Defence Business: SimTect grows along with simulation capabilities | ADM August 2012
Sixteen
years on, SimTecT, Simulation Australia’s annual conference and exhibition, continues
to grow in both popularity and breadth, with more than 600 delegates and 50
exhibitor booths gracing this year’s event in Adelaide.
While the first SimTecT in 1996 focused predominantly on
simulation skills developed for the defence arena, these have now spilled over
into other fields like aerospace, aviation, road, rail and logistics.
Nevertheless,
Simulation Australia’s chair Adrian Smith said a recent economic impact survey
conducted by his organisation had established that the defence sector continued
to attract the largest number of simulation companies, followed by transport,
education, health, infrastructure and resources.
The
survey also confirmed the increasing international engagement of Australian simulation
suppliers, with 33 per cent of respondents involved in global markets and a
further 11 per cent engaged in the Asia-Pacific region. Of the balance, 26 per cent
restricted their activities to Australia,
and 30 per cent to a single state.
Some
90 per cent of companies surveyed named skills as their primary business challenge,
followed by development costs and financial risk.
According
to conference convenor Deanna Hutchinson, Managing Director of The Simulation
Agency, SimTecT 2012 saw the normal technology life cycle at work, with several
examples of “smaller, faster, cheaper” versions of mature simulations, and new
collaborations between providers to beef up capability offerings.
“The breadth of simulations for vehicle operation, command and control and analysis
is certainly growing and serious games are here to stay, especially though our
new partnership with I/ITSEC’s (the world’s largest modelling, simulation and training
conference) Serious Games Challenge,” she commented.
“We
hope to capitalise on Australia’s
game development strengths and engage our next generation of simulation
professionals through such ventures.”
Hutchinson
also noted that although simulation provided a mechanism for exploring alternate
realities, it did so by promoting learning from failure. Therefore the adjacent
people systems relating to failure, namely performance measurement, reward and
recognition, accountability and authority, must be addressed, she said.
This
relationship between simulation and organisational culture was driven home by
Major-General Craig Orme, Commander of the Australian Defence
College, in a powerful
presentation from which the ADF’s attitude to simulation, both past and present,
did not emerge unscathed.
MAJGEN
Orme recalled that in the early 1980s the ADF was engaged in a very basic form
of simulation – many years behind its US
and UK
counterparts - that focused on equipment rather than decisions.
“Exercises
were scripted and closely controlled…..outcomes were not random, and chaos was
eliminated. Adjudication in field training was the purview of learned Directing
Staff who wore white arm bands and conferred casualties in an arbitrary way via
a wave of their ‘God Sticks.”
Fast-forward
to the later 1980s when the Australian Army saw the integration of computer
wargaming into tactics courses and some training – a development that was not
uniformly welcomed.
“There
were often heated arguments when both direct and indirect fires led to higher
casualties than expected. Also the Manoeuvrists would simply bypass fixed and
immobile positions and would not oblige defenders by offering ‘a damn good
fight’ on the ground that the Blue Force (the good guys) had decided was
important.
“Also
the elements of chaos and lack of control over the Red Force in two-sided simulations
did not lead to many wins for the Blue Force. For many, simulation did not
provide the answers they wanted – so why would they become its champions?”
Simulation
. . . eh?
As
recently as the late 1990s the ADF, especially Army, still did not ‘get’
simulation, MAJGEN Orme said.
“To
be frank, we were a light force and we didn’t like what the simulations were telling
us about our combat weight and our survivability in any environment that looked
like warfighting . . .
“While
some recognised the utility of simulation as offering the ability to have ‘force
on force’ exercises where the enemy is unscripted and able to operate as they see
fit, the organisation lacked the will to make it happen.
“Senior
Field Commanders resisted being tested by simulation for fear of failure. Failure
tactically, failure organisationally or failure personally. This risk of not
getting the outcomes you wanted was just too great for anyone to really want to
push simulation hard.”
Post
9/11 the introduction of the Mission Rehearsal Exercise saw improvements in the
use of simulation, but not to the extent either necessary or possible.
Preference and priority was given to procedural simulators for training rather
than to the simulation of complex decision-making offered by wargaming and
Command Post Exercises.
“Further,
there was a lack of investment in and subsequent maintenance and sustainment of
direct fire weapons-effects simulators which could accurately depict the
effects of fires on the battlefield and highlight weaknesses in tactics,
techniques, procedures and equipment,” MAJGEN Orme commented.
