A 15-Year "Quicklook"
Written by Marty Kauchak
MT2 2010 Volume: 15 Issue: 4 (July)
As MT2’s 15th anniversary issue is published, community
proponents and insiders refl ect on the technologies and
innovations which emerged during their involvement.
Happy 15th anniversary, MT2! Since fall 1996, we have told our readers how U.S. servicemen and women have used technology to learn and enhance their individual and unit skills. We’ve asked several long-time industry supporters and practitioners to place into perspective some of the more significant developments from this era.
In the Beginning
David Warner, vice president Unmanned and ISR Training Systems at AAI, recalled some of the state-of-the-art learning practices from 1996. “Fifteen years ago, the Internet was still in its infancy. Knowledge was gained through books, magazines and similar resources. Identifying and digesting the needed information on a particular topic could be time consuming; as a result, this part of training was measured in weeks. [These] skills can now be assessed in a manner of minutes or hours. Distance learning enables us to continually test and assess skills and receive instantaneous feedback.”
Rear Admiral (retired) Fred Lewis, president, National Training and Simulation Association, recently talked with us about developments and trends within the modeling and simulation industry and community of interest within the past 15 years, and said, “They have been dramatic.” In a broad sense the shift of focus from training on individual platforms and systems to networked systems across diverse training environments “has enabled not only individual units, but also the participation of multiple entities. This can be taken as far as campaign scenarios, mission rehearsals for individual missions as well as a host of interconnected missions that build into an entire campaign,” said Lewis. Other developments have complemented distributed, networked training. Warner pointed out, “The advent of intelligent games, along with the ability to acquire information instantaneously, have led to an increase in the speed at which we process information and in our ability to multitask. These factors have shortened the training cycle. As such, training technologies have evolved from large, hardware-intensive devices based on specialized computers and software to desktop computer devices that utilize commercially available software.”
The role of software in training technology was also on the mind of Senator John McCain, ranking member, Senate Armed Services Committee. McCain, the cover VIP for the inaugural issue of MT2, noted, “Over the past 15 years, the area of military aviation and naval ship programs, the most interesting innovations in training technology, has advanced signifi cantly in terms of software development, design and applications. Our military is best in the world, and when it trains like it fi ghts we see success. The opportunity to establish a virtual scenario that looks like the actual streets in Baghdad or the villages of Helmand Province using the latest geobase technologies to facilitate joint exercises and mission rehearsals is critical to the effective employment of combined arms and ultimate mission success.”
Garth Smith, president of MetaVR, placed these technology advancements in another perspective—of being used, and perhaps driven by the demands of a more demanding and technology profi cient learning audience. “Probably the most important evolutionary advancement in mission rehearsal [and training] in the last 15 years is that you now have a generation of military personnel who grew up with the expectation of high-fi delity visual realism,” said Smith. “They are unwilling to believe the previous excuses for why military simulations of training and mission rehearsals could not be of a similar quality to modern PC and console games. We note that 15 years ago there were no commercial graphics cards on personal computers that had suffi - cient performance to generate real-time 3-D graphics for mission rehearsal. Therefore, most all of this type of visualization was done on high-end and expensive hardware.” Smith recalled when the Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstation was the assumed platform for mission rehearsal, but the hardware prices and associated software created high barriers to entry. He noted that today you can purchase Netbook computers that have signifi cant hardware-accelerated 3-D performance for mission rehearsal. “SGI ultimately fi led for Chapter 11 and had to reinvent its business. As well, 3-D accelerators for cell phones are coming online, which make situational awareness with GPS viable—albeit at the low end of visual quality and performance for now—but they will move up market rapidly, as is typical of a disruptive technology,” he said.
From MetaVR’s perspective, “The enabling technologies for mission rehearsal now are: the ability to reach potential customers via the Internet, ready access to high-resolution imagery and elevation data from commercial sources, commercial 3-D PC hardware accelerated graphics cards, Moore’s Law, the advent of the commercial GIS markets and the tools that are used to support it (primarily from ESRI), and a large pool of GIS and 3-D artists as a byproduct of both the GIS and game industries.”
Agility and other Innovations
Another element—the response to dramatically changing threat environments over the last 15 years—has been an industry hallmark. “The focus changes because the theater of operations changes, the terrain changes, the missions change—all because the threat is constantly changing and evolving,” said Lewis.
