During Arma 2 one mod gained a lot of appreciation and quickly became one of the necessities for the tactical Arma scene. Its name was Advanced Combat Radio Environment - or short ACRE.

This mod built a hook between Arma and Teamspeak. This way it was possible to simulate a realistic radio environment in Arma. Players would no longer hear each and every member in their Teamspeak Channel but only those that were standing close to the player's character ingame. To ensure a constant communication between players in Arma, ACRE also added several radios - short range aswell as long range radios.

This innovative Arma 2 Mod helped raising the immersion ingame to another level and established itself in nearly every Unit.

With the release of Arma 3's Alpha in March 2013 people asked themselves "which mods will make it from Arma 2 to its successor?" Everyone hoped for ACRE. But the players had to experience the Alpha without it.

In June 2013 Bohemia Interactive released the Beta of Arma 3. One month after, Wards, the team behind ACRE released their first version of ACRE2 for Arma 3. It was basically a light copy of the Arma 2 Version with only one radio and its basic functionality. The problem was that this version was very buggy and only rarely worked as expected.

That is why nkey released his Mod called "Task Force Arrowhead Radio" in November of the same year. This mod improved a lot of the things people hoped to see from ACRE2. It came with an Arsenal of four Radios for each of the three main factions. All vehicles were equipped with Radios and ensured a communication of all players in a mission, and soon people realized that it was much needed with the new map Altis, which was bigger than any map before.

Another big selling point of Task Force Arrowhead Radio was the implementation of an underwater transceiver for the new diving gear Arma 3 introduced.

A lot of time has passed since then and ACRE2 has developed to a working mod. Both mods have their fans, and their pros and cons.

We at STAF prefer Task Force Radio due to its variety of the radios, the underwater radio communication and the overall functionality. Even though ACRE2 has a lot of functions and qualities that are certainly interesting we will stick with TFR for now. A test has shown that most of our members appreciate this decision.