Embedded Training (ET) has become the Army's preferred training solution for future weapons/systems development. In the past 10 or so years, training materiel developers have demonstrated stove-piped instances of technical and programmatic appended success unique to one of the Live, Virtual or Constructive training domains with a computing device attached to the vehicle or the system. Historically the training domain and the weapons development domain have each been successful in separately producing systems that meet the Army's requirements. The Future Combat Systems (FCS) Program was the first Army program to require the development of a completely integrated Embedded Training capability as the first choice for training. Despite the numerous ups and downs during the development of FCS, Embedded Training development achieved many successes before the termination of the program. This paper will discuss ten imperatives to ensure successful development of embedded training integrated and concurrent with the development of a new Army system.

The imperatives are broken down into Technical and Programmatic areas. The technical areas addressed in this paper include: Design of a "Safe Mode" for vehicle training; integration with the Vehicle Management System; integration with Mission Command; early dual-use decision for sub-components; designing external power and data ports; definitization of key internal and external interfaces; and early integration of embedded training as part of the Information Assurance (IA) architecture. Programmatically the following areas will be addressed: TRADOC Senior leadership commitment to embedded training; accurate detailed cost and schedule baseline for embedded training; and separate management of training development funds. Details of the implementation will be discussed as well as impacts of not following the imperatives through lessons learned.