A fire team mounts the back stairs of a two story duplex and is quickly picked off by insurgents firing from inside the top floor. With four men down, the squad leader shakes his head and takes off his helmet. Thankfully, this occurred in an immersive environment at Fort Benning, Ga., during a capability demonstration and assessment hosted by the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, Maneuver Battle Lab and Joint Staff J6 as part of Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment Bold Quest 2012-2 (AEWE-BQ12-2) (Reitz & Seavey, 2012). The squad leader asks the exercise controller to stop and send it to the After Action Review screen. His unit regroups around him, and they talk through what just occurred.

AEWE-BQ12-2 allowed for an assessment of the quality of training transfer from virtual training capabilities to live mission execution. One area assessed was the impact of training capabilities on situational awareness, understanding and small unit readiness. Over three weeks, four squads performed area reconnaissance, cordon and search, and attack missions. Three squads trained in a digitized McKenna Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) virtual environment for three days before performing each live mission. The control squad utilized the live MOUT environment for both training and execution of their missions. The three experimental squads (N=34) performed at the same level as the control squad in situational awareness as measured by Situational Awareness Rating Tool (SART) (Taylor, 1990). Inter- and intra-squad communications increased significantly in the experimental squads, compared to a control.

Future austere budgetary environments lead military leaders to look to virtual training environments to hone combat proficiency within the force. This paper details results of the experiment, and outlines implications of those results on balancing live and virtual training capabilities to enhance situational understanding and small unit readiness.