Real Warriors Trained In Virtual Worlds

The Washington Post has a piece looking at the U.S. military's increased reliance on gaming for training the next generation of soldiers. From the article: "'The technology in games has facilitated a revolution in the art of warfare,' says David Bartlett, the former chief of operations at the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, a high-level office within the Defense Department and the focal point for computer-generated training at the Pentagon. 'When the time came for [a solider in training] to fire his weapon, he was ready to do that. And capable of doing that. His experience leading up to that time, through on-the-ground training and playing 'Halo' and whatever else, enabled him to execute. His situation awareness was up. He knew what he had to do. He had done it before -- or something like it up to that point.'"

Hesitation

[BWJones]

When I did small arms training, one of the hardest things to do (for the Corps at least) was to get people to pull the trigger at the moment of truth. There is a built in hesitation that people have to shooting others. So, training typically starts off with standard targets and then progresses to targets of humans in silhouette, then for close quarters battle training, targets become more realistic looking.

Using CG generated images helps significantly by enhancing the realism and lowering the threshold of resistance to "trigger pull".

What computers cannot teach however, is the NOISE and physical presence of a firefight.

Americas army...

[mayhemt]

I love americas army http://www.americasarmy.com/ [americasarmy.com] ..
very role based, strategic shooting game...& above all its free ;-)
$$ profit

Re:Hesitation

[BWJones]

A 5.1 Surround System with a subwoofer set on high should fix that problem.

Trust me..... No Surround system I have EVER seen will simulate the experience of standing next to/behind/infront of/below a M60 when that sucker goes off. You feel it as much as you hear and see it. The German contingent that trained with us also had an equivalent H&K that is unbelievably loud and fearsome. Even more so than the SAW. Even the combined fire of a squad with small 5.56mm based platforms (M4 and M249) can make for some pretty impressive sound sight and smell. Nothing I have ever seen can simulate that.

Re:Americas army...

[chill]

They upgraded to 2.6 last week and most of them switched overnight. There are tons, if you run the Windows version. Linux & Mac users will have to wait another week or so for the update. They ARE there...tons of them.

[chill]

Experience with combat simulations

[Hunter-Killer]

My unit went through a computerized simulation before our deployment to Iraq in 2003.

Disclaimer: I'm active-duty Army (only for a few more days, hallelujah), but I'm not infantry or a "combat arms" MOS. I'm Signal, and have likely spent more time debating OSPF vs EIGRP than being on patrol. MOS25F/Node Center FTW.

As I said earlier, this was back in 2003, so I'm sure the tech has improved a bit since I went through.

Typical exercise involves 6-8 guys in a darkened room. The simulation is projected at one end of the room, and we are arrayed directly across from it. We are provided with M16s, and one person each gets an AT4 anti-tank rocket and M16/M203 grenade launcher. I don't recall if blanks were used with the M16, or if firing sounds were simulated.

Simulation starts with a nostalgic orange/white 3dfx splash screen. They wouldn't let me near the console PC, so I'll never know if it ran on a Voodoo5 6000. :)

Everyone is in either a crouched or prone position, and we are greeted with picturesque dunes. A Soviet-style armored vehicle rolls across the screen, slowly meandering towards our posision. Nobody does anything. Bah, everybody's frozen up, I thought. I take the initiative, and start unloading my M16's magazine into it. Sure enough, everyone else does the same a few seconds later.

Fun fact: 5.56 mm rounds have no effect on armored APCs. After being enlightened of this by the instructor, the simulation is run again. This time we get infantry swarming at us from over and between the dunes. We engage, and shoot at squad based groups for a few minutes. A running tally is maintained, and we are told our scores at the end. As expected, we were all wildly inaccurate (I blame sensor calibration), with the exception of the M203 guy, who managed to rack up a sizable percentage of kills. Who needs accuracy when you have grenades?

Since then, training has been heavily modified to focus more on "modern" threats, but I don't think I should go into particulars. ;)

On Killing

[Daengbo]

What you say about getting soldiers past the point of firing (or firing AT something) is true, and the DoD has known about it since WWII, and changed training methods specifically to get past the 90% rate of ineffective fire they saw there. Bullseyes were replaced with more man-like targets and many more sophisticated changes were made. The resulting shift in effective fire to near the 90% level is credited by the professor of psychology at Westpoint as the reason for the increase in post-traumatic stress disorder after Vietnam.

Anyone really interested in this subject should read On Killing [amazon.com], because it covers the subject very well and even talks about the role of FPSs in the "training" of civilians. You may not agree with its contents, but it may change the way you think about modern warfare.