Hey, just wanted to make a post as a fresh meat and just want to truly know is there a lot of people in this milsim that are serving / have served if so is the process still the same such as doing basic and all that jazz or do you get straight to a section and get to participate in the milsim nights. Final question regarding people serving what is it like to post LOAS if you are going on ops/exercise for future ref cheers

There's several members of the unit that are currently serving - I myself am one of them - as well as numerous ex-military. With regards to Phase 1, it's still the same process. This is just to make sure that everyone receives the same standard of training prior to joining the unit. Real world experience is useful, but there's things specific to Arma that still need to be taught.

As for LOAs, the unit is very accomodating for things like exercises and deployments, and the general rule is 'Real life comes first', so if you have events coming up that you need to LOA for, you should be fine.

Alrighty understand, will the phase 1 be like sucking eggs and going through basic contact drills or is it literally understanding the mechanics of arma?

Bit of both - if you're arriving with real world military training then there will be bits where you already know the subject matter, but there will also be parts where it is completely Arma/4IB focused. You have to remember that this is geared at the lowest common denominator - meaning it's aimed at someone who potentially has no military knowledge at all, and no Arma experience either, so it has to cater to those requirements.

In my experience, I found that even though I knew the fundamentals of what they were teaching (section attacks, formations, etc), I still came away having learned something - the instructors and the course are full of useful information regardless of your previous experience, so it's definitely can't be considered a waste of an evening.

Alrighty cheers for this mate, hopefully I can get an op night sorted before I get to go and spend my lovely life in Salisbury plain for a couple of weeks