17. Table of Common Abbreviations

The information in the following section provides a list of various terms and standard military abbreviations. This should be helpful for new players to review and become familiar with these terms.


A/C – Aircraft.
AA – Anti-Air
AAA – Anti-Air Artillery. It mainly refers to gun or cannon systems. Also known as flak.
AAM – Air-to-Air Missile
ACA – Advanced Composite Armor. A sandwich of metal and either ceramic or rubber
AD – Air Defense
ADA – Air Defense Artillery. This includes SAMs.
ADL – Air Defense Limited. The weapon system has limitations in the engagement envelope.
ADW – Air Defense Weapon. The weapon is designed specifically to engage flying targets.
AGM – Air to Ground Missile
AP – Armor Piercing
APC – An Armored Personnel Carrier. Carries infantry troops and provides minimal protection from machine guns and artillery fire. Very vulnerable to any AT weapon and most autocannon (20mm, 25mm, 30mm). An Armored Personnel Carrier is lightly armored and lightly armed.
APS – Active Protection System. A radar sensor and counter-rocket/missile munition are designed to destroy the incoming munition several meters from the protected target. The sensor is usually some type of radar.
AT – Anti-Tank. The broad category of weapons/munitions capable of killing an MBT.
ATGM – Anti-Tank Guided Missile
BDA – Battle Damage Assessment
Bty – Battery. This applies to artillery and air defense units.
C2 – Command and Control
CAS – Close Air Support
Cav – Cavalry. Reconnaissance forces.
CP – Command Post
Echelon (Operational) – During the Cold War, Soviet doctrine used the concept of the Echelonment of Forces. These are "waves of Divisions". The First Echelon was tasked with creating a breakthrough, and the Second Echelon would exploit that. The time gap between these Army-level echelons was anticipated to be five to seven days into the war.
Echelon (Tactical) – This represents the formation size and span of control. The echelons in the game are Platoon (about 30 infantry soldiers or three to four fighting vehicles), Company (three to four Platoons), Battalion (three to five Companies and 1-3 specialty platoons), Brigade or Regiment (three to five Battalions and two to five specialty Companies/Batteries)
ERA/NERA – Explosive and Non-Explosive Reactive Armor. These are armor, usually enhancements designed to defeat HEAT-based munitions. They function by disrupting the plasma-cutting jet created by the HEAT round, reducing the penetration to a level less than the hull or turret armor.
EW – Electronic Warfare
FARP – Forward Arming and Refueling Point. Where helicopter units rearm.
FASCAM – Family of Scatterable Mines. Western term for a scatterable cluster munition. These are minelets used for area denial. Usually, it will cause mobility kills on armored vehicles. These include anti-personnel minelets in the mix as well. Units that detect these will attempt to bypass them.
FDC – Fire Direction Center. A platform where artillery computations are made to determine gun lay for azimuth and elevation, and what charge for a particular target.
HE – High Explosive
HEAT – High Explosive Anti-Tank
HERA – High Explosive Rocket Assisted. Artillery rounds that have a rocket in the base to provide extended range.
ICM – Dual-purpose (anti-personnel and anti-armor) scatterable cluster munition. Each shell or bomb ejects several bomblets that attack soft and armored targets (top armor being relatively thin). The target will have dud rounds remaining that impede future movement.
IFV – Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Armored more than an APC but less than an MBT. Usually armed with an autocannon, and many have ATGM as well. IFVs carry a squad or fewer of infantry. More survivable than an APC.
Improved Position – Field fortifications consisting of dug fighting positions affording improved cover. Includes positions for fighting vehicles and CPs.
IR – Infrared. This is a short wavelength or near-infrared spectrum of light. For surveillance sensors or weapon sights, illumination is required.
ISR/ISTAR – Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance/Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance.
LOS – Line of Sight. This is the ability to see from one location to another. This is how spotting in the game is done.
MBT – Main Battle Tank. Tracked, heavily armored, with a large caliber and high-velocity gun.
MG – Machine Gun. There are three groupings of these based on caliber – 7.62mm caliber, .50/12.7mm caliber, and 14.5mm. There is no essential difference among nations or weapons within the caliber category.
MRL – Multiple Rocket Launcher. Generally, a grouping of tubes or rails that hold unguided rockets fired in a salvo at a target area.
PGM – Precision Guided Munition. The munition is guided to the target by various means. These are generally missiles, either air or ground-launched.
Platform – The lowest atomic element of capability. These are individual aircraft and ground vehicles, squads, gun crews, etc.
Prep – Short for preparatory fires. These are artillery fires directed against known or suspected locations just before a ground assault. The primary aim of a prep is to degrade the effectiveness of defending forces, not the destruction of them.
RPG – Rocket-Propelled Grenade. Shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launcher.
SACLOS – Semi-Active Command Line Of Sight. Gunners need only keep their sights on the target. No gunner inputs are required to correct munition ballistics or lead compensation.
SAM – Surface to Air Missile
SEAD – Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses
Smoke – A type of artillery round that generates a large, dense cloud of smoke that impedes LOS. This has minimal impact on TIS systems.
TIS – Thermal Imager Sight. Detect targets using the electromagnetic spectrum's long-wave or mid-wave infrared portion. These wavelengths correspond to heat emitted by a target and are not effectively blocked by standard smoke rounds. No illumination is required.
TIV – Using the same technology as a TIS, but not part of a fire control system, the TIS can spot enemy units.
UCAS – Unmanned Combat Aerial System. Flying drones that have the primary purpose of attacking enemy targets.
UAS/UAV – Unmanned Aerial System/Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. This broad classification of flying drones doesn't speak to their battlefield purpose, including recon, surveillance, situational awareness, and strike systems.