The unlucky One-Twelve Cav were to take their initial stand in the ruggedly digitized Mojave hills on a baseline code-named Purple. Their orders were to fight in their sector, delaying the advance as best they could, while retreating in good order to Baseline Amber, where the survivors (if there were any) were to take another stand.
The attacking enemy would advance from west to east. That much was already known. But the exact enemy tactics were obscured by the fog of war.
The US company commander, Capt. Van Aken, studied the terrain and deployed his meager forces with care. Alpha Platoon to guard the center. Bravo Platoon to the north. Charlie Platoon to the south. The command post to the rear, near Baseline Amber. And the scouts, in their swift but lightly armored Bradleys, to range ahead of Baseline Purple.
The One-Twelve Cav had their orders. They understood their strategy. They left the command post for the squat plastic ranks of simulators. The Jacuzzis of Death.
From the outside, a SIMNET M1 Abrams tank simulator is clearly not a tank. It looks like an oddly humped gray fiberglass shower-stall. The simulator is, in fact, built by Jacuzzi from the same materials as a whirlpool bath. Its interior, however, is designed to psycho-logically replicate the basic tank experience, and it does.
Inside, the simulator is the proper shape and size for a tank's crew chamber. It makes all the proper sounds: the loud engine whine, the ominous rumble of treads, the multi-ton coffee-grinder racket as the turret slews, the concussive thud of the main gun firing. It has the instruments of a tank, though many of those controls are nonfunctional and only painted-on. There are no actual 40-pound high-explosive shells inside simulators, though the loader, by design,