thedrifter
06-04-07, 07:58 PM
The future of training’
Combat simulators grow more sophisticated
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : June 11, 2007
Imagine grunts in North Carolina, radiomen on Hawaii, combat engineers in California and truck drivers on Okinawa, Japan — all logged into the same real-time virtual battlefield.
Imagine spraying suppressive fire at insurgents on a flickering screen at Twentynine Palms to cover a squad of Marines advancing on a building full of electronic enemies from the amphibious assault ship Bataan in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Now, you’re thinking like me,” said Training and Education Command’s modeling and simulations analyst Terry Bennington, a retired sergeant major working to incorporate a new version of Marine Forces Reserve’s Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer into a Corps-wide battlefield simulation accessible to Marines in every clime and place simultaneously.
When the current convoy trainer visited the artillerymen of 2nd Battalion, 14th Marines, in Oklahoma City late last month, it came with hardware and software upgrades that officials at Training and Education Command’s technology division are hoping to offer active-duty Marines “as soon as we can,” Bennington said.
With its new upgrades, the convoy trainer went from 270 degrees of projection screens to a full 360 degrees. Software upgrades inject enemy combatants and give the mock-up Humvees the same cornering, steering and braking performance as the up-armored vehicles Marines will operate in Iraq, said Capt. Trevor Thibodeau, assistant Reserve liaison officer for Marine Corps Systems Command’s training systems branch in Orlando, Fla.
Realistic training
The trainer is loaded with software that allows it to reproduce a “topographically correct Iraq,” Thibodeau said. “You can drive through Baghdad, and that’s Baghdad. There are going to be buildings where a building is, and intersections where the intersections are.”
Once in the trainer, Marines are subject to the will of their unit’s training chief, who calls the shots when it comes to the scenarios they will encounter, such as receiving enemy fire or calling in airstrikes, Thibodeau said.
“He says, ‘These are the kind of drills we want to work on because there is a known deficiency in our unit.’ He’d say we want to work on [roadside bombs], and they’d do four to six hours of reaction drills,” Thibodeau said. “We’re giving them tools to practice on what they need to practice on.”
Marine Forces Reserve bought four trailers in 2005; placed two at Twentynine Palms, Calif.; and sent the others on a road trip across the country to train Marines preparing for war in places where Iraq-like conditions can’t be replicated naturally.
More than 12,000 Marines have trained in the four-vehicle simulator at Twentynine Palms’ Camp Wilson, said Maj. Walt Yates, the modeling and simulations officer there.
Though the combat center at Twentynine Palms has no shortage of desert or open space, “there was a ‘me too’ factor” when the brass there first saw the trainer in 2005, said Maj. Terry Thomas, the assistant training officer for modeling and simulations in the Reserve operations section. “We have been the lead dog because MarForRes found it. We own the trainer in Twentynine Palms, but we share it with the total force.”
Each of the trainer’s Humvees is separated by a wall; though Marines in one vehicle can see the other vehicles on the projection screens surrounding them, they must communicate over radios as they would in Iraq. But that’s only the start.
“Let’s make it more complicated. Put in civilians mixed with insurgents. Put in traffic, aircraft and animals, dead animals,” said Lt. Col. Julio Villalba, the Reserve liaison officer at SysCom’s Orlando training systems office. “When he’s driving down the road in Baghdad and he’s engaged by individuals, some of them are civilians, some of them are not. What are the rules of engagement? Then, it gets really complex.”
Villalba said “there are many different ways to incorporate ethical decision-making into the scenarios,” a topic stressed by Commandant Gen. James Conway in a white letter released to the Corps’ commanders and officers-in-charge late last month.
“When you’re talking about escalation of force, it’s ethical,” Villalba said. “Are you just going to open fire? It’s a judgment call.”
Thomas said the simulated scenarios can range from “light for beginners to very difficult for experienced Marines, and that’s a great capability.”
