MILITARY SIMS STEP UP

The AP’s Mike Branom heads down to the Defense Department’s annual train­ing and sim­u­la­tion con­fer­ence, and finds some pretty cool stuff.
One company’s vir­tual street bat­tle includes a destroyed Humvee with con­vinc­ing burn marks, a life­like squad of sol­diers scur­ry­ing to the res­cue and a busi­nesslike yet bit­ter announce­ment over the radio net­work that the vehicle’s occu­pants are all KIA.
Lockheed Martin’s Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer, used by 3,000 sol­diers since com­ing online this fall, used maps and pho­tographs to accu­rately re-​​create Baghdad, Fallujah and Tikrit.
“We’ve heard sol­diers tell us, ‘This is the cor­ner where I got shot at,’” said Dan Crowley, the company’s pres­i­dent for sim­u­la­tion, train­ing and sup­port.
I’m quoted down at the bot­tom of the story, as the res­i­dent cur­mud­geon. But I’m really not all that grumpy — not about this, any­way. The more sol­diers can hone their skills before they hit the bat­tle­field, the bet­ter. We just shouldn’t con­fuse joy­stick mojo with expe­ri­ence in the real world.

December 7th, 2004 | Training and Sims | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.