Beyond a Large Box

VIRTUAL TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTS EVOLUTION OF SMALL ARMS TRAINERS.

Virtual technology enables service men and women to more effectively train to use small arms.

While laser marksmanship systems help service members complete basic live-fire qualifications and other entry-level skills, small arms trainers allow the training audience to complete tactical and collective (unit) training and sharpen other advanced skill sets.

Hardware and software developments have also encouraged the services to use small arms trainers as subsystems in convoy trainers and helicopter gunner trainers developed in response to lessons learned from Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF).

Ongoing research and development supports the services’ vision for providing a small-arms training capability in embedded training systems which will prepare troops for mounted and dismounted operations, and combined arms training missions.

FUNDAMENTALS

One representative laser-based system, the Laser Marksmanship Training System (LMTS), provides fundamentals of rifle marksmanship while firing a laser attached to the end of a rifle at a reflective, zero target.

The system allows a soldier to see where the laser ‘rounds’ impact on a properly scaled target, demonstrating proper application of all the marksmanship fundamentals and an improvement over the current methodology, said Robert Raisler, deputy product manager, Ground Combat Tactical Trainers, Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training & Instrumentation (PEO STRI).

“Currently, during preliminary marksmanship instruction, a soldier places a dime on the end of the rifle barrel. When the soldier squeezes the trigger, if the dime stays on, it indicates that a steady position, proper trigger control, and breathing control are maintained. The LMTS system expedites and improves live-fire qualification and is an improvement in the ‘old way’ of conducting Basic Rifle Marksmanship,” added Raisler.

A computer scoring device is used during the grouping and zeroing exercise which displays a soldier’s shot placement and grouping, allowing an instructor to determine if the soldier is properly implementing the fundamentals of marksmanship.

The Army’s PEO STRI has fielded over 211 LMTSs to active component units. The U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard have also procured LMTS systems.

LMTS is manufactured by MPRI, an L-3 Communications company.

HIGHER ORDER TRAINING

Three companies’ small arms trainers used by the department are highlighted below.

Firearms Training Systems (FATS) has fielded over 5,500 systems to services in 52 nations. More than 300 weapons types—a mix of international small arms—are integrated into its systems.

The most popular FATS system is the venerable Small Arms Trainer which supports individual marksmanship skills training, and team and squad-level tactical training.

Technology breakthroughs fielded by the Suwanee, GA-based company, include FATS Bluefire Wireless Weapon Simulators. This option uses commercial wireless technology to communicate with the training system in the same manner as FATS Systems Controlled Weapons. Bluefire technology weapons products meet its customers’ increasing demand to “cut the cord” between the weapon and the system infrastructure, and train with an untethered weapon.

“Bluefire does support the freedom of movement desired by many of our customers,” said Bill Bunnell, Corporate Product Manager, FATS.

“Bluefire is a relatively new weapons technology. Over time we will likely convert all of our weapons to Bluefire or (next generation) technology. Until then we will manufacture both System Controlled (tethered) and Bluefire weapons to meet the needs of our users,” noted Bunnell.

Cubic Corporation acquired ECC International, Inc. in late 2003 and, with that acquisition, the crown jewel in the ECC portfolio—Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000. The new business entity was titled Cubic Simulation Systems Division.

About 600 ESTs are in service with U.S. military and civilian organizations and international military organizations.

Cubic’s EST supports training scenarios through three basic modes of operation: marksmanship, collective, and an increasingly important requirement for missions other than full conflict—shoot-don’t-shoot (SDS).

EST’s capabilities were recently bolstered through the Warrior Skills Training (WST) enhancement. This optional fourth EST mode supports trainees in a vehicle or while dismounted.

The WST’s field-of-view has been expanded to 180 degrees and “provides the ability to interoperate with the Distributed Interactive Simulation-compatible systems, including semi-automated force generators, other training systems, such as Close Combat Tactical Trainer, and various developed databases. In this mode the system is capable of using geo-specific terrains for scenario development,” added Patrick Morello, director, Engagement Skills Training Systems, Cubic Simulation Systems Division.

