[hollywood...]

Originally Posted by Brian McIlmoyle

but it can also be much smaller.. and more focused.

Over the past year I have been involved in several small scale operations that included intelligence aspects, that defined mission parameters. through analysis of intelligence we defined a target and a date, and a scope of operation.. on that date and location we deployed a specially trained unit with specific ROE and objectives.. between initial warning order, intelligence gathering and mission profile development and unit selection and training these operations took an average of 3 months to complete. The actual operations were often concluded within about 1.5 hours ( some less , like 40 minutes ) the shooting part was just the culmination of the intelligence gathering, preparation and Training.

These were 1 life operations, no respawn, if you are hit you are dead for the operation. When you do things like this, you get a quality of experience that is unmatched in any other event.

One of the operations we did was surveillance and intelligence interception in an urban environment.. no shots were fired.. but it was still a very stimulating MILSIM

exactly!