Villalba said the capability to “be in country and fight the insurgents virtually from a safe environment and to make mistakes” will become “the future of training for all forces” as technology continues to advance.
“We’re at the tip of the iceberg. We’re going to lean forward and get bigger and better things,” he said. “As technology grows, so do the training devices. We’re in the infancy. There is going to be the boom.”
Urgent needs
Back at TECom’s technology division, Bennington is working on delivering the boom to the total force.
After officials at I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Marine Corps Forces Pacific at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, saw the convoy trainer in action at Twentynine Palms, they jointly submitted a universal urgent needs statement to Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., for seven new six-vehicle convoy trainers with more technological upgrades, Bennington said.
Bennington wrote industry a 500-page request for proposal, full of “very specific requirements refined by the user community. Based on that, we believe we are going to get an unbelievable, top-of-the-line training system that will knock people’s socks off,” he said.
He said May 31 that the contract should be awarded “in the next couple weeks” and the simulators could begin arriving in the fleet by the end of this year, with a goal of fielding them all by the end of 2008.
That’s two trainers for Pendleton; two for Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and one each for Hawaii, Okinawa and Twentynine Palms, he said.
The next-generation simulator “will expose Marines to various threat situations such as [roadside bombs], direct and indirect fires, car bombs, roadblocks and urban operations that cannot be otherwise simulated,” he said. “It will place the entire convoy in a realistic environment and allows for repetition, review and critique while saving time, maintenance, ammo equipment, weapons and range facilities.”
Bennington is working on a way to swap out the Humvees for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements in the simulators earmarked for the fleet.
Those simulators will come with wireless weapons, allowing Marines a more realistic range of motion and “the capability of federation, meaning we can hook up suites,” he said.
Bennington said the plan is to go further than having the convoy simulator in Lejeune sharing a virtual battle space with the simulator in Pendleton. He wants to incorporate the Corps’ Deployable Virtual Training Environment, laptop computers with which Marines can log into a first-person shooter environment and practice their small-unit tactics in an equally accurate Iraq topography.
Ellie
Combat simulators grow more sophisticated
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : June 11, 2007
Imagine grunts in North Carolina, radiomen on Hawaii, combat engineers in California and truck drivers on Okinawa, Japan — all logged into the same real-time virtual battlefield.
Imagine spraying suppressive fire at insurgents on a flickering screen at Twentynine Palms to cover a squad of Marines advancing on a building full of electronic enemies from the amphibious assault ship Bataan in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Now, you’re thinking like me,” said Training and Education Command’s modeling and simulations analyst Terry Bennington, a retired sergeant major working to incorporate a new version of Marine Forces Reserve’s Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer into a Corps-wide battlefield simulation accessible to Marines in every clime and place simultaneously.
When the current convoy trainer visited the artillerymen of 2nd Battalion, 14th Marines, in Oklahoma City late last month, it came with hardware and software upgrades that officials at Training and Education Command’s technology division are hoping to offer active-duty Marines “as soon as we can,” Bennington said.
With its new upgrades, the convoy trainer went from 270 degrees of projection screens to a full 360 degrees. Software upgrades inject enemy combatants and give the mock-up Humvees the same cornering, steering and braking performance as the up-armored vehicles Marines will operate in Iraq, said Capt. Trevor Thibodeau, assistant Reserve liaison officer for Marine Corps Systems Command’s training systems branch in Orlando, Fla.
Realistic training
The trainer is loaded with software that allows it to reproduce a “topographically correct Iraq,” Thibodeau said. “You can drive through Baghdad, and that’s Baghdad. There are going to be buildings where a building is, and intersections where the intersections are.”
Once in the trainer, Marines are subject to the will of their unit’s training chief, who calls the shots when it comes to the scenarios they will encounter, such as receiving enemy fire or calling in airstrikes, Thibodeau said.
“He says, ‘These are the kind of drills we want to work on because there is a known deficiency in our unit.’ He’d say we want to work on [roadside bombs], and they’d do four to six hours of reaction drills,” Thibodeau said. “We’re giving them tools to practice on what they need to practice on.”