EST 2000 systems are deployable and support U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Korea and Italy.

Fifteen U.S. and international weapons may be used in the trainer.

Advanced Interactive Systems (AIS) has delivered more than 25 of its PRISim units to the U.S. Navy and Army, and an unspecified number of units to customers in the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

PRISim provides high-fidelity, video judgmental training environments for all aspects of firearms handling. Training audiences are immersed in the system’s digital environment through a variety of trainers, some of which are laser-based portable systems, self-contained mobile trainers, fixed classroom facilities, and live-fire versions embedded in modular, transportable livefire ranges.

“The PRISim system comes with software that allows for the use of high-quality video-based scenarios for tactical judgmental training and for the use of computergenerated imagery with digital videos for marksmanship training,” said Rick Leavitt, Director of Military Programs, AIS.

The system’s scenario menu is enhanced through multiple authoring capabilities, from standalone authoring stations to embedded authoring.

PRISim uses all of the standard weapons in use by the U.S. military and may include less-than-lethal weapons, including Taser, Pepperball, incapacitating sprays, and beanbag shotguns. The company offers tethered or untethered weapons with delivered systems.

Industry integrators are including some of stand-alone small arms systems in their larger products.

SYSTEM ENHANCERS

Industry quickly developed virtual convoy training systems in response to lessons learned in OEF and OIF. While the devices’ primary requirement is developing and then sharpening tactics to avoid and minimize improvised explosive devices attacks, small arms training systems allow servicemembers to better train as they operate.

Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training and Support’s Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer (VCCT) replicates scenarios which troops encountered during in-theater convoy missions. The company is also building for PEO-STRI a prototype of the Close Combat Tactical Training-Reconfigurable Vehicle Simulator (CCTT-RVS—better known in the community as RVS). This device will provide a similar, but different, type of training.

Lockheed Martin reported that the number of fielded VCCT suites (each suite has four simulators) includes: four with Army and one and one-half with the Marine Corps Reserve. The Air Force has one simulator on order.

FATS provides the VCCT with M-16, M-4, M2 and M240G weapons, and the embryonic RVS with M2, M240, M249, M16A2, M4, M9, MK19 and AT4 weapons.

“The VCCT and RVS provide a unique small arms training environment,” said Chuck Woodman, Lockheed Martin program director for VCCT and RVS.

“The training offered by this system covers handling a weapon while on a moving vehicle such as a High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle or Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. The trainees are provided with a safe and costeffective environment in which to participate in a convoy mission and use the tactics they have been taught to use when they encounter a small arms, rocket-propelled grenade, or improvised explosives device attack or other hostilities,” opined Woodman.

A competing program is Raydon’s Virtual Convoy Operations Trainer. The system is in service at over 20 Army and National Guard sites.

Threats to OIF and OEF helicopter crews have also generated interest in shoring up air-to-ground training for the rotary-wing crews.

Binghamton Simulator Company (BSC) delivered an Aerial Gunner Scanner Simulator (AGSS) to the Air Force Special Operations community in 1996. The firm is on the cusp of expanding its business, as it expects to deliver a Prototype Aircrew Virtual Environment Trainer to the Navy for the MH-60 R/S variants later this year, and an Aircrew Virtual Environment Trainer for the MH-60F model in early 2008.

“The AGSS II product line was designed to provide a fully immersive environment for mission planning and rehearsal, but the real area where it can provide savings is in the basic skills training area,” said Terry Lewis, president, BSC. “When inserted into the curriculum for basic aerial gunner training, the simulator can replace a significant portion of the ‘real world’ training which requires actual aircraft and pilots [and which often aren’t available],” he added

A second entry in this market segment is Raydon’s Virtual Door Gunner Trainer. The system is in service at Fort Hood, Texas, and features interchangeable weapons and is networked to virtual convoy simulators.

BEYOND KEYBOARDS AND MICE

With respect to small arms training, “there are two things that I am seeing repeatedly, one of them is distributed mission training and the other is embedded training,” observed Ron Stearns, Senior Strategic Analyst, Frost and Sullivan. These trends suggest that instead of having “for lack of a better phrase, a large box, in which someone enters into a small arms trainer and is put into a virtual environment,” other training strategies are evolving, said Stearns.

