FORT EUSTIS, Va. (June 23, 2014) – The Army is evolving its current Integrated Training Environment into a single synthetic training environment that combines constructive, gaming and virtual systems to provide challenging exercises efficiently at the point of need.
Army officials discussed the Future Holistic Training Environment — Live/Synthetic at the Training and Education 2025 and Beyond Industry Forum, held Wednesday and Thursday, here. At the forum, Army officials discussed future capabilities, and training and education gaps with defense industry representatives.
Currently, the Army is fielding the Live, Virtual, Constructive–Integrating Architecture to bring current training systems together to create an Integrated Training Environment. The Future Holistic Training Environment–Live/Synthetic would provide additional capabilities.
“The new environment will collapse constructive, virtual, and gaming capabilities into one synthetic environment that can be coupled with live training,” said Col. John Janiszewski, director of the National Simulation Center, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. “It will allow commanders to incorporate the plan, prepare, execute and assess steps of unit training management into multi-echelon training exercises.”
Janiszewski led a panel discussion about capabilities the new training environment will need, including:
• A convergence of virtual, constructive, and gaming environments with augmented reality into a single synthetic environment to link with live training. This will increase the realism of live training and reduce dependency on brick-and-mortar training sites.
• A single environment that encapsulates land, sea, air, space, and cyber. This will support regionally aligned forces and missions.
• Artificial intelligence to replicate operational complexity and uncertainty. This will lower costs by replacing some human role players with avatars.
• Automated tools and intelligent tutors to provide a holistic training common operational picture. This adds mentors, teachers and coaches without the costs.
• After-action review and assessment tools that are linked to execution outcomes, assist unit readiness reporting and provide lessons learned. This provides commanders with useful information and benchmarks to evaluate training exercises.
• All aspects of the operations process to enable the seamless planning, preparation, execution, and assessment of Live-Synthetic training. This will improve all steps in an exercise.
• A 24/7, low-overhead capability worldwide at home stations, Combat Training Centers and deployed locations that will require fewer contractors. This will provide training at the point of need while reducing costs.
Several Army organizations are conducting research to make the Future Holistic Training Environment–Live/Synthetic a reality. To learn more about the new training environment, see the presentation at: http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CAC-T/Repository/FutureHolisticTrainingEnvironment.pdf