Urban Solutions

Written by Marty Kauchak

innovations Emerge to Bolster MOUT Training Readiness.
by Marty Kauchak, MT2 Editor

The U.S. DoD is responding to the lessons learned from urban warfare missions in Iraq and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, by integrating a blend of technologies into its military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) programs. While industry’s solutions have increased the fidelity and rigor of the urban warfare training experience, a number of evolving products and concepts have the potential to further improve the services’ training readiness.

ONE SERVICE’S SHORT-LIST

Two of the many urban combat lessons learned from missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have appeared on the short list of Humberto Ravelo, deputy product manager, digitized training, PEO STRI. “From a mobile MOUT tactical perspective, Coalition Forces Land Component Command is still dealing with improvised explosive devices, but the sniper activity has increased. Making our MOUT facilities [fixed and mobile] more suitable to counter sniper training is a priority,” Ravelo told MT2. He added, “The Marines have many of the buildings we are installing at Camp Pendleton that include rooftop hatches with faux water tanks and chimneys. This allows for sniper access regarding ingress and egress as well as cover and concealment even from aviation assets.”

From the combined arms collective training facility perspective, indoor tracking is also a technology shortfall. “This is currently being addressed by another PM TRADE product office, which we expect to leverage on MOUT,” pointed out Ravelo.

Industry is providing an increasing number of solutions that address MOUT training readiness concerns at PEO STRI and other services’ commands.

ONE MOUT TRAINING FOUNDATION

Saab’s Training Systems’ Deployable Instrumented Training System (DITS) has been used by the U.S. Army in Europe for deployment training since 1999. The company’s DITS program customers include the Army, U.S. Marine Corps and Navy units in the U.S. and Europe, and five armies around world. DITS is also the ground instrumentation system for the Deployable Instrumented System Europe (DISE) used at Joint Multinational Training Command, Germany. DISE supports NATO and the U.S. European Command’s Theater Security Cooperation program with numerous European partners.

DITS was tailored for MOUT missions beginning in 2002 with the urban warfare instrumentation upgrade. This capability has evolved with technology enhancements that allow operators to train as they will operate in complex urban venues. The culmination of these upgrades is the Urban DITS variant that has been put through its paces by the Marines. This system supports live training exercises that move seamlessly from open terrain fighting to urban environment combat, where ground warriors are tracked as they move in and out of structures with a realistic simulation of direct and indirect fire effects. Saab Training's indoor tracking competency should be of interest to PEO STRI.

Keith Kernek, vice president, training solutions, Saab Training USA told MT2 that DITS is scalable, with resolution to a zone within a room with the same 2-to-3 meter (3.28-to-9.84 feet) location accuracy indoors that the system uses outdoors utilizing the global positioning system. “The structure information device (SID) provides varying structure material simulation to allow the observer controllers to rapidly change the type of building material used to alter the vulnerability of the soldiers behind the walls. The room association device (RAD) mounted in each room, hall or entry way communicates with each player unit using wireless technology to update his location within the building,” added Kernek. A typical instrumentation of a building would consist of one SID and 20-to-40 RADs. The small size of the battery operated devices allows a team of two men to instrument a building in one hour with no additional power requirements.

To counter the asymmetric warfare option of taking the urban warfare fight below street level, Saab Training also instruments MOUT site tunnels and subsurface structures using RAD and SIDs. DITS’s urban warfare enhancements also include the Structure Effect Simulator that provides primary and secondary shoot-through-thewall effects and visual and audio target affects cues to the players. Internal weapon hits within a structure are simulated by audio and smoke units and visual simulation.

WHAT’S NEW

Four emerging programs that caught our attention have the potential to further increase the fidelity of MOUT training.

