Death Knell for Live Training?

The live training domain continues to mature. Learning technologies are being increasingly integrated into live events and scenarios, providing servicemembers with higher fidelity, more rigorous and increasingly relevant training. Group Editor Marty Kauchak reports.

The heretofore agreed-upon framework of live training used by the military-industry-academic S&T community is rapidly evolving. To the relief of many defense department staffs around the globe, it is still too early to change the definition of live training in their service strategy and policy documents. Scenarios and events in this domain will continue to be based upon actual servicewomen and -men training in real weapons platforms, command posts and other venues, with real or training-configured kinetic/non-kinetic weapons.

But as reported almost weekly in MS&T’s online defense developments, healthy doses of virtual and constructive simulation continue to be regularly inserted into live training programs – moving the needle of traditional live training further into a blended construct in the expanding Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) environment, and providing ever-increasing mission fidelity and other returns on investment.

Maturing Domain

Capt. Garrett Loeffelman, Modeling and Simulation Officer at the US Marine Corps Training and Education Command, told MS&T that submitting a singular or even approximate percentage of training completed in a live environment is difficult, because every unit has a different training schedule focused on various priorities with a mix of missions they must meet. The Quantico, Virginia-based officer added, “The percentage, though, is significantly high. All marines go through live training in preparation for deployments, and marines regularly participate in unit exercises to maintain readiness.”

A second ‘snapshot’ on 2021-era live training was provided by Capt. Brent Blackmer, Naval Training Technologies and LVC Lead, US Fleet Forces Command. US Navy fleet forces prepare for deployment under its Optimized Fleet Response Plan. Within this construct, the fleet employs a three-phased approach: Basic Phase, Advanced Phase, and Integrated Phase. The first phase is designed to forge a unit into a team, competent in the use of their systems; the senior officer explained, “Operators predominantly train on their individual systems, both live and virtual, during this phase. In the Advanced Phase units train to elevated tactics by executing mission rehearsal in a simulated environment prior to execution on live ranges where some constructive injects are utilized to further test the training audience.”

Integrated, or final, phase training takes advantage of synthetically generated events that stress the operator and ensure that subsequent live training is optimized. Blackmer added this combination of live and synthetic events increases in complexity throughout the Integrated Phase where units are forged into deployable groups. “Live events during this final phase are heavily augmented with virtual and constructive entities.”

While live training remains vital to the continuum of training for individuals, units and staffs, in the cases of the US Navy and US Marine Corps, the training domain is evolving – and with good reasons.

In one case, it is not hyperbole to state there are nothing less than “eye watering”, increasingly affordable and capable, learning technology advancements entering the market space. From off-loading full-flight simulator-based learning tasks to ever-more efficient part-task trainers, to the expanding use of big data, to rapidly maturing mixed-reality technologies for training, the S&T industry is offering its current and prospective defense customers increasingly sound business cases to invest in learning technologies.

At the same time, live training, and indeed, the entire LVC construct, remains under pressure from a confluence of external forces. Paul Averna, Business Development Director for LVC and US Navy Business at Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions, told MS&T that today’s fifth-generation systems capabilities in the orders of battle for the US, and its allied and coalition partners, greatly exceed physical training range limitations. Significant restrictions on live air training scenarios at ranges include air speed and combat ceiling limitations.

Further, service training must also be harmonized to support overarching strategy and doctrine. For the Marine Corps, that means emerging naval operating concepts necessitate distributed training. TECOM’s Loeffelman explained that bringing disparate units together in the island chains of the Pacific to train is too cost-prohibitive to do regularly. “The service will not have the proficiency, decision-making ability, or experience that is needed to seamlessly integrate naval, air, and ground assets to destroy enemy ships without a Live Virtual Constructive training environment capability.”

While the trend toward integrated, or even enabled, live training is progressing in these two services, let’s not dismiss the place of live tasks, events and scenarios in the continuum of training quite yet.

Cubic’s Averna, a retired US Navy fast-jet pilot, noted, while the threat has similarly evolved and become more complex,” the “ability to train live will always be a critical component of our proficiency before we go to ‘the fight’. Nobody ever won the war effectively by just training in a simulator. You have to have the physiological and psychological, full impact in live training that you just can’t replicate in simulators.”

The Marine Corps' Loeffelman emphasized his service does not expect a decrease in the importance of live training, and noted, “Simulators augment live; they do not replace it.” To point, the service believes units should use simulators to make easy or simple mistakes, remediate, and generate “muscle memory” and cognitive experience that its marines gain from training in a short period of time.

The TECOM mid-grade officer continued, “When integrated into unit training plans, simulations can improve skill proficiency during rehearsals and home station training exercises, thus enabling units to maximize their return on investment during more expensive live fire and/or service-level training opportunities. High-fidelity rehearsals in simulators allow marines to get the most out of live training by minimizing pauses to training and maintains immersion in the live range.”

Industry Survey

Beyond the above glimpses of maturing live training constructs provided by the US Marine Corps and US Navy, it’s similarly important to survey the evolving business models of S&T companies in this market space.

Saab Training & Simulation has core business competencies in live training, live fire training, virtual training and training services. Hans Lindgren, Head of Business Development at Saab T&S, provided important perspectives on the ever-dynamic live training part of his portfolio, and, in turn, a vital glimpse of the scope and breadth of end-user demand.

The industry veteran first noted live training is a core business operation, “with real people training in real environments”, and is an important customer requirement – given the focus of increasing training readiness to defeat evolving near and peer threats.

