are introduced alongside them. 

 

Definitions

• Active time in unit (ATIU) - the number of unique months in which the user has been active in the unit. This is not the same as the number of months enlisted, since one deployment is required per month to be classed as active. For example, if two members joined 24 months ago, and one of them was absent for 12 months of that time, his ATIU would be 12 months. If the other had played every month during that time, his ATIU would be 24 months.

• Active time in grade (ATIG) - the number of active months you have been in your current rank.

• Good conduct (GC) - Good conduct is defined as having received no reprimands while being in your current rank. If you hold good conduct in your current rank, the requirements to achieve your next rank are discounted, as outlined in the table below. Reprimands are reports logged against your dossier for policy violations and no-shows.

Both ATIU and ATIG statistics have been added to public dossier profiles, under deployment record.

New ranks

The new system introduces 4 new specialist ranks, taking the 5-step progression to 9-steps, at the same time it revises the requirements for all ranks above that of and including PFC. It achieves this by introducing a requirement for ATIU, ATIG at all grades above and including PFC - ensuring all those in these grades have met a combination of combat and practice activity, as well as time in the unit. 

The requirement for ATIU solves the issue of the 1800% increase in SHPM by hard limiting the benefit of excessive deployments (above the average of 8 per month) and will protect the integrity of the units structure should we double this activity again, since it’s highly possible that we could see 5,000 SHPM or greater, in the next few years.

As with the old system, the First Requirement refers numerically to operation/practice hours.

 

Further notes

• The fastest time someone can reach the highest rank (MSP, CMS is excluded as it is considered a positional rank), is increased from 10 months, to 46 months, or 37 months with Good Conduct

• The current rank of Master Specialist is renamed to Specialist 2nd Class

• The current rank of Specialist is renamed to Specialist 3rd Class

• The 4 new specialist ranks (SP1 to CMS) are added above the current MSP rank/future SP2 rank.

• All promotions still require no reprimands in the last 30 days.

 

Will my current rank change?

In short, yes. All ranks will be updated to meet the minimum requirements of the new system, this will take place on Monday 18th October 2021. During the re-assignment, only the first and second requirements from the table above apply. The third requirement does not apply to this implementation nor to rank re-assignment in the future (i.e. someone stepping down from the ORGCOC) - only to future promotions. Your rank will be determined by the First and Second requirements only. You should wait until the official announcement that the update is completed, and you can see your rank on Discord and Website before applying changes to your teamspeak and game profiles. You must ensure you update these, or you will not be allowed into upcoming deployments if you have an old rank applied on your profile.

As Commanding Officer, I know many of you take great pride in the ranks you have earned here, I also know that some people don’t pay any attention to it at all - this is something that I’ve kept in mind during this review and something we have spoken about at length as staff. Statistically, most people will see a reduction in rank by one grade. I’m aware, especially when considering the ORGCOC rank update also mentioned in this SITREP, that this may feel disheartening. However, what I would say is those of you who remain active into the future will benefit the most from this change, and it is you whom we are making this change for.

What results is a much more robust system, where each rank has a more defined meaning - and each promotion a much more impactful and rewarding achievement - this is not something that would be the case, if we did not re-assign everyone to meet them.

 

When will this happen?

The implementation of this change will start right now with the publishing of this SITREP, you’ll see changes being made across our network, including the website, teamspeak and discord as we roll out the necessary updates required to support this change, at some time on Monday 18th of October a full update will take place that will re-assign all personnel to the correct ranks on both the website and Discord, this process will take time with nearly 400 personnel to process - once this is complete an announcement will be made.

Finally, this will be the only major review in our structure for the last 2.5 years since the unit was founded and it will likely not be reviewed again for at least the same amount of time.

 

ORGCOC rank review

This change is effective Monday 18th October 2021

Ranks of the organisational chain of command cover all those from Corporal to Colonel. The primary difference between ORGCOC ranks and Enlisted ranks is ORGCOC ranks belong to the position and not the person. For example, the rank of a Troop Commander is (1Lt/2Lt) and so a person in that position holds that rank in order to perform the duties of that position, and if they leave that position, their rank changes depending on where they go next.

