Beyond DoD: non-defense training and education applications of DIS

2001

One certainty for the future of warfare is change. To be prepared for tomorrow's new challenges, Defence requires organisational flexibility and innovation. A Joint Synthetic Environment (JSE) may facilitate this capacity for change and innovation across Defence. A JSE would link existing and emerging synthetic environments such virtual air, land and maritime platforms; C4ISR, EW and IO simulations developed in DSTO, industry and by our allies through the use of interoperable standards and simulation services based on High Level Architecture (HLA). The extension of the Experimental Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Technology Environment (EXC3ITE) network to support the use of distributed simulation and military synthetic environments is examined from a corporate research perspective. Issues from operational, systems and technical perspectives are presented, addressing the use of emerging simulation middleware (eg HLA), in harmony with legacy simulation standards. Recommendations are made for progressing the development of simulation services, which will require a response from industry to develop as a National capability to underpin future military experimentation and innovation in Australia.

1994

The Army has set a goal of enhancing battlefield effectiveness by fielding a digital division by 1998 and has started a sequence of field exercises to investigate how new applications of digital technology will affect military operations. These transition activities are part of preparing the Army to fight third-wave warfare-information-age warfare. Distributed interactive simulation (DIS) is a key technology in

2002

The United States Air Force is positioned to take full advantage of Internet2 technologies and apply them to Command and Control (C2) research. This paper summarizes and updates progress on the Air Force's Distributed Mission Training Research Network (DMT-Rnet), an Internet2 based network for collaborative research and training via distributed PCbased systems. This network hosts complex environments for multi-operator simulation-based training and performance research.

International Journal of Aviation Sciences, 2016

Training warfighters requires the establishment, enhancement, and assessment of decision making (DM) skills at various levels. This review seeks to identify DM training technologies at the tactical and operational levels of war. Simulation based training (SBT) provides learning experiences for improved cognitive abilities and retention of complex skills. Here, seven SBTs will be evaluated for their situational awareness (SA) training abilities for decision making. Valuation of the included SBTs examine the modifiability (scenario customization), data availability (physiological and behavioral), assessment methods (feedback and after action reviews), validity (team training), and fidelity (2D or 3D environments) for tactical and operational warfighter training.

Present and anticipated NATO missions require highly trained and capable military personnel. It is important that policy, procedures, and technologies provide adequate means to prepare coalition forces for the full-spectrum of situations that they are likely to encounter. An important requirement is the need for units to deploy with little or no notice and for them to adapt effectively to evolving situations. This places military units in locations where they will not have the facilities and infrastructure they had at their home station limiting their ability to train for, and rehearse complex missions. The use of Embedded Virtual Simulation (EVS), within a broader Embedded Training (ET) capability, is seen as a potential tool to provide more effective deployed training. EVS is a concept that tightly integrates training and mission functionality into operational equipment. Recent advances in training concepts, agent technologies, computers, communication and display technologies off...

Present and anticipated military missions require highly trained and capable military personnel. Military personnel have to be well prepared to effectively and efficiently use state-of-the-art technology under highly complex battlefield conditions. A number of factors are influencing training policies, procedures and technologies. An important factor is the need for units to deploy. This places them in locations where they do not have the facilities and infrastructure needed to optimally plan and rehearse complex missions. Recent advances in computer and display technologies make embedding training and embedded virtual simulation in highly mobile military hardware both practical and effective. Embedded training is a well-known concept, which tightly integrates training functionality into operational equipment. It allows military personnel to train and rehearse while deployed to an operational area. Embedding training allows skills to be maintained and developed close to the battlefi...