One of the more intriguing technologies is offered by VRSonic, which is making significant progress in advancing the design of virtual auditory environments for MOUT close quarter battle (CQB) situations. “Historically, there have been a number of technological challenges as well as practical problems faced by system developers when attempting to integrate realistic battlefield audio conditions in modern training simulators,” Hesham Fouad, Ph.D., CEO, VRSonic, told MT2. The first and most important problem is the lack of content. While a number of tools exist for designing synthetic visual environments, no such tools existed for designing virtual auditory environments. “VRSonic developed a COTS product called VibeStudio Designer that enables laypersons to develop highly dynamic and realistic synthetic audio environments. VibeStudio Designer is a suite of tools that designers can use to design, audition and save auditory scene descriptions in an open XML [eXtensible Markup Language] format,” he explained. Those scenes can be rendered using either headphones or loudspeaker arrays within training simulators.

VRSonic is addressing a related second challenge: MOUT trainers come in a variety of system configurations and any training audio system must be highly configurable in order to accommodate a variety of such systems. VRSonic developed the SoundSim Rack and SoundSim Micro audio rendering systems in order to render VibeStudio scenes in practically any situation. “VRSonic has used the SoundSim platform to develop systems ranging from a headphone based, immersive, multi-person MOUT CQB fire team trainer with spatialized communication between users to speaker arrays used in the AAV Turret Trainer currently being used to train troops on their way to Iraq,” pointed out Fouad. The company has also “been able to drive costs down so that highly realistic audio is possible with nearly any budget,” he said.

VRSonic is now working with Design Interactive on an Office of Naval Research- funded effort to integrate affective (emotional) training into MOUT training systems. “The intent of this research effort is to ensure that trainees are emotionally engaged in the training by automatically sensing a trainee’s emotional state and using auditory, visual and haptic sensory feedback to induce the proper affective state into the trainee. This aspect has been missing in modern training systems and promises to dramatically increase the training effectiveness of those systems,” concluded Fouad.

A second technology that would add another dimension to MOUT training is Quantum3D’s ExpeditionDI. “In essence, ExpeditionDI is a virtual MOUT facility,” remarked John Carswell, product manager, Expedition DI. Expedition DI is a COTS man-wearable, immersive mission-rehearsal platform for dismounted infantry. The product has been delivered to the Army’s 25th Infantry Division’s homepost training facility and the Fort Benning Soldier Battle Lab, and is being delivered to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.

Within the virtual world in which an ExpeditionDI soldier is immersed, Quantum3D can present a virtual MOUT situation that could be the Green Zone in Baghdad, a DoD MOUT facility, a fictional venue or any other location that can be modeled. “We even have a McKenna MOUT village [Fort Benning] high resolution database that looks exactly like you were there. You can train in a number of different MOUT scenarios, in a number of locations without being at where the MOUT facility is,” emphasized Carswell.

While ExpeditionDI is well-suited for squad-level exercises, Quantum3D can also support up to platoonlevel scenarios.

A number of ExpeditionDI upgrades are in progress or planned for completion into this fall: improving the ergonomics and other attributes of the simulated weapons; adding instrumentation features to the weapons; and upgrading the helmet mounted device and its Thermite Tactical Visual Computer (man-wearable computer).

Another virtual MOUT training enabler is Presagis’s Aeria product portfolio which was introduced to the community earlier this summer at 2008 ITEC. Aeria includes Terra Vista, STAGE Scenario, AI.implant, Creator, Vega Prime and Lyra COTS tools. “Using advanced 3-D modeling and terrain generation software, combined with computer generated forces and high quality 3-D visualization software, simulation developers can create detailed geo-specific urban areas quickly,” Robert Kopersiewich, vice president, Product and Program Management, Presagis, told MT2. The Aeria product portfolio also uses the common database enabling developers to modify and update databases quickly and easily removing the costs associated with replicating data.

“Several customers use COTS tools from Presagis to support virtual testing. In addition to Lockheed Martin and Raydon, KMW and the Institute of Creative Technologies also employ Presagis technology for training purposes,” said Kopersiewich.

Advanced Training Systems (ATS) offers its MT Series Mobile Tactical Training System as another new program. The new product is a low-cost, high-performance, wireless controlled robotic platform on which can be mounted a variety of target configurations. Multi-mission platform mounts provide the versatility to carry targets, remote cameras, portable lighting, or trigger devices. A training audience can add the optional electronic hit reactive target functionality for enhanced training.