The purpose of the ORGCOC rank realignment is to provide 2 progressional ranks at every position in the ORGCOC. This is currently the case for all of the following positions in green;

• Company Commanders / Executive Officers (Capt,Maj)

• Troop Commanders (1Lt,2Lt)

• Troop Sergeants (SFC,MSG)

• Section Commanders (Sgt,SSgt)

• Assistant Section Commanders (Cpl)

 

The only position that does not currently have a 2-step progression is Assistant Section Commander, the entry level ORGCOC position. Just as with enlisted ranks, progression is an important part of being in the ORGCOC. To solve this we explored a number of options including using the USMC rank of Lance Corporal and re-aligning all ranks to make this happen, the latter of which is what we have opted to do.

 

Future structure

The table below outlines each position affected by this change in the ORGCOC, from Assistant Section Commander to Company Sergeant. All ranks from Sergeant to Command Sergeant Major move down one position in the chain of command meaning Sergeant now becomes the senior rank for an Assistant Section Commander, and Staff Sergeant the entry-level rank for Section Commanders.

The table below details each position, it’s previous rank and it’s new rank according to this change.

 

 

What does entry/established mean?

Every ORGCOC position now has two ranks, one for ‘Entry level’ position holders and another for ‘Established’ holders. This provides the desired in-position progression. The specific requirements for moving from Entry to established will be later determined and published as guidance by staff - for the time being it is defined as “having exceeded the expectations of the position over a long period of time”. Promotions as before this update between positional ranks is at the discretion of myself and the other officers - although we do aim to provide some further guidance on this soon.

 

So everyone is being promoted then?

While there is no getting around this optic, we are changing what it means to hold the ranks of Sgt through to SFC as they are known now, as this change is implemented anyone holding these ranks will be automatically assigned to the rank one higher than their current rank, except this is not a promotion and the website will never refer to it as such - according to all systems, the person will have held this rank for as long as they have held their current rank. The seniority of each position remains the same and no structural changes will take place, except for the name of the rank and visual identity of each position.

 

ORGCOC Seniority

To preserve the indicative level of seniority in the COC, the NCO, SNCO groups will be updated as per the following table, adding two new groups JNCO and CNCO.

 

 

Discord updates

As part of this wider update, we’re updating a number of Discord features.
 

Groups and permissions

This change is effective Monday 18th October 2021

• New groups have been added for all ranks, meaning your rank icon and rank will be displayed on Discord, the same way it is shown on Teamspeak. This also allows the tagging of ranks in announcements, if required.

• New groups have been added for all ORGCOC positions, meaning members of the ORGCOCs positional role will be shown on discord.

• nco, snco, jnco groups updated in accordance with the new structure

 

 

Channel changes

This change is effective Monday 18th October 2021

• nco-chat becomes orgcoc-chat

• nco-chat, snco-chat updated according to the new structure

 

Troop channels

This change is effective Monday 18th October 2021

• Each member now has access to a Troop Announcement channel, this channel is in a new section of Discord called COCCOMs (Chain of Command Communications) it allows your dedicated Troop staff to communicate with the troop, and makes it clearer who they are. UNITAFs bots will also use this channel to provide Troop specific information.

• Troop Command Channels have been renamed to the format of x-trp-cmd

 

 

Discord timestamp support through hammertime

This change is effective immediately

We have added support for the Discord Hammertime function to most pings provided by our bots which show you a relative time to the announcement. A ping saying that an ORBAT release will take place on XXX date will say (in 4 days) relative to your timezone, and when hovered over, show this in your local time.

 

Account settings

Updates to account layout

This change is effective immediately

In the my account section of unitedtaskforce.net the layout has been updated to support the large quantity of other games now in the system.

 

Ability to view your own AARs

This change is effective immediately

It is now possible to view your own historical AARs via the my account page.

 

Daylight savings

At 0100 UTC on Sunday 31 October, most all UNITAF deployments will be adjusted for UK Daylights Savings, meaning that for example; Sunday deployments will move forward one hour from 1700 UTC to 1800 UTC. For the UK this operation will still start at the same time locally, 6PM (then 1800 UTC) and until British Summer Time kicks in next year UNITAF time and UK time will be exactly the same.

For our members from around the world who have already observed DST or are about to, this should again not make any major difference as most our represented countries observe DST if not exactly on the same date and this is in line with what we do every year for DST.

 

Activity overall is certainly increasing inline with what we'd expect as we enter Winter, a number of re-activations from retired and discharged members combined with some really Excellent work from SFC Korean Falcon and STAG-1 in recruitment put the active force back over 100 for the first time in a few months.

 

 

The number of deployments is rising again, but on-par with the average this year, and mission ratings overall have dipped slightly in September (especially for server performance) although are on-par again with the average, as August itself was exceptional.