“The
simulation debate was cast in terms of resource savings, not capability building.
Further, the simulation debate was not mainstream. It was not being championed
at the highest levels, and it was not penetrating Defence.”
MAJGEN
Orme referred to an increase and acceleration in the use of crew and procedural
trainers with the advent of new vehicle combat systems such as ASLAV and the
Abrams MBT, but a “systems” view of simulation was still lacking and simulation
acquisition was, and still is largely, buried in individual projects.
“In
sum, to the extent that simulation has infiltrated Defence, it is more about training
and certainty, rather than developing skills around complex decision making and
uncertainty,” he stated.
“Regrettably,
we have not yet built a culture that embraces simulation, nor a culture that
embraces it as an opportunity to liberate our thinking and remove fixed and
inflexible notions of success.
“We remain a conservative organisation that has yet to develop a mature and strategic
approach to simulation. We don’t yet see simulation as part of the fabric and system
of training and education.”
US lessons
This
is clearly not the case with the US military. The US Army’s Program
Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation fields more than
150 separate training and simulation systems, of which deputy head Rob Reyenga
highlighted several.
Collective manoeuvre training for platoon through to battalion level across the
full spectrum of operations is supported by the Homestation Instrumentation
Training System (HITS). This provides position location and weapons effects
data for real-time exercise monitoring and after-action review.
The Close Combat Tactical Trainer supports
the training of infantry, armour, mechanised infantry, cavalry and armoured reconnaissance
units operating from full-crew simulators, mock-up command posts and live
battalion command posts. The computer-driven, manned module simulators range
from the Abrams M1A1 main battle tank to the M113 armoured personal carrier and
Humvee.
Distribution
of a Dismounted Soldier (DS) sub-system of CCTT will begin later this year.
This uses a monitor headset that straps over or under a helmet and
noisecancelling headphones to create an immersive environment, body sensors to capture
position and a small joystick to register movement.
The
system is designed to eventually link with other simulators for more complex training
scenarios. In theory, a dismounted squad will be able to train in the same
virtual environment as scouts in a Humvee simulator or a medevac crew in a helicopter
simulator.
The
Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (AVCATT) provides six manned modules
re-configurable to any combination of attack, reconnaissance, lift and/or cargo
helicopters. Its four role-player stations involve battalion/squadron staff, combined
arms elements, and integrated threat or friendly forces.
The
US Army’s simulation portfolio also includes WARSIM, a Lockheed Martin program used
by the company at SimTecT to demonstrate a common user interface (CUI) that can
simultaneously integrate the live, virtual and constructive (LVC) training domains.
By only pulling down from the cloud those elements of the three domains immediately
needed by operators, the CUI can be hosted on commercial laptops and mobile
devices (iPad, Android, iPhone).
Lockheed
Martin says it hopes to sell WARSIM to the ADF. The system currently provides
the US Army with mission rehearsal capabilities for commanders and staff during
combat operations, stability operations and peacetime. Scenarios include
post-conflict operations such as restoring order, supplementing civilian government,
providing humanitarian assistance, redeployment, reconstitution and
demobilisation. WARSIM technology has been used to provide the constructive environment
for a variety of recent US
wargames including US Marine Corps logistics, Littoral Combat Ship logistics
and F-35 shipboard sustainment.
Inside the Dome
The most distinctive exhibit at SimTecT was undoubtedly Cubic Defence’s
Integrated Training Environment Dome, a black four-metre high aluminium and
fabric portable structure that is easily deployable within a hangar or on the
well deck of an amphibious ship to support continuation training for embarked
forces.
The
primary capability demonstrated within the dome was the company’s Mission Rehearsal
and Planning System. This can be tailored to replicate any real-world threat,
using a core constructive training application; a range of powerful 3D engines
and terrain. The system allows tactical units and planners to analyse and refine
courses of action, assisted by the system’s ability to identify and predict
potential threat actions for a given mission.
The
MRPS, a laser-based Engagement Skills Trainer allowing individuals or teams up
to section level to practice direct- fire engagement in 3D scenarios; and a
tablet-based After Action Review system – both of which were also being
demonstrated – can stand alone.
However,
Cubic says that integration of all three systems and the dome provides a total
live, virtual and constructive simulation battlespace that takes up less than 10mx10m
in space and can be deployed by four personnel in less than two hours.