Saab has an expansive live training footprint, consisting of its infantry training, and anti-tank weapon simulator, vehicle simulator, WinEXCON evaluation tool and support capabilities. The firm’s live training business is present in six nations in North and South America, and in 20 national and one joint training enterprise in Europe. Lindgren emphasized, “From the US perspective, we’re one of the major players in the market, together with Cubic, of course. Looking into Europe, our footprint is quite strong – we’re almost dominating Europe, but in all countries we do not yet have a complete training system, a training center.”

That is about to change. Beyond the US Army’s JMTC (Hohenfels Training Area, Germany), Saab is continuing to work through Covid-19 interruptions to deliver a complete combat training center for the Belgian Army.

Saab’s Lindgren also recalled that for the past 10-15 years, live players have used lasers for direct-fire, short-range scenarios, and geometric pairing to provide the effects of non-line-of-sight area weapons. Fast forward to 2021, when the tempo of this demand is quickening.

In one project, Saab is introducing artillery and mortar units as scenario players. Lindgren added, “We will add mortars, train the soldiers to operate the weapon, and place them to be at the right position to do the correct fuze setting and apply the effect – this will no longer be completed from exercise control.”

In a second effort to increase the rigor and fidelity of live training, Saab is working to virtually blend in the components of the latest battlefield weapons into scenarios. One representative outcome allows the feed of the virtual aspects of MBDA’s MMP (Missile Moyenne Portée) or Rafael’s Spike Long Range anti-tank missile to the training audience. The latter capability allows “a gunner to launch his or her missile and guide it on a 3D map view, and engage beyond line-of-sight, by mixing GPS, radio technology, virtual technology and direct engagement, with a player, such as a soldier, a main battle tank or buildings,” according to Lindgren.

Towards the top of the product hierarchy that ties together many Saab technology offerings for the live training audience is the instrumented GAMER laser-based training capability. While GAMER has been enabling live training events around the globe for several decades, the system continues to rapidly evolve. GAMER is scalable to meet the customer’s home station and deployment requirements, supporting training formations in increments of 120, 300, 2,500 or 10,000 players. The embedded 4G technology for configurations above the 120-player level allows for establishing mesh networks and increasing coverage across training venues. GAMER mission expansion packs are available for gunnery training, urban training, C-IED training, combat support, medic training, CBRN training and LVC training.

Of added interest, GAMER’s standard interface permits connectivity to more legacy and evolving virtual (VBS and others) and constructive products, to allow multi-domain mission training.

Cubic’s P5CTS is one of the forward-learning technologies allowing fast-jet pilots from the US and 15 allied and friendly nations to train with increased rigor in the contemporary live training domain. Image credit: Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions.

Elsewhere, Cubic’s P5CTS is one of the forward-learning technologies allowing fast-jet pilots from the US and 15 allied and friendly nations to train with increased rigor in the contemporary live training domain. Cubic has delivered more than 2,000 pods to its customers, with an approximate 98% availability rate on the flight line.

The P5 pod provides high fidelity, time, space and position (TSP) data, and collects and processes in-flight data to perform real-time weapons simulations for participating aircrews. A near-term, major expansion of this Cubic program calls for the delivery of P5CTS pods and auxiliary training hardware in support of the US Air Force’s Combat Air Force (CAF) Contracted Air Support program.

Doug Thies, Senior Manager for Strategic Development at Cubic, noted the pods will help overcome the challenge of enabling CAF third-generation aircraft to better replicate a contemporary adversary. The retired Air Force jet pilot explained, “One of the things we are doing with the P5 pod is to make slight modifications to it, to increase the avionics’ capability on a third-generation platform, allowing it to be an effective adversary against F-15/F-18 fourth-generation, and F-22/F-35 fifth-generation aircraft. This is another way to scale the capability of that third-generation aircraft to a higher level at a very low cost.”

One representative third-generation aircraft enhancement would provide very accurate and precise weapons cueing, to model and present, what a near- or peer-threat fast-jet aircraft would bring to the fight.

While the US Air Force has 875 P5CTS pods, about 550 near-similar pods, with minor adjustments for F/A-18-unique mounting, have been delivered to the US Navy’s Tactical Combat Training System Increment I program.

“Train as if There Were No Borders”

Saab’s Lindgren spoke to another major trend in his customers’ live training strategies: to continue meeting national requirements, but, more significant, increasing their multinational exercise and interoperability capabilities. To point, the retired Swedish Army officer noted that in response to one emerging, common threat in the European theatre of operations, European and US forces are seeking to prepare and train together in the right terrain, and in essence, “train as if there were no borders – which requires interoperability.”

The imperative to achieve interoperability is being met, in one major instance, through Saab’s expanded participation in the Interoperability User Community (IUC), which has increased to 16 member nations, in and beyond Europe. Lindgren emphasized the IUC’s objective is to “achieve full interoperability in training for any war function,” and pointed out the collaborative effort “is complying quite well with senior defense departments’ directives to make it possible to deploy a system, and train across borders with a plug-and-play functionality.” The IUC’s cooperation areas include: laser (direct fire) code; AWES (indirect fire) code; explosive device code; range communication and external systems (distributed interactive simulation and high-level architecture).

The evolving, successful IUC initiative provides a template for advancing industry-government partnerships in other parts of military services’ training enterprises.

Huge Opportunities

Military services are eyeing increased opportunities to immerse their live training audiences in more complex and higher-fidelity events and scenarios – enabled by learning technologies. From the US Navy’s investments in the Navy Continuous Training Environment, to the prospect of more European nations pursuing national combat training centers, the S&T industry will have increased opportunities to support the defense customers’ maturing live training programs well into this decade.

Marines fire a Javelin missile while conducting a live-fire combat rehearsal during Fuji Viper 21.3 at Combined Arms Training Center, Camp Fuji, Japan. Image credit: US Marine Corps/ Lance Cpl. Jonathan Willcox.