Command sims cut through fog of war

For a cou­ple years now, Iraq-​​bound sol­diers and Marines have ben­e­fited from real­is­tic train­ing fea­tur­ing Arabic-​​speaking role­play­ers, Hollywood spe­cial effects and “insur­gents” por­trayed by highly trained U.S. troops. Now their com­man­ders can get in on the sim-​​Iraq action with a new dig­i­tal com­mand and con­trol (C2) archi­tec­ture at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., as I described in a recent National Defense arti­cle:

Arguably the most impor­tant tech­nol­ogy lever­aged by deploy­ing units are the dig­i­tal Army bat­tle com­mand sys­tems that pro­vide lead­ers at all lev­els real-​​time sit­u­a­tional aware­ness on the loca­tion of their units to squad level, Brig. Gen. Michael Barbero, Fort Polk com­man­der, said in an inter­view.
Accordingly, JRTC sim­u­lates the com­plex command-​​and-​​control setup that under­pins oper­a­tions in Iraq. Patrols sor­tie from sim­u­lated for­ward oper­at­ing bases that boast tac­ti­cal oper­a­tions cen­ters fea­tur­ing all the same sys­tems com­man­ders might employ in Iraq.
The Army bat­tle com­mand sys­tems are made up of sev­eral soft­ware pack­ages, each designed for par­tic­u­lar missions.

These include, among others:

The maneu­ver con­trol sys­tem, [which] col­lects real-​​time bat­tle­field infor­ma­tion and dis­plays it graph­i­cally. It inter­faces with the blue-​​force track­ing sys­tem which plots the loca­tions of indi­vid­ual vehi­cles on a dig­i­tal map.
[And] the bat­tle com­mand and sus­tain­ment sup­port sys­tem [that] processes logis­ti­cal, per­son­nel and med­ical infor­ma­tion, gen­er­ates near real-​​time reports and updates a com­bat ser­vice sup­port data­base every three hours. It fuses data from satel­lites, radio fre­quency iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tags, inter­roga­tors and transpon­ders to track and dis­play the loca­tions of vehi­cles and cargo.

The C2 archi­tec­ture facil­i­tates real-​​time com­mand of forces in the JRTC box. The dig­i­tal archi­tec­ture enables Fort Polk train­ing staff to pass down intel­li­gence and orders from sim­u­lated divi­sion and joint task force head­quar­ters. It also helps sim­u­late oper­a­tions that cant be con­ducted live because of range and air­space lim­i­ta­tions, as well as short­ages of avail­able sys­tems such as bombers and aer­ial drones.
The bet­ter your train­ing, the bet­ter your results in com­bat. Now if there were only a sim­u­la­tion for the kinds of cul­tural encoun­ters that make all the dif­fer­ence in Iraq. Oh wait — there is!
–David Axe

November 7th, 2006 | Training and Sims | 22233 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/11/07/command-sims-cut-through-fog-of-war/Command+sims+cut+through+fog+of+war2006-11-07+13%3A04%3A27wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.