Good stuff.
I am at Fort Polk in the dedicated OPFOR unit (1/509th) that fights the rotational units coming through JRTC. We use MILES gear and have everything from RPG-7 simulators, 249's, 240's, Barret .50 Cals, and we just got some new SVD semi-auto sniper rifles. Back when we did conventional force on force rotations we used Soviet BMP-1 and BMP-2 along with a Soviet Hind helos for air mobile insertions. But now we mostly do Afghan or Iraqi rotations so no use for the big stuff, though I hear in the offing we will be doing a North Korean rotation against a Stryker brigade coming some time in the beginning of next year.
We operate in cells and where cultural garb and learn a bit about the roles we are supposed to play such as a disgruntled former Baathist party uy working with al queda against the US and so on. We have both real world experience, the vast majority assigned to the unit have multiple deployments, and we go through special training to use both realistic and up-to-date practices of Al-Queda, the Taliban and other factions fighting our forces in something we call the OpFor Academy. There are literally hundreds of contractor civilians that we interact with that play the part of COB's (civilians on the battlefield). They too are trained to act as realistically as possible, alot of the times they are actual Iraqi or Afghan interpreters who are being rewarded with a long trip to the US, get paid some big bucks, and get to enjoy a little life without getting real bullets or explosions coming their way. We have alot of built up cities and villages along with all the other civil structures that you would find in country.
Most of the time its pretty serious stuff but at times we have some fun. I recall holding a village of about 30 civilians hostage for a day and ultimately Alamo'ing it in the town mosque while we were surrounds by 4 Bradley's, 2 Abrams, about 8 gun trucks, a company + of infantry and 2 Apaches flying overhead while the brigade commander tried to negotiate with my Company commander playing the role of the Leader of the Ashura Brigade for the release of our hostages. We had taken the village right next to a FOB they were operating out of but they had ignored the whole rotation. We rolled in with about 40 of our guys and starting taking out the guys in their guard towers in the FOB, "executed" all non-Shite civilians in the city and took the mayor and several other of its leaders hostage. They rolled out 4 gun trucks after about a hour of us raising hell in the city. We hit them with RPG's and knocked them out. They then tried to get a couple platoons on foot to start securing some of the out lying structures but with a mixture of small arms and some of the .50 cals we manned off the disabled gun trucks we took them out. By that time news of the fiasco got all the way up to their brigade and they started rolling up the bradleys followed by the abrams and they got the air coverage over top pretty much simultaneously. We then took all our hostages and made for the mosque and made it pretty clear we had about a dozen civilians hostages to hold them off. The negotiations were pretty entertaining to listen to as we prepped the mosque for being breached and making our last stand and probably all getting taken out. Our CO kepts them talking for quite a long time and our snipers would occasionaly take out any of the Bluefor that got sloppy during the wait and exposed themselves. When the Bluefor brigade commander finally arrived via a Blackhawk with his terp my CO managed to secure freedom for some of us as we released some of the hostages in return for them making an opening in the cordon they had formed so we could make it to the wood line. Some of the guys hauled ass through the opening but some decided to stay and go down in a blaze of glory. The Bradley's pulled up and "notionally" knocked down 2 walls on one side of the mosque and another team breached the main entrance. We took out all the guys breaching the entrance and then the Bradley's opened up on us taking us all out and killing all of our hostages.
My CO and a few of the other higher ranking guys who took the city conducted a huge AAR just over that one event during the whole rotation. Needless to say there was quite a lot of improves that were brought up.
I just wish there is some way we could register hits and kills better than with the MILES gear we use. Something that might inflict a little pain but not cause serious injury. We had done the simrounds with the paint tips but they say its to expensive and it is to dangerous with the potential to hit in the face and eyes even though everyone is supposed to be wearing eye pro.
Here is some OK vids of stuff that we do.
Some action with an oncoming vehicle (not sure its from JRTC but it gets the point across)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQYrzhkKAIE&NR=1
A news clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fky2BtE637o
A morale boasting vid for the rotational unit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdamNDgeLCo&feature=related
Another good one with no sound though