I was told that there are people in military intelligence that just build models all day for planning and tactical purposes. I would love to have this job

I'd be willing to bet that they are built by contractors (for a hell of a lot of money!)

Part of the S-2 sections job is to make terrain models to help explain parts of the Opord for upcoming operations. It depends on the unit size how big the model is. At the squad level, the one's I made were literally lines drawn in the ground and text images put on the ground to show where units were and other basic info. At Brigade, Division, and above huge sets are made for the large operations. I saw a picture of one for Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan that was the size of a room. They are used in so-called Rock Drills to show how an operation will go or at least how the plan is supposed to go in a way that is more visual than a PowerPoint and a topographic map.

These aren't the most sophisticated things in the world. They aren't putting 1/35 vehicles in them. The terrain can get pretty good but given the size and time constraint, most guys just don't have the time to make it the most accurate.

Jeff

That is pretty sick, I wasn't sure if it was true or hullabaloo. Sounds like fun though

When my brother was in the Fleet Air Arm, he briefly got back into models when the squadron needed some recognition aids - they bought a load of kits from Hobby House in Truro and asked for volunteers who could slap them together. There was a suspiciously large number of Hasegawa MiGs around the house for a while after that. Whether they still do that sort of thing, I'm not sure. Either (i) costs are pared to the bone so they still ask for volunteers, or (ii) anything not actually involving contact with The Other Lot is sub-contracted* so there's a factory somewhere churning them out, or (iii) some berk is buying Corgi die-cast models at ruinous prices instead, because That's What The Armed Forces Always Do.

* I still can't believe we were once considering leasing tanks. Can you imagine the conversations? "'Ere - this one's all dirty, and you haven't emptied the ashtrays - we're keeping your deposit" ...

I've built several models for the Air Force Academy here in the Springs. A good friend used to teach aircraft design there and they would use the models to point out good and bad points of the engineering behind the planes. Easy builds as they were all cleaned of munitions so one could see the plane and not the just the ordnance slung underneath. The terrain models Jeff spoke of were just that, an approximation of the terrain the units would be operating over. Usually laid out with white engineer tape, yarn, or just lines scratched into the ground. Hi ground was represnted with a shovel full or two of dirt. 3x5 cards with objective names printed on them etc. Nothing exciting about them at all. In fact it was a real pain in the a** to make some of them and doing so on less then adequate sleep didn't help matters any. While at Ft. Bragg we had one that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50' widex 100' long due to the number of players we had involved. It was a full blown CALFEX (Combined Arms Live Fire Excercise) armor, infantry, artillery, engineers etc. Made for a hell of a light show when we kicked it off. "Q"

Too many years ago while I was based at Ft Riley, Kansas our mess hall was being redecorated. There was an older E6 in the battallion (701st Maintenance Bn.) who was just kind of marking time until his retirement. He was a hell of a nice guy but was one of those who got to where he couldn't be given too much responsibility beacuse he was just too nice to be in charge of others. So, he was was bumped around the battallion and the companies, assigned to different non-essential and temporary duties he could mostly do by himself, kept around because he was so likable. As it turned out he was a hell of a wood carver. He would sometimes make a carving of some military vehicle to give as a gift to a somebody he had come to like who was leaving the unit. After seeing the quality of his work on someone's desk the Battallion Commander asked him if he would consider making more of them to decorate the entire perimeter of mess hall with. He did just that. His last year in service he was in Heaven, just carving away. While I haven't seen a great deal of really high end, super detailed wood carvings before or since, what he did was beyond belief! Deuce and a halfs, M-60s, 113s, jeeps, five quarters, and wildest of all were his helicopters with the rotors full out! The detail has amazing! If they would have been painted it would have been impossible to tell they were made out of wood. Size-wise his vehicles were close to 1/35 and the helicopters were close to 1/32. This was back in 1975 and I wonder if they are still there. More than likely they disappeared one by one over the years. What a skill to have, and coming from the unlikliest of individuals. I thought it was one of the happiest endings to a career in the Army anyone could have had.

Sounds cool! Nice work if you can get it.