I was really pleased to approve the following promotions after the last month. Welcome to all of the recruits and again, congratulations to SFC Korean Falcon and Stag-1 for the great work.

Rank	Grade	Personnel
Master Specialist	E-5	Ainz Ooal Gown
Specialist	E-4	Zero
Specialist	E-4	Natlos
Private First Class	E-3	Taru
Private First Class	E-3	Pete
Private	E-2	Smowl
Private	E-2	Maslank
Private	E-2	Minipily
Private	E-2	Vincent
Private	E-2	Afya
Recruit	E-1	Nimrod
Recruit	E-1	Redkawak
Recruit	E-1	Khan
Recruit	E-1	Metters
Recruit	E-1	Rain Twister
Recruit	E-1	Polack
Recruit	E-1	SniperElite
Recruit	E-1	Kton
Recruit	E-1	Meyer
Recruit	E-1	Thors
Recruit	E-1	JDRyker
Recruit	E-1	T4l3
Recruit	E-1	Jordan Martinez
Recruit	E-1	Nonno
Recruit	E-1	Floki
Recruit	E-1	Steichenator
Recruit	E-1	Frits
Recruit	E-1	Barrineau
Recruit	E-1	Lord
Recruit	E-1	Milfner

 

 

From latest to greatest - Congratulations all.

Personnel	Medal	Issue date
Capt Kevin	Field Exercise Service Medal with Silver Star	2021-10-11 00:42:40
2Lt Deksterus	Professional Development Ribbon	2021-10-10 22:19:00
SPC Astreo	Combat Operations Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-10-03 21:35:03
SPC Mohawk	Field Exercise Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-10-03 21:33:03
Cpl Dreolic	Field Exercise Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-10-03 21:33:03
SFC Johannes	Professional Development Ribbon	2021-10-03 21:31:11
Sgt Zuka	Support Operations Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 21:38:53
Sgt WhiteWolf	Combat Operations Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:42:08
Sgt SkullCollector	Combat Operations Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:41:41
PFC Fowlds	Field Exercise Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:36:04
PFC Fowlds	Combat Operations Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:31:32
Pvt Yoi Blackkit	Combat Operations Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:31:32
PFC PMCRUGBY	Combat Operations Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:31:07
Cpl Shahid-e-Gomnam	Combat Operations Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:25:00
PFC Matthias	Combat Operations Service Medal	2021-09-26 19:25:00
Sgt Zuka	Education Command Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:24:32
Sgt Zuka	Field Exercise Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:22:51
SPC Fire Hawk	Field Exercise Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:22:08
MSP Ainz Ooal Gown	Field Exercise Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:14:17
SFC Dungworth	Support Operations Service Medal with Bronze Star	2021-09-26 19:13:22
SFC Dungworth	Medal of Occupation with Bronze Oak Leaf	2021-09-26 19:10:45
SPC Wavan	Medal of Occupation with Bronze Oak Leaf	2021-09-19 21:11:19
SPC Fire Hawk	Space Command Medal	2021-09-19 21:09:07
SPC Flubber Dubber	Prisoner of War Medal	2021-09-17 01:19:02
Cpl hotspur	Prisoner of War Medal	2021-09-17 01:19:02
Pvt Norseman	Prisoner of War Medal	2021-09-17 01:19:02
PFC Nico	Medal of Occupation	2021-09-17 01:18:01
MSP Bex	Long Service Medal 1 Year	2021-09-13 11:40:02

 

 

Manual assignment tool

This change is effective immediately

It's now possible to manually assign Leadership and Mission Support roles from the ORBAT editor, both before and after ORBAT approval.

 

Misc

• T1338 - Fixed an issue with roman numerals not working with discord pings
• T1337 - Various performance improvements for databases (Sgt Scape)
• T1361 - Added ATIG and ATIU to dossier profiles
• T1177 - Added a ping to Troop Command channels when a reprimand is removed
• T1344 - Added a ping to Troop Command channels when a dossier note is made
• T1205 - Removed the legacy callsign editor from the ORBAT editor
• T1352 - Fixed a bug where flagged AARs would be rasied by the wrong user

 

Summary

Two really special mentions this month, firstly to SFC Korean Falcon - for his outstanding work in the last 2 months in STAG-1, Recruiting and Retention. Secondly to all the members of STG-9 (Development) Sgt Scape, 1Lt Jari and SFC Dungworth for their work on items both in this SITREP and those coming soon.

See you in the field soon.

 

Major James
Chairman
UNITAF

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