STE, OTW, OTA, and TReX

An MS&T Exclusive Interview with MG Gervais.

Major General Maria Gervais is Deputy Commanding General, US Army Combined Arms Center, and Director of the Cross Functional Team (CFT) for the Synthetic Training Environment (STE).

Major General Maria Gervais.
Image credit: US DoD.

At the DefenceSimulation, Education, and Training (DSET) conference at Ashton Gate, UK inMarch, MG Gervais spoke with MS&T’sGareth Davies in an exclusive interview.

Having heard MG Gervais’ presentation on STE, we started by looking at the‘sporty’ timescales that she has been set by the Chief of Staff of the Army. Sheacknowledged that they were challenging but the pace of development and changeof technology is now much faster, which will help. Another challenge isbureaucracy, but the industrial landscape has changed and start-ups andnon-traditional firms like a challenge. Both of these challenges have been partof her drive to change the culture of setting the requirements for trainingsystems and then acquiring them.

Next up was the age-old debate on the live/sim balance. MG Gervais was clear that virtual environments don’t simply replace the live environment. The progression from live to virtual, or vice versa, and back again will be decided by working out which progression enables training for excellence (as opposed to competence).

Part of the philosophy of training for excellence is a change ofmindset, echoed in the UK, about losing. For too long, losing during traininghas been seen as failure, but this is no longer the case. Losing, and thenlearning from the reasons for that loss, is a vital element of training andeducation and is now accepted practice in armies on both sides of the Atlantic.

We then asked some very targeted questions.

MS&T: What are the expected critical capabilities of STE which will be different from current Army synthetic capabilities? In terms of scale, mobility, fidelity?

MG Gervais: The fundamentaldifference between the Army’s current simulation capabilities – the Integrated Training Environment (ITE) – and the Synthetic Training Environment is a holistic strategy theArmy is taking toward developing the STE. The STE will be realized as a singleconverged training environment that will operate through the Common SyntheticEnvironment (CSE). The CSE will be built upon an open architecture using commondata, standards, and common terrain thereby providing one common gameengine (Training Simulation Software - TSS), one common planning tool (TrainingManagement Tool - TMT), and one common terrain database (One World Terrain -OTW). This is a fundamentally different approach to how the ITE developed as aseries of disparate programs in the Live, Virtual, Gaming, and Constructivesimulation domains. These individual stovepiped proprietary components were“hooked” together through a simulation translation programme known as LiveVirtual Constructive Integrating Architecture (LVC-IA).

The STE will take Armytraining to greater levels of scale, mobility, and fidelity. In terms ofscale, the current ITE is limited to platoon and above, traditionally availableat our twelve Mission Training Complex (MTC) locations, and is limited in thenumber of units that can train simultaneously. Through the Army’s enterpriseand tactical networks, the STE will provide a Live, Virtual, and Constructivetraining capability from squad level to Army Service Component Command. The STEwill be capable of being used simultaneously across active duty Armyinstallations and in National Guard Armories and at deployed locations.

The STE will provide the force with the mobility and fidelity it needs in the Live, Virtual, and Constructive training domains. Through the use of mixed/augmented reality, as well as the latest advances in technologies, the STE is seeking to reduce the requirements for using large bulky hardware and is focused on developing more software-centric solutions. Less hardware means increased mobility. It also increases fidelity by modeling a greater number of the Army’s weapon systems than current simulations and through software updates while lowering concurrency challenges by increasing the number of personnel and units that can train simultaneously.

Bottom line, the STEwill enable Army units and leaders to conduct realistic and repetitivecollective training on combined arms manoeuvre and mission command tasks inorder to enter live training at higher levels of proficiency. This isultimately the advantage to developing and using the Synthetic TrainingEnvironment. As an Army we can easily create battlefield conditions andreplicate terrain, enemy formations and tactics in the STE. Then we can conductmultiple training iterations against that enemy in the environment that we willfight him on, from our home station, before we deploy.

Image credit: US Army Acquisition Support Center.

MS&T: How might the Common Global Terrain/One World Terrain differ from the Army's current variety of databases in structure and capabilities?

