Defence Business: SimTect 2010 - connecting makers to users | ADM Jul 2010

SimTect 2010 brought together a range of simulation companies and interested parties across the defence, health and mining sector to look at strengthening the bonds between the communities.

But where were the decision makers from Defence?

Katherine Ziesing | Brisbane

SimTect 2010 has highlighted the disconnect between developers and users of simulation technology with it’s theme of ‘improving capability and reducing the cost of ownership’.

In his keynote address Major General Steve Day, Joint Capability Coordinator in the Vice Chief of the Defence Force office spoke of the need for evolutionary rather than revolutionary growth in how simulation is used in the Defence space.

“The White Papers and Vice Chief of the Defence Force Lieutenant General David Hurley have championed the use of simulation as a vital and growing issue in Defence,” MAJGEN Day told delegates.

“But our focus is clearly on operations and the support that simulation can bring to ADF operations around the world.

“This is why we need evolutionary rather than revolutionary growth as we simply do not have the time or the people for any other approach.”

MAJGEN Day also spoke of the tendency for Defence to be ‘seduced’ by the technology or latest gadget rather than focussing on the outcome; a well-informed decision or training solution.

With this in mind, examples of different ownership models such as public private partnerships, private finance initiative or the Florida Simulation Precinct of Team Orlando.

Team Orlando is located within and around the Central Florida Research Park campus setting on the east side of the city of Orlando, adjacent to the University of Central Florida.

This close physical collocation allows the primary simulation and training solution providers from the across the military Services to not only judiciously team with one another, but also team with leading experts in industry and academia.

This sounds a lot like the virtual hub of simulation expertise that NSW Defence Advisor John Blackburn was proposing for RAAF Richmond.

The Australian Defence Simulation Office (ADSO) was keen to showcase that the Defence Synthetic Environment (DSE) is up and running, acting a gateway for numerous simulation programs to act in concert.

The DSE is now able to fuse together programs that use High Level Architecture (HLA), Federation Object Model (FOM) and Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) within Australia and with allies such as the US and UK.

While there was much speculation about the size and scope of the only Defence Capability Plan simulation project, JP3028, ADSO confirmed that the scoping studies on the project would not begin until 2012 with deliverables not due until 2016-2017 at the very earliest.

There was a feeling in a panel discussions that getting industry’s hopes too high would see another overload in industry capacity faced with negligible demand, and funding, from Defence.

This is oversupply of simulation and experimentation services in the past 10 years (Boeing’s Systems Analysis Lab, Thales’ ATiC, QinetiQ’s ACELab etc) came to light when champions of simulation within Defence were moved to other postings, without leaving behind structure to support their enthusiasm.

ADSO Director General Simulation Dr Mike Brennan was keen to point out that delegates needed to engage with decision makers at other events such as the Pacific naval shows, Land Warfare Conference and service conferences rather than just SimTect.

Dr Brennan explained that while he was trying to increase the appetite within Defence for simulation and collate demand as much as possible, it was still up to the industry to better explain the capabilities of their offerings to a customer that may not have an appreciation of the solutions on offer.

I see red

Katherine Ziesing | Brisbane

Virtual Reality Solutions (VRS) was on hand to showcase the latest display offering from Christie; an infra red (IR) projector.

The Matrix projector series is the first in the world to project in standard modes as well as IR, making training with night vision equipment easier for forces.

The system was launched in the US in November last year and has since shipped over 350 units around the globe, mainly to military customers for training facilities and to fellow defence companies in the simulation space.

“Pilots can bring in their own night vision gear for any simulation, so they train with their everyday equipment,” Michael Bosworth VRS director told ADM.

“Assets will ‘flare’ in the simulation as they would in real life.

“The system can be ruggedised and fitted as part of a training solution or in a full motion simulator.”

The system also boasts solid state LEDs as the light source, meaning the quality of the projector is the same of the life of the LEDs rather than the previous generation of arc lamp projectors that had a variable performance over time.

Eye on the prize

Capturing technical and non-technical skills in simulated or live environments has, until recently, been a challenge.

Systems developed in the past for Observer/Trainers to use to capture subjective assessments during team dimensional training have been very basic (pad and pencil) or often too heavily focused on the power of technology (heavy electronic tablets with too much functionality).

These solutions under-perform on various counts: the assessment data is non-standard and/or personalised and difficult/impossible to transfer for subsequent use; the assessment process is too engaging for the Observer/Trainer who spends too much time in a head-down pose rather than observing the trainees.

VoTech System Engineers and Developers Pty Ltd have produced a flexible framework to address this challenge – TeamTalk.

Launched at Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference I/ITSEC 09, the Australian debut was at SimTect this year.

The system was developed in the response to a need identified at the Maritime Operations room at HMAS Watson.

Assessors at Watson concentrate on qualitative and constructive feedback, and this aspect drove the style of content and presentation used in the prototype.

Before the training session begins, Observer/Trainers load their PDAs with the appropriate set of standardised competencies, comments and qualifiers associated with the exercise.

Once in session, Observer/Trainers can then easily select the comments they wish to make through TeamTalk’s context driven navigation framework.

Furthermore, the interface uses large format, fixed and variable action selection buttons to minimise the head-down time.

After Action Review can occur immediately after the session with the same ease of navigation.

Finally, all data can be transferred to a desktop environment for report compilation and further analysis.