Its agility in shifting emphasis has allowed the training industry to be responsive to the department’s rapidly evolving requirements. Lewis cited the industry’s rapid delivery of convoy training systems in the early phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a premier example of agility. “Two companies, Lockheed Martin and Raydon, responded to the call. They fi elded a system in six months and deployed it to Kuwait to allow newly arriving troops in that theater to train for the challenges they would face when they drove their vehicles north into the theater of operations.” Another example of the industry’s rapid response to urgent needs was the HMMWV egress trainer, evolved as a result of the IED and other enemy threats, said Lewis.
Lewis pointed out that one of the more interesting areas of training and scenario support is the development of role players and cultural elements to train for operations in unfamiliar environments. “This involves indigenous, foreign language role players—Afghanis, Iraqis and others. This is not technology per se, but it’s a fascinating development and an example of what entrepreneurs in the training and simulation business can do.”
Changing Business Models
One constant over the past 15 years has been the industry’s development and production of systems, the fielding of the systems and the need to make a profit to enable future initiatives. This imperative has recently encouraged a trend to develop teaming arrangements in pursuit of contract awards. “We have seen the government acquisition system lead us to some changes and some teaming that is relatively new—STOC I, II for instance. These different contract vehicles that the government and the different services have used resulted in a lumping of a several different companies together, but also a fundamental limitation in the number of companies that can participate in a given contract. This makes it easier for the government to bring systems on line and get the contract into the execution phase,” said Lewis.
Another development that has affected the way companies operate is the department’s effort to make contracts available to small businesses. This commitment has nurtured the entrepreneurial spirit in niche centers of excellence in the industry and has enabled many innovative concepts and ideas to become reality. However, Lewis noted, “Once small businesses become successful, they are suddenly no longer small business. And once they are no longer small they had better be really good, because they are not going to get the set-aside they enjoyed and are now competing directly against larger companies and corporations, which don’t necessarily want to team with them because they were competitors earlier. It can be a very diffi cult position to fi nd yourself in.”
AAI’s Warner provided one industry example of the changing business environment, noting that his company has kept pace with its training offerings, transitioning away from large, hardware-intensive training environments. “Instead, we have made a signifi cant shift in the application of our internal research and development funds to develop training systems around the desktop virtual environment.”
Warner also pointed out that AAI has remained abreast of the latest technologies and offers them as cost-effective solutions to customer training needs. He continued, “We frequently partner with experts in the technologies we are offering to give our customers the biggest return on their investment. One example of this is our F-35 avionics maintenance trainer, which provides a networked, 3-D virtual environment to train maintainers without the use of aircraft or aircraft hardware. The training device also can use virtual and/or real aircraft support equipment as appropriate.”
The Road Ahead
As long as DoD intends to wring near-term savings from overhead expenses and other budget sources, “the M&S and training business will remain healthy,” predicted Lewis. The cost effectiveness of simulated versus live training is dramatic and indisputable, and simulations have evolved to the extent that they blur the distinction with reality. These attributes make modeling and simulation an increasingly important component of DoD planning, particularly in an era of budget constraints, he said.
The industry is also diversifying rapidly into new areas. One key such area is the medical community’s burgeoning interest in simulations and other learning technologies. “This is an area that’s growing very quickly. The Society for Simulation in Healthcare, for example, was organized two or three years ago with just two or three people. Now it has about 2,500 members and its own events. The growth continues on a rapid upward path. We’re seeing medical simulation centers standing up at different medical schools and teaching hospitals around the nation. There is rapidly expanding interest in the potential of medical simulation training,” said Lewis.
Indeed, at the 2009 I/ITSEC approximately 80 companies focused on medical training and simulation either exclusively or in part at their booths. At the 2010 conference, a portion of the exhibition fl oor will be devoted to a medical and simulation technology pavilion.
Future industry stability, vitality and growth is also linked to NTSA’s effort to establish M&S and training as a national enterprise. As this issue of MT2 was being published, the association was hosting a stakeholders meeting to develop a campaign plan to create such a national enterprise. “The participants will represent all the domains that we can contact, and that might have an interest in modeling and simulation. These are key people whom we will invite for a half-day planning meeting,” stated Lewis.
“We envision a collaborative effort to create a federated alliance among the nation’s disparate M&S organizations. We will be able to deconfl ict issues, assist one another, jointly promote events and the technology itself from a business perspective.” ♦