Future Soldier Training System (FSTS) – Deployed 2005
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.
CRIS (Common Range Instrumentation Suite) RMS (Range Monitoring System) - Deployed 2002
The Range Monitoring System (RMS) is a standalone, personal-computer application that provides real-time monitoring, control and data services for instrumented soldiers and vehicles performing force-on-force engagements using simulated weapon fire. The RMS is one component of the Common Range Instrumentation System (CRIS) developed for the USMC in order to provide enhanced capabilities to perform and review simulated force-on-force engagements.
System Overview
CRIS provides the capability to conduct fully instrumented force-on-force engagements in a battlefield environment using simulated direct-fire weapons. The system consists of the Player Unit (PU) Subsystem, the Range Monitoring System (RMS) Center Subsystem, the RF Data Network Subsystem, and Field Service Equipment Subsystem. The CRIS System can be deployed on any fixed range or temporary exercise area up to 20 km2. The PU crews are able to operate tactical training exercises in near real battlefield conditions. The CRIS Subsystem includes non-intrusive PU H/W that provides a vehicle or dismounted troop with simulated fire, simulated hits, and real-time casualty assessment (RTCA). Both audible and visual cues give the players real-time indications of the status of the battlefield and the individual PUs. Figure1.1 depicts the CRIS battlefield deployment scenario.
Center provides centralized real-time monitoring and control of the training exercise as it occurs. The system displays and records a variety of parameters from the engagements, provides for real-time control and monitoring, and supports after-action playback, data analysis and presentation development. The RMS Center is a single-user system implemented as multiple processes and applications on a standalone personal computer. Figure 1.2 shows the computational architecture of the RMS.
After all player units have been programmed, the MAIS software records approximately one gigabyte of data per hour. The data is extracted from over 240 messages per second delivered via Radio Frequency (RF) from units active in the field. A full exercise can require up to eight individual operators with different roles to monitor and orchestrate up to 2000 moving components on the battlefield. Operator duties include monitoring system alarms, controlling exercise state, creating reports, monitoring the player network, recovering missed player events, and defining and executing CAS, minefield, indirect, and NBC missions. The definitions of these duties are tightly integrated to the main application window to provide interaction for all appropriate users of the system.
The RMS architecture comprises the following components:
- Oracle Database – an Oracle relational database instance provides persistent storage and access for the configuration and real-time data from the system.
- Weblogic Application Server – a BEA Weblogic J2EE application server provides the programmatic interface between the applications and the database. It includes a COTS J2EE platform, custom Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), and a COTS message-distribution component.
- RMS C&C GUI – the RMS configuration and control application runs as a Java process and provides the main user interface for the RMS. The bulk of this document describes user interactions with this GUI.
- Tactical Display – a situation awareness window built using the Solipsys COTS product provides graphical displays of the engagement on a high-resolution map background.
- Player Gateway – an independent Java process that runs when the RMS is operational and interfaces the RMS Center to the Player Units through the Nova Roam radio network.
- Alert Manager – an independent Java process that monitors alert conditions during operations and generates notifications when these conditions are met.
- Nova Roam – an RF network used to exchange commands and data among the Player Units and the RMS.
Mobile Automated Instrumentation Suite (MAIS) - Deployed 2000
The U.S. ARMY PEO STRI (PROGRAM EXECUTIVE OFFICE for SIMULATION, TRAINING, INSTRUMENTATION) required next generation technology supports for operational and force development testing of current and future weapon systems through the use of a Mobile Automated Instrumentation Suite (MAIS). The Army needed an enhanced simulation capability that could be scaled to support an ever-increasing number of war fighters participating in simulated exercises in order to assess the effectiveness of next generation weapons systems. MAIS was developed for the U.S. Army's Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) and is currently operational at the Operational Test Command (OTC) at Fort Hood, Texas. The MAIS needed to support Real Time Casualty Assessment (RTCA) and provide After Action Review (AAR) capabilities for a number of U.S. Army operational tests including M1A2 (Abrams) SEP, FBCB2 Limited User Test (LUT), and M2A3 (Bradley) IOT&E.
Comprised of a mobile Command, Control, and Communications Center (C3 Center) and five categories of Player Units (PU) as shown on the right, MAIS is capable of supporting combined arms testing or training exercises of up to 2000 participants in real-time. MAIS provides the following core capabilities for up to 9 concurrent operators required to run an engagement scenario.
MAIS needed to support tests of realistic force development in a combined arms environment. The instrumentation suite is capable of data collection, test/exercise control, and combat simulation for RTCA during force-on-force engagements. Typical training/testing will consist of a combined arms exercise including armor, mechanized infantry, logistics, engineers, field artillery, air defense artillery, minefields, aviation, and chemical weapons. MAIS has the capability to emulate threat weapons as well as friendly forces.
The key opportunity for the US Army was the ability to create very realistic battlefield engagement with up to 2000 live units and 20,000 virtual units and then monitor, control, and analyze the simulated battle in real-time. The key opportunity for Riptide was to utilize our experience in developing enterprise level software to create a scaleable multi-tier architecture using next generation Java and J2EE techniques in order to provide significant cost savings to the military over a 15-year operational software lifecycle.
The Development Process
Riptide offers a diverse set of cutting-edge products developed using the latest technologies to meet the ever changing demands of business. Riptide is a both Microsoft Certified Partner and a Sun Microsystems Certified Partner and leverages those technologies heavily.
The Tailored Solution
A multi-tier architecture consisting of Java, J2EE and XML components provide the scalability. The use of XML for device configuration provided a very flexible and scalable solution. The plug-in architecture and custom Graphical User Interface (GUI) screens allow operators to define weapon configurations. The system generates an XML configuration file that is downloaded into the player units (monitoring hardware).The support of remote load and boot provide great flexibility to the operators. Player configuration, range asset setup and player force structure definition comprise a significant portion of the exercise setup for a force-on-force engagement using the MAIS software.
After all player units have been programmed, the MAIS software records approximately one gigabyte of data per hour. The data is extracted from over 240 messages per second delivered via Radio Frequency (RF) from units active in the field. A full exercise can require up to eight individual operators with different roles to monitor and orchestrate up to 2000 moving components on the battlefield. Operator duties include monitoring system alarms, controlling exercise state, creating reports, monitoring the player network, recovering missed player events, and defining and executing CAS, minefield, indirect, and NBC missions. The definitions of these duties are tightly integrated to the main application window to provide interaction for all appropriate users of the system.
The system utilizes an intuitive workflow that guides the operators through the process of configuring the application, configuring the hardware (player units and communication devices), defining the vulnerabilities of the weapon systems, defining a force structure definition (selecting the participating units), defining an exercise definition, defining the battlefield boundaries, recording the exercise, and playback of a completed exercise for review. When practical, graphical interfaces are used to support data entry.For example, the system allows range data to be entered graphically by selecting coordinates on a map or directly entering coordinate data.The result is an accurate definition of the range with visual confirmation using a tactical display.The system collects volumes of data and stores it in an Oracle database for post processing which can then be transferred via automated means to Microsoft Office, SAS, and other third party analysis tools.