In military training contexts, fast and long term decisions are intermixed where survival and security are prioritized. Simulation-based training, here applied to ground patrols in Afghanistan, can provide preparation for mission critical and life critical operations prior to exposure to real danger. Optimising the effectiveness of simulation-based training raises the need for more detailed representations of the competences required, both for simulation design and for evaluating simulation effectiveness. These needs are here considered in terms of three research questions . The first research question asks how objects trigger dialogue in observational tasks. Eye gaze tracking and recorded dialogue provide a foundation for proposing the cognitive operational structures behind how objects and dialogue are structured when people work together when collaborating in simulation-based training sessions. The objects are tracked along with related observational tasks and the communication b...

SIMULATION, 2004

Rapid advances in consumer electronics have led to the anomaly that consumer off-the-shelf gaming hardware and software provide better interactive graphics than military and other specialized systems costing orders of magnitude more. UTSAF (Unreal Tournament Semi-Automated Force) is bridging software written to take advantage of the power of gaming systems by allowing them to participate in distributed simulations with military simulators. UTSAF illustrates the use of multiagent technology to flexibly interconnect otherwise incompatible systems. This article describes an architectural approach for rapidly constructing middleware by taking advantage of built-in capabilities for processing, communication, and interoperation that a multiagent infrastructure provides. Several software agents based on Reusable Environment for Task-Structured Intelligent Networked Agents (RETSINAs) are used to support interoperability between military simulation nodes based on distributed interactive simulation and Unreal game simulators. Using a multiagent system, UTSAF can be expanded to support several network environments and interact with other agent-based software.

Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 1994

This paper presents a laboratory review of current research being undertaken at Sandia National Laboratories in the development of a distributed virtual reality simulation system for situational training applications. An overview of the project is presented, followed by a discussion of the various components, both hardware and software. Finally, a training application being developed utilizing the system is presented. a review of this research, including a discussion of the system components, the configuration, and an application-specific training environment being developed within the context of this larger work. Related work includes SIMNET (Pope, 1989) and NPSNET (Zyda, Pratt, Falby, Lombardo, & Kelleher, 1994), both of which are distributed, heterogeneous simulation systems for battlefield training, the latter with embedded hypermedia. To our knowledge, neither handles close quarters training with full-body rendering of human participants. I

2017

The U.S. Army Aviation Combined Arms Training Strategy highlights the use of Training Aids, Devices, Simulations, and Simulators (TADSS) as key, low cost tools to prepare Army aviation forces for future combat. A prominent component of this strategy is an increasing reliance on games-for-training. Game-based systems are capable of supporting training and assessment of mission procedures and situational judgement tasks. However, little research exists on the capabilities of the specific types of game-based systems for supporting Army aviation collective training. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of the Virtual Battlespace 3 and Microsoft Flight Simulator game-based training environments for a set of collective air assault mission tasks. Study participants consisted of previously qualified Army aviators recruited from various U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE) schoolhouses located at Fort Rucker, Alabama. An air assault mission scenario, consisting of a set ...

2000

Increasing digitization of the modern battlefield brings with it new demands on military command staffs for rapid, flexible decision making, execution of complex digital skills such as visualization and information management, and coordinated, communication-intensive teamwork. The Army's Battle-Command Reengineering III exercise (BCR III) simulated the demands of the future digital command environment by placing a command staff in the context of a soldier-in-the-loop simulation, with a suite of digital tools including email, shared whiteboard, and SA-enhancing common-operating views, to test concepts in future battle command. In this context, we developed an innovative approach to decision-skills training using short, focused vignettes that provided staff members with opportunities to utilize the same digital equipment to accomplish goals in each of several stages of the natural battle-preparation and execution cycle. To assess the degree to which the training approach was successful and to develop a picture of individual and team outcome/process, we developed a set of targeted performance measures. These measures fell into several categories ranging from measures of individual performance to measures of team-level perceptions of teammates' roles and workload. We employed a mix of observation, participant survey and objective measurement to provide measures of both team outcome and team processes.

