Videos for Victory

November 10, 2006: The U.S. Marines and Army are both building more MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) facilities. The marines are expanding one training area to include 1,500 buildings, all within a 400 square kilometer area.

But the most important aspect of all this is the increased use of numerous video cameras, which record what everyone does during the street fighting exercises. Then, when the troops have their actions reviewed, errors can be clearly pointed.

Things done right can also be shown, but it's the mistakes you want to study and correct. There is also software that can take several different groups of troops, and their moves, and assemble them in a virtual model of the training areas, to show how several squads, or platoons, interacted.

This sort of virtual reconstruction of a combat is nothing new.

Fighter pilots have been getting this sort of thing since the 1980s, and they know it works. But now the technology has gotten capable enough, and cheap enough, for the ground troops to use it in the complex MOUT environment.

Ellie