A Game About Hats: The Future of US Military Training?

In a nondescript office building in East Orlando, Ken Storey observed a rag-tag group of gaming professionals creating possible new pathways for Armed Forces education.

On a recent rain-filled weekend, the US Armed Forces' future was on display in an otherwise ordinary office building. As dozens of engineers and tech creators labored away at high-concept pitches designed to meet problem areas identified by military leaders, a dream more than 20 years in the making was being realized.

To understand the Armed Forces Jam and the Central Florida Tech Grove where it took place, one must turn back the clock and travel a few miles west.

In the 1990s, the Naval Training Center (NTC) Orlando was closed as part of the 1993 Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. With its closure, the more than 1,000-acre training center was reimagined as a mixed-use development, Baldwin Park, that connected the neighboring communities. That reworking of the former naval base into a community connector mirrors the goals of the Armed Forces Jam itself.

After NTC Orlando closed, some of the Navy’s technology divisions moved to the Central Florida Research Park, located near the University of Central Florida and surrounded by many of the region’s leading OEM industry leaders. This presence led to new collaborations between the Armed Forces and local modeling, simulation, and artificial intelligence companies that have long called the area home, thanks in part to the space industry the region has led for more than half a century.

Still, even as groups like the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) grew their presence in the Orlando market, there was little connectivity with the region’s tech sector. Armed Forces Jam co-founder Kunal Patel hopes the hack-a-thon like event can help be the conduit for those connections. Similar to how the former NTC is now an anchor of connectivity to the neighborhoods surrounding it, Patel envisions the Jam being a means of connectivity between two of the region’s largest sectors.

Hosted in the coworking-like studio designed by the Central Florida Tech Grove, inside a secure building that is also home to military technology groups, the Armed Forces Jam is designed to be a casual first meet-up between DoD leaders and those in Central Florida’s tech sector.

“I think there's a lot here in terms of talent, but we have a marketing problem. When you look at the greater whole, you have more here than anywhere else, and it's just a case of really connecting these dots,” explains Patel. “I think that's the thing that we all need to be working towards. That’s what I'm trying to do, what I try to drive towards with these innovation events. It’s a magnet to get people from all these different industries together at the same time.”

“We want these people who are great at rapid prototyping, and we want these people who are experts within their field,” Patel notes as he points to the importance of the Armed Forces partners in hosting a successful Jam. “They understand the challenges they’re in, and they understand areas where the Armed Forces have hit a roadblock.” But at the Jam, these leaders can work with innovative people that can rapidly prototype simulated 3D worlds where a solution or part of a solution can be tested in real-time.

The four-day event began on a Thursday evening with defense, technology, and academic leaders speaking on the need to move away from the silos each has faced while finding novel, collaborative answers to the challenges all face. That laid the groundwork for the weekend, which began in earnest when nearly two dozen gaming concepts were pitched. Many concepts focused on gamification in training and collaborative simulation challenges. What, on Friday night, looked to be overly ambitious concepts were fleshed out by midday Sunday. By the time dinner was served Sunday evening, the teams were showing off their creations.

Those final products, primarily reliant on the game engine of event sponsor Unity, weren’t necessarily a complete package able to be used by the military, but that was expected. Even with these rough models, Patel notes the proof of concept alone is valuable. “In real life, it would take millions of dollars or years to produce it or something similar, or, worse, life and death. But in a game, you can pull this together relatively quickly; you can get to 80 percent of a solution very fast.”

The innovative approaches to challenges can be seen in Hat Trick, a quirky two-person simulator game. This Amentum Challenge winning game combines computer vision recognition, machine learning training, and synthetic data creation in a scenario that has two users working in tandem to ensure people in the environment are all wearing hats. Drone piloting, communication, and navigation skills are all vital in the game, where one user pilots a simulated drone via a desktop computer while the other user seeks out the hatless people via a VR headset.

Other winning concepts saw VR harnessed for small arms training, a training simulator for deep-space construction projects, and a Battleship-like game that provides After Action Review based on audio cues, facial expressions, and performance. That Battleship-like concept, NavStrat by Team i3 Corps, came in third place overall but generated a lot of buzz at the event due to its impressive post-simulation feedback.

That type of multi-pronged approach to a problem via a gaming solution is the purpose of the Jam. In his opening night remarks, NAWCTSD Commanding Officer Captain Dan Covelli expressed the need for the gaming and tech industries to collaborate with the DoD. With a slide deck filled with examples of previous projects and how they translate to real-world applications both inside and outside of the Armed Forces, Capt. Covelli emphasized the need for collaboration beyond the four days of the Jam. “We need your help; we need folks like you to help us develop these training [programs],” he declared. “We have worked with the gaming industry before; we need more of that.”

Armed Forces Jam Innovators

1st Place - Small Arms Collaborative Training Environment (SACTE) - ASquare Games & Simulations. Use of force training environment featuring a fully rigged VR player.

2nd Place - Orbital Guardians by Team JSquad. The year is 3017. You have been in cryo for 15 years as you travel to Planet 247. You are part of Alpha Team and need to make sure final preparations are done prior to the colonists arriving. Use the new Space Force Guardian Mech to help you complete any final repairs and explore your new homeworld.

3rd Place - NavStrat by Team i3 Corps. An interactive, high-stress naval training experience focused on battlegroup strategy, collision avoidance, and standards building around calm, non-anxious communication and judgement calls. With an AAR based on correlations between audio dB levels of players as they communicate, facial expressions, and training performance, NavStrat potentiates a training standard to lower the differentiation, over time, between a player's stress responses to gameplay and their ability to make sound judgement calls.

Amentum Challenge Winners - Hat Trick by Adrian Rodriguez (right) and Trey Atwood. Computer vision recognition, machine learning training with synthetic data creation by a fun scenario where everyone needs a hat! Desktop player pilots a drone to find the hatless people walking around an environment; meanwhile a VR player throws hats to the hatless.

Image credits: Steve Seidman.

Read more:
https://armedforcesjam.com/
www.centralfloridatechgrove.org/
www.navair.navy.mil/nawctsd/
https://i3-corps.com/