Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is a tactical shooter video game developed by Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubi Soft in 2001 for Microsoft Windows.

Together with Rainbow Six, SWAT 3, and Operation Flashpoint, game industry experts generally credit Ghost Recon with defining and refining the tactical shooter genre.

[13] Ghost Recon's success spawned two expansion packs, Desert Siege and Island Thunder, as well as numerous sequels.

There are four basic categories of skill: The player also unlocks "specialists" from NATO or allied countries by completing extra mission objectives.

Two specialists are armed with the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, as part of field tests and implementation of the U.S. Army's Land Warrior program.

A heads-up display relays information such as the name of the soldier the player is controlling, the soldier's assigned fireteam, weapon and ammo counter, a threat indicator, the targeting reticule, health status, and a stance indicator (to show whether the character is standing, crouched, or prone).

Meanwhile in Georgia, the U.S. Army's elite "Ghost" special forces unit battles South Ossetian separatists who are harassing the Georgian government and their allies.

In response to their presence, the RDU complains to the United Nations that the United States has interfered in their internal affairs, and the Russian Armed Forces invade Georgia to support the rebels; in turn, the Ghosts support the Defence Forces of Georgia and U.S. reinforcements, who slow the Russian advance.

Eventually, the Russian military captures Tbilisi and the RDU controversially proclaims its annexation of Georgia, forcing the Ghosts to withdraw, while the Georgian government sets up a government-in-exile in Geneva, Switzerland.

The RDU government blames President Arbatov for their losses, places him under house arrest, and eventually executes him in a coup d'état.

The death of Arbatov results in a massive loss of domestic support for the RDU government and the rise of an anti-RDU insurgency, while the Ghosts covertly attack Russian military facilities in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to cripple their combat capabilities.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder was released in late 2002 as an expansion pack for Microsoft Windows, and as a standalone game for Xbox.

Free expansions like Frostbite, CENTCOM, Heroes Unleashed, and Year of the Monkey (among others) have gained huge popularity, with download counts in the hundreds of thousands, and attaining community-based awards.

Combined sales of all Ghost Recon series computer games released between those dates had reached 620,000 in the United States by August 2006.

[62] Sales of the game's Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions surpassed 2 million copies by the end of June 2003, and helped to drive Ubisoft's Q1 2003/2004 revenues to a record high for the company.

[68] During the AIAS' 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Xbox version received a nomination for "Console First-Person Action Game of the Year"[69] In August 2008, the Russo-Georgian war began, and a number of commentators noted that this real-world event was somewhat similar to the plot of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, namely how it was prescient in its prediction of Russia's backing of separatist rebel forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.