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.