Marine Forces Reserve bought four trailers in 2005; placed two at Twentynine Palms, Calif.; and sent the others on a road trip across the country to train Marines preparing for war in places where Iraq-like conditions can’t be replicated naturally.
More than 12,000 Marines have trained in the four-vehicle simulator at Twentynine Palms’ Camp Wilson, said Maj. Walt Yates, the modeling and simulations officer there.
Though the combat center at Twentynine Palms has no shortage of desert or open space, “there was a ‘me too’ factor” when the brass there first saw the trainer in 2005, said Maj. Terry Thomas, the assistant training officer for modeling and simulations in the Reserve operations section. “We have been the lead dog because MarForRes found it. We own the trainer in Twentynine Palms, but we share it with the total force.”
Each of the trainer’s Humvees is separated by a wall; though Marines in one vehicle can see the other vehicles on the projection screens surrounding them, they must communicate over radios as they would in Iraq. But that’s only the start.
“Let’s make it more complicated. Put in civilians mixed with insurgents. Put in traffic, aircraft and animals, dead animals,” said Lt. Col. Julio Villalba, the Reserve liaison officer at SysCom’s Orlando training systems office. “When he’s driving down the road in Baghdad and he’s engaged by individuals, some of them are civilians, some of them are not. What are the rules of engagement? Then, it gets really complex.”
Villalba said “there are many different ways to incorporate ethical decision-making into the scenarios,” a topic stressed by Commandant Gen. James Conway in a white letter released to the Corps’ commanders and officers-in-charge late last month.
“When you’re talking about escalation of force, it’s ethical,” Villalba said. “Are you just going to open fire? It’s a judgment call.”
Thomas said the simulated scenarios can range from “light for beginners to very difficult for experienced Marines, and that’s a great capability.”
Villalba said the capability to “be in country and fight the insurgents virtually from a safe environment and to make mistakes” will become “the future of training for all forces” as technology continues to advance.
“We’re at the tip of the iceberg. We’re going to lean forward and get bigger and better things,” he said. “As technology grows, so do the training devices. We’re in the infancy. There is going to be the boom.”
Urgent needs
Back at TECom’s technology division, Bennington is working on delivering the boom to the total force.
After officials at I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Marine Corps Forces Pacific at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, saw the convoy trainer in action at Twentynine Palms, they jointly submitted a universal urgent needs statement to Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., for seven new six-vehicle convoy trainers with more technological upgrades, Bennington said.
Bennington wrote industry a 500-page request for proposal, full of “very specific requirements refined by the user community. Based on that, we believe we are going to get an unbelievable, top-of-the-line training system that will knock people’s socks off,” he said.
He said May 31 that the contract should be awarded “in the next couple weeks” and the simulators could begin arriving in the fleet by the end of this year, with a goal of fielding them all by the end of 2008.
That’s two trainers for Pendleton; two for Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and one each for Hawaii, Okinawa and Twentynine Palms, he said.
The next-generation simulator “will expose Marines to various threat situations such as [roadside bombs], direct and indirect fires, car bombs, roadblocks and urban operations that cannot be otherwise simulated,” he said. “It will place the entire convoy in a realistic environment and allows for repetition, review and critique while saving time, maintenance, ammo equipment, weapons and range facilities.”
Bennington is working on a way to swap out the Humvees for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements in the simulators earmarked for the fleet.
Those simulators will come with wireless weapons, allowing Marines a more realistic range of motion and “the capability of federation, meaning we can hook up suites,” he said.
Bennington said the plan is to go further than having the convoy simulator in Lejeune sharing a virtual battle space with the simulator in Pendleton. He wants to incorporate the Corps’ Deployable Virtual Training Environment, laptop computers with which Marines can log into a first-person shooter environment and practice their small-unit tactics in an equally accurate Iraq topography.
Ellie