2012

Governments and militaries have long recognized that armed forces must engage in training in order to develop and maintain the proficiency necessary to effectually carry out those legitimate duties with which they are entrusted by their nations. This is made particularly salient by the increasing demands placed on individual members of the Armed Forces because of reduced staffing and increased task complexity. Yet training comes at a significant financial cost: roughly one third of the total defense budget in fiscal year 2012 is devoted to training. Moreover, military operations directly impact the environments in which they are carried out, while also burning significant quantities of fossil fuels. Broad societal, government-wide, and Department of Defense commitments to improved environmental management together with fiscal austerity measures enacted in response to the financial crisis will increasingly bound the scope of training operations, potentially limiting their utility. Often the challenges these bounds bring are approached only as a zero-sum problem of balancing interests, as exemplified by the 2008 Supreme Court trial over sonar training by the U.S. Navy. However, scientific advances have improved the understanding of physical phenomena and, together with innovations in modeling techniques and advances in computational power, this has enabled simulation-based training to augment live-action training for many military applications. In this paper, sonar training serves as an example through which to illustrate in broad overview the scientific and technological advances that have enabled enhanced capabilities for simulation-based training. It also provides a framework through which to examine how these technologies should be best developed to address the unique demands imposed by environmental, fiscal, and security concerns. Beyond enhanced knowledge of the ocean environment, improved models of sound propagation and scattering within that environment, and new algorithms for real-time computation, effective simulation-based training also requires an understanding of how the learning process is mediated by the fidelity of the simulation. This, in turn, impacts the efficacy of simulation-based training and the cost of developing a training system. Such considerations are a necessary part of any system-engineering process if it is to ensure that a training technology satisfies the diverse demands imposed on it.

Social Sciences held a two-day symposium on DoD's use of training games. The 50 participants in attendance listened to presentations on the use of games for training purposes from the three military services, academia, and private sector representatives. Each presentation was followed by a discussion on the use of PCbased simulations and games for military training. Topics included the effective use of training games, their integration into courses, barriers to implementation, return on investment, and evaluating training effectiveness. A key finding highlighted in several presentations was that the few training games in use work best when closely monitored by instructors or subject matter experts and are integrated with existing courses and their specific objectives. Another recurring theme was that the more effective training games require developers, subject matter experts, instructors, and evaluators to work together through the entire development process. Participant feedback indicated that the symposium was very timely and filled a continuing need in a growing, rapidly changing community.

2015 Military Communications and Information Systems Conference (MilCIS), 2015

In the area of military simulations, a multitude of different approaches is available. "Close Combat Tactical Trainer", "Joint Tactical Combat Training System", "Battle Force Tactical Training" or "Warfighter's Simulation 2000" are just some examples within the history of the large DoD Development Program in Modelling and Simulation, representing just a small piece of the variety of diverse solutions. Very often, individual simulators are very unique and so it is often difficult to classify military simulations even for experienced users. This circumstance is further boosted due to the fact that in the field of military simulations-unlike in other areas-no general classification for military simulations exists. To address this shortcoming, this publication is dedicated to the idea of providing a first contribution to the development of a commonly accepted taxonomy in the area of military simulations. To this end, the problem field is structured into three main categories (general functional requirements for simulators, special military requirements for simulators and non-functional requirements for simulators). Based upon that, individual categories are provided with appropriate classes. For a better understanding, the taxonomy is also applied to a concrete example (NetLogo Rebellion).

2007

: Over the past several years, the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have been involved in research to develop training and assessment methods for use in mission training via distributed simulation. As part of these efforts, we developed competency-based training and rehearsal scenarios and data collection instrumentation for routinely delivering and assessing distributed training events. The most recent collaborative study, named "Red Skies" involved extending our work to include field assessments of the training benefits derived from involvement in a simulation-based distributed mission training event and subsequent live flying at a Coalition Red Flag exercise event at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada in the US. This event was the largest Red Flag event ever hosted, and presented a number challenges for the study and for data collection. This paper presented the methods and results from the distributed simula...