Royal Thai Navy using GCB

[Dust]

http://www.gcblue.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=323

Some interesting news, the Royal Thai Navy is using software adapted from GCB:

From http://www.navy.mi.th/ians/gcb/gcb_comp.html

English summary provided by thanin with some minor edits:

GCB is developed by Dewitt Colclough using C++ and Python programming languages. He officially registered to http://sourceforge.net on 6 August, 2003 for open source development. The site http://www.gcblue.com is the official web site for information on development progress and for bug reports from end users. Any person can use GCB for developing by himself, but it must be under the GPL license terms. The Institute of Advanced Naval Studies (I.A.N.S.) has adapted GCB for appropriate practice in the Royal Thai Navy. I.A.N.S. appended "Naval Wargame Simulator 980" to "Global Conflict Blue" to celebrate H.M. King Bhumibol Rama IX of Thailand 80th Birthday on 5 December 2007.

Statement from Chief of I.A.N.S., Vice Admitral Piroj Kansarn follows

1. GCB is used by I.A.N.S. for studying, reseach and development for our sim. Now it can be used to practice wargames for student officers in our different courses. We have conducted research and development for some time to assure that we can use it for practice for different wargame courses. But for sure, I invite representatives from each department in the Royal Thai Navy to get suggestions and ideas for better development of NWS 980 which is based on GCB.

2. Our Institute (I.A.N.S) has had 2 types of simulators, one is "REDIFON" and the other is "CPX" (stands for "Command Post Exercise") simulator.
Both of manufacturers who produced spare-parts have closed their business for a long time. Now we have no spare-parts for both of our sims.

3. Now our Institute cannot use REDIFON to practice the "line officers course" (for student oficers whose rank are lieutenant), and cannot use CPX to practice our "staff course" (Lieutenant Commander - Commander rank). So It must send them to practice at the Training Division of Royal Thai Fleet in Satahip province. That of course incurs much more expense for those practices.

4. Our Institute proposed a plan to the Royal Thai Navy for buying a new simulator to replace our old sims. But our Naval Force has no budget for this, so it seems hard to get a new sim in the future.

5. On May 2006, our Wargaming Division discovered free software named "Global Conflict Blue" which was developed by a team led by Dewitt Colclough. We think there are no problems to modify GCB source code or just even grab it for use under the GPL license of the Free Software Foundation. From studying GCB, we found that it's appropriate for wargame practice in our different courses, both tactical level and operation level. We were able to develop this project for less than 6 million Baht (33 Baht=1 $US).

6. Our institute proposed this project in the meeting of the Royal Thai Navy on last April, and the Supreme Commander of Royal Thai Navy approved budget for this project.

7. Capabilities of GCB
7.1 surface operation
7.2 anti-submarine operation
7.3 coast guard command operation
7.4 air operation
GCB also simulates sensor, weapon, logistics, and weather in realistic 3D. Also it can evaluate the result of using each weapon and is able to create more than 1000 units and 8 sides in game.

[Deamon]

Congrats. Sounds like it will get a development boost. I look forward to a worth successor to Fleetcommand.