As a communications tool, the America’s Army game (www.americasarmy.com) has placed Soldiering in popular culture by providing players a means to explore training and education as integral elements of a Soldier’s development. Gamers have completed more than 600 million missions and 62 million hours virtually exploring progressive individual and collective training events ranging from basic training to Special Forces training. Recognizing the game as a great icebreaker to open a dialogue with young adults on the Army’s career opportunities and Soldiering as well as a way to sustaining DEP/Future Soldier enthusiasm, recruiters hosted more than 100 game events in 2004. Given this level of activity it is not surprising that twenty-nine percent of young Americans 16 to 24 report that America’s Army is one of their leading sources of positive awareness about the Army.
Government agencies are now capitalizing on the game by leveraging its extraordinarily engaging and realistic environments and experiences. The America’s Army Platform (AAP) has been used for a number of government applications, to include virtual learning for Force Protection, Adaptive Thinking and Leadership, Mission Rehearsal, Shortage MOS training, and First Aid training. Projects include virtual training environments for U.S. Secret Service and the America’s Army Future Soldier Trainer (AA-FST), which is currently deployed in Recruiting Stations across the U.S. to help reduce attrition of Future Soldiers. The AAP is also used to explore how Soldiers will use new systems in combat, the effectiveness systems and the costs of new weapons in terms of increased requirements for ammunition, communications or organizational structure. Using the game platform, the group has constructed virtual training tools including a Talon robot trainer and the Javelin missile trainer, both used internally by the Army.
The FSTS project was developed on the America’s Army Platform (AAP), thus allowing it to take advantage of an easy to deploy, mature, stable, and very widely-used technology base. FSTS includes a set of specially-designed features and content customized for the America’s Army game that will enhance readiness prior to a recruit beginning Basic Combat Training (BCT). The project achieved these tasks by employing a combination of interactive online instructional applications via the web, as well as individual and team-based simulations in a virtual Soldier environment, replicating those experiences that Future Soldiers can expect to encounter after they arrive at BCT.
The ultimate goal of this project was to better prepare FS prior to BCT. The content contained in the FSTS prepared them with respect to training readiness; mental/emotional readiness; and personal/family readiness.
Army Values are embedded into the scenarios developed by the America’s Army Development Team. Users will be given decision points in each scenario that allow for choosing the harder right over an easier wrong. These decision points are tracked by the master database underlying the software.
This is done using established Instructional Systems Design (ISD) methodologies. Prior to the commencement of development of training content, America’s Army personnel worked with U.S. Army FS Program Management staff and Basic Combat Training subject matter experts (SME’s) to specifically define the training scenarios that will be built for America’s Army.
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