Thursday, August 24, 2006

Free Game Demo

Joint Task Force Single-Player Demo.
Joint Task Force™ is a fast-paced tactical strategy game based on real world combat scenarios.

In the first mission you’ll neutralize a Somalian port with a small force of infantry specialists. In mission two, you’ll head deep into the Columbian jungle to smash a heavily armed cartel. In this more difficult mission you’ll have officially licensed military tech, including the Boeing AH-64D Apache helicopter and the General Dynamics M1A2 Abrams tank, as part of your arsenal.
This is a real-time fast-paced tactical strategy game based on real world combat scenarios. The Demo has two scenarios. It is a half a gig download.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Australia to add two new battalions
Prime Minister John Howard has announced an extra 2,600 personnel for the army, saying Australia will face challenging situations in the next two decades.

The Prime Minister said two new battalions would be established in two stages, with one to be based in Adelaide and the other in southeast Queensland.

The cost to set up the battalions would be "something in the order" of $10 billion, the Prime Minister said, with the first battalion to be a mechanised unit and the other light infantry.

"This decision will ... as I understand it, take us back to a situation where we have the largest number of infantry battalions since 1973," he said.

"In anybody's language, it's a very significant boost to the Australian army and one that I think is needed, fully justified and will be widely supported by the Australian people."

Mr Howard said the first new battalion would be manned by 2008 and ready for overseas deployment by the end of 2010.

The new places are in addition to 1500 further personnel to be recruited under another army initative announced last year.
Australia has very interesting open debates about their defense needs and military decisions. A good discussion here on Ozzie reasoning.

In contrast to this my political blog caught the latest White House secrecy idiocy.

As long as I am making referrals to myself I posted a gaming post about a woman fantasy RPG in my general Notebook.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Saudi Arabia buys 72 Eurofighter Typhoons.

The Eurofighter has a long history and is a generation 4.5 fighter. Saudi Arabia has a history of buying British planes since the 80's. Here in America we only here about the American purchases. The American F-22 and F-35 aren't quite available to export to Saudi Arabia yet and they choose this over the French Rafale. Their other option was upgraded F-15's, which are not as advanced and they are not a market for the Soviet Mig-35 which it looks like India will get.
New (old) PC simulation war games

The Operational Art of War III.

Any battle at the operational level for the last 100 years or so. Unique movement and battle planning system empasizes that battles must be planned out.

Gary Grigsby’s World At War: A World Divided.

WW2 at the very high strategic level and into the post-war period. This is the sequel to the 2006 Award winning World at War.
Strategy Page - Gary Grigsby’s World at War is notable as the first step in recognizing PC games as legitimate entries into the ‘hobby’ game market. Gary Grigsby's World at War is one of the first, if not the first, PC titles to win a Callie award. This is a sign to retail hobby shops that it is alright to accept and embrace PC “board games” as an extension of their existing market. The Vanguards, such as the one given to Gary Grigsby’s World at War, are given to titles that are award worthy but do not fall into an existing category. Congratulations go to 2by3 Games – Gary Grigsby, Joel Billings and Keith Brors - for adding a great award to their long list of honors!
Harpoon 3: Advanced Naval Warfare adds multi-player mode to an improved Harpoon version.