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home > February 2008 issue > article
Marines try plug-and-play SIM
By Brian Robinson
Special to Defense Systems
The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab looks to simulation to help build warfighting skills
Simulation has been a major element in training for many in
the military, but it’s largely missing from training for Marine Corps
ground combat troops, something a new research program is looking
to fix.
The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) is trying to find
ways to provide realistic simulations to help troops in the short term,
with the long-term goal of defining a broad technology architecture
that would allow plug-and-play simulations using a range of systems.
Given the budget, training area restrictions and time factors now
pressuring the Marine Corps, they hope to start delivering interim
solutions within the next few months.
As an example of the effect such ground combat simulation might
have, program leaders at MCWL point to the training aviators
receive with cockpit flight simulations. A similar quality of ground
combat simulation has so far not been possible.
The technology hasn’t been up to the task, said Maj. James
McDonough, modeling and simulations analyst at the Marine Corps
Training and Education Command (Tecom) technology division.
“When you put a pilot into a combat trainer, you are controlling
the surroundings,” he said. “But that same capability can’t be provided
for the guy on the ground because he’s moving around and
doing a lot of other things.”
There’s also an intuitive pushback from Marines about using simulations
because their tasks tend be tactile and manipulative, said
Maj. Ray Pursel, modeling and simulations analyst in the
Experiment Division at MCWL.
“You touch things, move things and coordinate with other folks,”
he said. “The easier task for computer simulation would be the coordination
and the ability to move through scenarios multiple times.
That’s good management of resources and time, but still, the intuitive tasks of the infantryman are not yet touched by simulation.”
Pursel and McDonough are co-chairmen of the Infantry Skills
Simulation Working Group, which has the job of developing a formal
infantry simulation program. ISSWG, in turn, is a partnership
of MCWL, Tecom, the Office of Naval Research and the Program
Manager for Training
Systems.
The idea is to use simulation
for the more cognitive
tasks in an attempt
to gain better acceptance
from Marines for the idea
of simulation. A current
focus, for example, is on
the Deployable Virtual Training Environment).
DVTE, which is in the prototype stage, is intended to help sustain
personal skills using workstations linked in a simulation network
that can emulate a wide range of scenarios. It addresses a large subset
of Marine Corps combined-arms training.
MCWL is introducing DVTE to platoon commanders and squad
leaders as a practical application helping them more effectively
bridge the gap between classroom instruction and live training.
One example would be training for mortar call-for-fire situations.
In the classroom, there won’t be enough rounds for every Marine to
go through an actual call-for-fire, McDonough said. Simulation can
provide instruction in the basic skills and for mission training before
going to live-fire training.
Other simulators already deployed or in development include
the Marine Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer and its follow-on, the
Reconfigurable Vehicle Simulator, which train Marines in basic and
advanced combat convoy skills needed for various terrain and
weather conditions.
The use of simulation in predeployment training is one area that
the MCWL team is focusing on now, Pursel said. Because the training
cycle is so short for these forces, he pointed out, the choice is
between doing some things once or not at all and just concentrating
on the few things they consider most important.
The goal of the Simulation Enhanced Predeployment Training
and Rehearsal (SEPTR) program, for example, is to provide troops
waiting to be deployed with the repetitions they need in various scenarios
and give them at least some of the training they would otherwise
not have time for.
It will also be a development platform of sorts for simulation technologies
and techniques. The SEPTR team will evaluate several battalions’
training plans from now to fiscal 2010 and introduce various
technologies where appropriate, distribute the lessons learned and
best practices that result, and use the findings as input for future
research and development.
SEPTR was introduced with the 7th Marine battalion in October,
Pursel said, and the results will be evaluated during a training exercise
later this year.
The intent is to push
the technology as far as
possible into ground
combat training and produce
settings and situations
that are as realistic
as possible. But Pursel
and McDonough said it
can only go so far.
“The thing you can’t do in simulations, and probably won’t ever
be able to do, is provide the intensity that you get with live fire,”
McDonough said. “You can go through [tactics, techniques and procedures]
and recognition decision scenarios, but the real combat
experience is what you don’t have.”
So the goal now is to identify infantry tasks that can be taught
using simulation and that are in the best interests of the Marine
Corps, then put the resources together to make that happen, he said.
One longer-term target the MCWL team has in mind is to build a
simulation system-of-systems, a scalable infrastructure that will enable
a number of different systems to be integrated to meet whatever levels
of instruction and effect are required, wherever they are needed.
It’s not possible to build one large system that can meet all training
needs, McDonough said. “It’s not just one thing we want to get out,
it’s the architecture we can use to support the troops from the individual
all the way up the scale. That’s where we have to be smart.”
One scenario would be to have a single simulation running on a
number of networked laptop PCs with the ability for Marines to easily
plug in devices, such as laser weapons or live-fire weapons with
instrumentation on them, and have the visual output displayed
through a head-mounted display or projected onto a wall.
Pursel said the technologically difficult things could take five to
seven years to develop. But the intention is to release systems such
as the DVTE as they are ready.
“The operating forces don’t want to get the perfect solution in
2012, they want an 80 percent solution they can use this year or next
and build off that,” McDonough said. “So it’s our business to provide
the Marines with the best training capability we can now, while
making sure we develop the best capability we can to support them
in the future.”
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