One component on Stearns’s radar screen is Quantum 3D’s Thermite, a 2D/3D tactical visual computer designed for graphics and video intensive deployed applications including embedded training and mission rehearsal, which is one of that company’s tools supporting the Army’s quest for a next-generation training and readiness capability.

Quantum3D’s efforts with Thermite and ExpeditionDI, a COTS, wireless, immersive man-wearable, open architecture training platform that employs Thermite and other virtual environment training components, move beyond “the keyboard and mouse” infrastructure often found in legacy small arms training systems.

“We’ve taken the notion of ‘train like you fight and fight like you train’ in developing ExpeditionDI in partnership with U.S. Army RDECOM because infantry don’t normally use keyboards and mice when they’re clearing a building or manning a checkpoint,” said Mike Pavloff, Quantum3D’s vice president for business development.

ExpeditionDI is part of the company’s vision for the near-future soldier training audience in which an individual soldier conducts training in the same way they conduct warfare, Pavloff said. “Put the system on, carry their training weapon as in real life, wear their helmet—the screen is the helmet- mounted display (HMD) over the wearer’s eyes, not on a desktop computer—and use the wireless input-output device, which is the weapon itself,” Pavloff said.
 
The ExpeditionDI system employs positional “trackers” that provide feedback to the training software running on the Thermite computer. What the individual sees in the HMD screen “is determined by where the head is pointing. Whether you are actually standing upright or crouching down is actually determined by whether you are standing upright or crouching down. This is opposed to the keyboard and mouse [in some virtual, legacy systems] where you push the appropriate key to say: ‘Lie down.’, ‘Kneel down.’, ‘Turn left.’, ‘Turn right.’, or whatever. Everything you do is done naturally with the help of trackers on your body, helmet and training weapon,” Pavloff said.

“So in order to shoot the enemy, you have to aim the weapon exactly at him. This approach compliments schoolhouse and live training, since it can be used as a means to hone specific individual or collective tasks that require movement or immersion for proper training cues—especially in deployed environments. And because the system provides 360 degree immersion without physical restriction, it’s ideal for mission rehearsal and lessons learned after action reviews.” Several Quantum3D research contracts focus on man-wearable, embedded combined arms team training and mission rehearsal objectives.

The Distributed Advanced Graphics Generator and Embedded Rehearsal System (DAGGERS) provided high-performance soldier-worn embedded training for dismounted infantry training research.

The follow-on research effort based on DAGGERS is the Embedded Combined Arms Team Training and Mission Rehearsal Army Technology Objective (ECATT-MR ATO), which supports the infantry carrier vehicle element of the evolving Future Combat Systems program.

ExpeditionDI is the company’s COTS, open-architecture immersive, self-contained man-wearable embedded training platform that evolved from the DAGGERS efforts and is central to the ECATT-MR program. ExpeditionDI’s baseline capabilities include binocular helmet mounted display technology with a correlated three-degree of freedom head/body/weapon motion tracker system, a M4A1 training weapon with Quantum3D’s patent pending wireless controller, the Thermite Tactical Visual Computer, a load-bearing vest with batteries and a wireless network connection to SAF, IOS and other soldiers equipped with ExpeditionDI systems or PCs in the simulation.
 
The company’s efforts “are very much experimental” and its products are not training systems, but rather “tools, to allow a lot of people to do experimentation for different concepts,” said Ross Smith, President and co-founder, Quantum3D. “This fall and winter, we’ll see a number of important ExpeditionDI- based experiments at Fort Benning and other U.S. Army and USMC facilities that will start to really assess the utility of this new capability for our soldiers.”

Frost and Sullivan’s Stearns believes that Thermite-like systems will migrate from limited applications, such as for special operations forces or other smaller organizations, to larger, service-wide use in about seven-to-ten years

“What this has the potential to do over time is to enable more mission-specific training in theater—this is a very specific transformational step—and this is the direction that the services are going,” suggested Stearns. ♦

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