Synthetic training has become a key element of the Fleet Response Training Plan. Advancements in Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) capabilities have accelerated this trend. Yet still, synthetic training remains a challenging proposition, where warfighters must schedule their participation well in advance and are reliant on the limited resources of training centers to coordinate events, conduct testing, and carefully structure scenarios. Imagine a world more like the one our kids inhabit; a place where military units could connect to game servers that allowed geographically-dispersed units to select training scenarios and participate with other units in tactically relevant vignettes, on-demand with a minimum of overhead. This “anytime, anywhere” concept would allow sailors to facilitate timely mission rehearsal, complete training, receive credit, and glean performance evaluations from after-action review technology designed to enable warfighters to “Get Real, Get Better.”
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is sponsoring an effort to develop an on-demand wargaming capability to facilitate mission rehearsal and fleet training while underway. Enabling ship training system configuration and readiness, the solution provides automated tests and validation relating to onboard systems and sensors. When complete, this prototype will provide access to an online library of scenarios for dynamic on-demand training, readiness, and re-certification. Research and development on this effort has been conducted by utilizing virtual and bare-metal labs for testing and evaluation. This year, initial tests are being planned with live assets on a pierside ship to evaluate prototype capabilities and, as yet untested, Link 16 integration.
This paper will explore how research has been done to advance the training capability for our future warfighters. It will describe research efforts towards training system readiness and configuration in a virtual lab, architectures and components used while engineering a potential solution, as well as illustrate pierside test outcomes and future growth and sustainment.
Keywords
LVC, SIMULATIONS, TRAINING
Additional Keywords
GAME-BASED, FST