There's always some confusion between what a Mission, Operation, Tour and a Deployment. In this post we are going to talk about the differences, how they work and the length of each of them.
What's a Mission?
A Mission takes place with an intention to complete a small goal, this usually happens over a short period of time or in ARTIC's case, a singular night which is just shortened from a realistic Mission that actually could take about a week to complete. Missions could be raids, assaults, defences, support or alike.
What's an Operation?
An Operation is a larger sum of Missions, an Operation typically has an intention to complete an overall goal. For example an Operation could be to provide civilians with Humanitarian Aid and multiple missions will take place in different regions to provide humanitarian aid to an overall area. Another example could be to destroy the enemy's logistics bases with the intention to eliminate the logistical support to the enemy refining their combat readiness. Operations can go for up to a couple months or on a rare case a year long. ARTIC runs operations for a couple weeks.
What's a Tour?
A Tour is a smaller version of a Deployment. The purpose of a Tour might be for a small area or with the purpose of staying in an designated location for a short period and no longer. Tours will typically have a smaller amount of Operations all leading to a final goal such as Eliminating the enemy threat inside a country to give it back to the people. Tours typically last 6 months and in ARTIC'S case 1-2 months.
What's a Deployment?
A Deployment is a long period at a designated location involving multiple Operations. In a realistic Scenario a common example is Afghanistan, most soldiers got deployed to Afghanistan for a period of up to 9 months whilst the Afghanistan deployment lasted decades. In ARTIC's we typically simulate Deployments from 2-4 months which obviously include multiple Operations.
Hopefully you've now gotten an understanding of the difference and how they work together.