Tanks are, of course, very well-armored vehicles, but there is very little on earth that can resist a 120-millimeter uranium slug traveling at a mile-per-second. Anything hit by this projectile instantly buckles and splatters. Modern tank-to-tank warfare is extremely lethal and the exchange of direct fire generally lasts only seconds.
Those seconds are precious, so time spent inside a simulator is not a picnic. Simulators are not toys. They are "fun" in some sense, but only about as much fun as an actual no-kidding tank. You can drive these simulators across cyberspace landscapes, coordinate their tactics, advance and retreat, aim their cannon, fire and be fired upon. You can smash into obstacles, bog down in mud, fall off cliff edges, and experience various kinds of simulated mechanical and engine trouble. You can panic, you can screw up, you can make a fool of yourself in front of your comrades and your commander. You can directly affect your real-life military career through what you do in simulators. And you can be killed inside simulators - virtually speaking.
The One-Twelve Cav deployed to their virtual tanks, opened the thick plastic doors on their hefty refrigerator-style hinges, took their posts at the black plastic seats, and were sealed inside. The drivers were also formally encased in their own separate plastic sarcophagi.
They started their virtual engines. They began exchanging virtual radio traffic. They examined their virtual navigation, and squinted at the desert-colored polygons in their vision-blocks. From the Ethernet lines dangling from metal frames overhead, SIMNET packets began to flow to and from the gloss-black Computer Image Generators, and the SIMNET recording angel, the big network