Tom Edwards, Deputy to the Commanding General of CASCOM, wears a head-mounted display and uses a virtual pallet and wand to interact in a virtual 3D environment.
Virtual Training for CSS Soldiers
by Pete Thibodeau
Using simulated forces during training exercises not only saves millions of dollars annually but also averts the sociological, economic, and ecological damage inherent in live exercises.
The Army Combined Arms Support Command's (CASCOM's) Training Directorate, the National Simulation Center's (NSC's) Logistics Exercise and Simulation Directorate, and the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Analysis Center Fort Lee (TRAC-Lee), all at Fort Lee, Virginia, have teamed up to study the use of interactive and immersive technologies to train combat service support (CSS) soldiers.
To explore the possibility of building and operating a virtual training environment at Fort Lee, the CASCOM/NSC/TRAC-Lee team visited the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Department of Computer Sciences' Center for Virtual Environments and Visualization at Blacksburg, Virginia. One of the highlights of the visit was a demonstration of the Virginia Tech Computer Automatic Virtual Environment (VTCAVE) and several virtual environment applications.
The VTCAVE is a three-sided facility that provides a virtual or synthetic environment for displaying three-dimensional (3D) images, including peripheral images. Users wear sensor devices and special glasses that allow them to be "immersed" in a 3D, real-time, synthetic environment that is produced by one or more computers. Input to the system can be accomplished with body movement tracking, verbal commands, or the use of "wands" or "data gloves." Instantly, the participant's senses (mainly vision and hearing, and occasionally touch) are stimulated, causing him to feel as if he is actually immersed in an interactive synthetic environment.
Virtual Versus Live
Training in a virtual environment is effective, realistic, and efficient and offers considerable advantages over live training. Among them are greatly reduced training costs; more control over simulated training situations; and greater soldier safety, which is achieved by correcting mistakes in a virtual environment that, in real life, could result in disaster. Soldiers can gain valuable firsthand experience in a virtual environment without being placed in harm's way. It is because of these advantages that the Army will vigorously pursue training in virtual environments.
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Tom Edwards, Deputy to the Commanding General of CASCOM, wears a head-mounted display and uses a virtual pallet and wand to interact in a virtual 3D environment. |
The advantages of simulation can be seen by comparing the Return of Forces to Germany (REFORGER) exercises of the 1980s with those of the 1990s. These exercises were the principal training events for battalion, brigade, and corps commanders and staffs. In the 1980s, a REFORGER exercise was a massive effort that required deploying an all-live force of thousands of soldiers and vehicles. Accidents, damage to personal property, and social and environmental disturbances were the norm. The exercise cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually—a fact that led officials to look for a better way to train CSS soldiers.
In the REFORGER exercises conducted in the 1990s, most lower level forces were replaced by simulated units through the use of the Corps Battle Simulation. The switch to simulated forces instead of live forces not only saved millions of dollars annually, but also ended the sociological, economic, and ecological damage wreaked on the German countryside every year.
CSS Simulations CenterTo ensure that the CSS community remains on the leading edge of technological advances for training soldiers, the CASCOM/NSC/TRAC-Lee team has proposed the construction of a CSS Simulations Center at Fort Lee. If approved, the facility will provide the CSS training community with a state-of-the-art virtual environment and simulation capability.
In such an environment, senior officers can immerse themselves in a virtual "rock drill" that will permit them to plan and execute operations and immediately see the results of their efforts in a CAVE environment. A virtual environment also will allow them to play out exercises used in the Joint Deployment Logistics Model or in leadership vignettes provided by the CASCOM Training Directorate's Multifunctional Training Division. More complex virtual environment situations may incorporate various ground or aerial terrain scenarios; ordnance, transportation, quartermaster, or medical assets; and battlespace or urban interactions.
A CSS Simulations Center will provide a virtual environment for CASCOM's Sustainment Portal (see article on page 32). This initiative will provide CSS soldiers with training on critical CSS tasks relating to—
• Mobilization; deployment; reception, staging, onward movement, and integration; and sustainment operations.
• Intransit visibility and distribution management.
• Management of the infrastructure and assets associated with strategic, operational, and tactical movements and maneuvers.
• Unit-through-depot maintenance operations.
• Medical operations from point of injury through definitive care.
• Medical supply operations.
• Personnel replacement operations and strength management.
• Materiel management and distribution operations, from the tactical level through the industrial base.
• Nuclear, biological, and chemical operations.
• Local, national, and international civilian/military operations.
Through the continued exploration and exploitation of virtual training environments, the CASCOM/NSC/ TRAC-Lee team, with help from industry and academia, will strive to provide the CSS community with a one-stop shop for command and control systems modeling and simulation opportunities and communication links to a distributed, interactive, simulation, experimentation, and training environment. ALOG
Pete Thibodeau is a supervisory instructional systems specialist (applied technology) assigned as the Chief of the Future Technologies Branch in the Training Directorate of the Army Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, Virginia. He has a bachelor's degree in social psychology/instructional technology from Park University in Missouri and a master's degree in human resource development and administration from Central Michigan University. He is a graduate of the Army Management Staff College and holds a chief information officer certificate from the National Defense University.