MG Gervais: Development of terrainfor current legacy training simulation systems is a laborious, manual processwhich is costly and time-consuming, making it difficult to support contingencyoperations in new areas. It’s also very limiting because current Army trainingsimulations use “postage stamp” terrains with 57 different dataformats. The creation of these disparate terrain databases is manpower – and time-intensive. OWT reduces these different formats toone, saving manpower, time, and money.

OWT will represent theentire earth at a certain resolution with insets of higher-resolution areas forkey locations such as home station training areas, combat training centres, andother areas of interest. OWT will be more efficient by relying on avariety of traditional and non-traditional data sources and techniques tocollect, process, store, distribute, and render terrain data.

OWT should be understoodas more than a terrain database. It is an entire workflow that includescollecting, processing, storing, distributing, and rendering to providesimulation-ready terrain data to support training, mission rehearsal, andoperational uses. Because OWT is also Soldier-enabled, Soldiers and unitswill have the ability to capture their local areas via drones and IVAS devices [Integrated VisualAugmentation System, the military version of the Microsoft Hololens]. This data will then be uploaded to the cloud to be vetted andincluded in the main OWT database. This ensures the Soldiers will haveaccess to the best terrain data available.

MS&T: How does STE play into the priorities of the new Futures Command?

MG Gervais: STE cross-cuts theArmy's six modernization priorities by providing a common training environmentto allow leaders and Soldiers to train with the Army's newest and next-generationtechnologies that will allow them to win on the 21st century battlefield.

Directly, the STE supports the Army’s 6th Modernization Priority – Soldier Lethality – by focusing on tactical level training. Through its Initial Operational Capability in FY21, the STE remains focused on individual soldiers and small teams (fire teams/squads and vehicle crews) as the primary training audience. Moving to Full Operational Capability in FY24, the STE will focus on enabling platoon through company collective training.

MS&T: Where is STE in the timetable? One document suggested prototypes as of mid-2018, another mentioned user assessments in May 2019.

MG Gervais: STE is completing itsevaluation of the initial Other Transactional Awards (OTA) contracts thissummer. The purpose of the contracts awarded in February 2018 was toinform and refine the requirements for the STE effort. This effort isculminating in a series of User Assessments with Soldiers in April and May ofthis year. The next phase will be the development of rapid prototypes for theCommon Synthetic Environment (CSE) and the Reconfigurable Virtual CollectiveTrainers (RVCT), Ground and Air. The strategy is for the award of an OTAcontract for CSE in June 2019 and an OTA for RVCT in June. This rapidprototyping effort supports the achievement of STE achieving initialoperational capability in FY21.

MS&T: What are some benefits, and challenges, thus far of the OTA approach? And of the Training and Readiness Accelerator (TReX) relationship?

MG Gervais: OTAs enableflexibility in acquisition to rapidly develop prototypes and to procure cuttingedge, innovative technologies quickly and efficiently – and if the technologies fail, to fail early. OTAs alsoprovide an attractive option for nontraditional defense contractors to dobusiness with the government and bring in industry partners that havetraditionally shunned the bureaucracy that comes with FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulations] acquisitions.

TReX has created anenvironment more conducive to teaming among technology providers through theirfacilitated design thinking events. This opens access to nontraditional vendorsthat were previously unknown to the government or were not previouslyconsidering the government as a customer. The most recent TReX event broughthundreds of subject matter experts to engage with the military to help informthe STE LIVE requirement as we move to finalization and release of the LiveTraining Statement of Need. This industry feedback is helping to ensure that weare looking at the most cutting-edge technology and moving to where thecommercial technology industry is heading. TReX also has been a significantfacilitator in reducing the administrative time to award an OTA and continuesto apply efficiency lessons learned to follow-on OTA awards.

As far as challenges, OTAs are still relatively new to many in both the government and private sector, which drives a significant amount of education in understanding what can or can't be done through the tool – as well as how to approach technical problems from an entirely new "business" perspective. The complex needs of STE require collaboration among multiple performers with various parts of the combined technology solution. Another challenge is the shift from detailed specifications. We need to allow maximum flexibility for our industry partners to be innovative. The challenge is being specific but not so specific that we stifle the industry partner’s creativity in identifying concepts and solutions.

MG Gervais concluded with the message that STE is going to be the 2nd “revolution” in training for the US Army. The first was the establishment of the Collective Training Centers.