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"Four Hotel Five Echo, approaching final objective, receiving heavy fires from the south." He then hears another call: "Five Poppa Six, enemy tank unit approaching from the north." What does he do? What support does he have? He can see from the last status reports that his reserve is lagging and can't get into position for another hour. Where is his artillery? He decides he must support B Company, but his fire support officer failed to tell the artillery to move up. "Seven Tango Hotel, Remote Pilot Vehicle sighting probable enemy battalion." What is happening? Where are we? Is this a scene from the last war? No, the Officer and his staff are actually in a Command and Control vehicle mock-up in a classroom in Bell Hall at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, participating in the Digital Leader's Reaction Course (DLRC) as part of the training at the Army's Command and General Staff College. And where is the cast of hundreds to drive this exercise for these selected staff officers? They are nonexistent. The entire situation is created by a set of interactive simulations programmed to provide this dynamic, immersive environment. The synergism of MITRE's advance research in multiple domains and Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center's (TRAC) operational analysis expertise has created this unique training environment, which taxes the combat leaders in their decision-making capabilities without the requirements of vast exercise support personnel and equipment. MITRE's expertise in basic research areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Networking, Distributed Simulations, and Decision Theory, combined with our expertise in command and control modeling and knowledge of command and control equipment, has made this course a reality. Development of and experimentation with prototype software have been underway in the Joint Virtual Laboratory, a collaborate project between MITRE and TRAC. The primary objective of the DLRC is to train battle staff to use advances in information warfare to win the next war. It will provide an environment to train leaders how to visualize the battlespace and make tactical decisions in a time-constrained, digitized environment. MITRE's challenge is to create this environment so that the Staff Officer feels totally immersed in the ongoing battle. The illusion becomes reality as officers fight the battle and make life-and-death decisions. Just as an aviator climbs out of his F15 simulator soaked with sweat after a simulated air-to-air engagement, these officers must be taxed and challenged so they forget they are only in a mock-up and experience the intensity of the fight. To create this environment, MITRE is combining several simulations, both combat and environmental, and interfacing them to fielded Command and Control systems such as the Maneuver Control System, Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System, and All Source Analysis System. The core simulation used to drive the DLRC is the Eagle Combat Model. This model, developed by TRAC and modified by MITRE, combines techniques normally associated with artificial intelligence for representing Command and Control decision making and classic algorithmic solutions for representing the physical dynamics of the battlefield. The Eagle Combat Model represents commanders and staff sections at each level of a tactical military operation, all operating from operations orders, which are driven by combat message traffic being passed up and down the chain of command. In the DLRC, the cognitive processing used in the simulation turns over the responsibility for the thinking process to the live people who are being trained. All others, including the enemy, remain in the simulation. The simulation allows for dynamic two-way interaction between the live staff players and the simulated subordinate and superior headquarters in the model. Information is passed to the live players through their C4I equipment and simulated radio traffic. The staff officers see and hear the battle. Their equipment has been modified to allow the staff to communicate directives and requests to fight the battle. The staff can also view the battlefield using a three-dimensional viewer made possible by a unique process that allows disaggregation of the Eagle combat units into the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) environment, using among other things the Command Forces software developed for the Synthetic Theater of War (STOW) program. By allowing Eagle's simulated commands to play those units that are not directly being played by the training audience, the normally required support staff and personnel will be significantly reduced. A key element in any training environment is the ability to capture information to evaluate the productivity of the training. The Eagle combat model will be the focus of this collection effort. The model captures all information that is fed to the C4I equipment and any directives or requests from the training audience. The after-action review process can at any time display the information that was presented to the staff and the subsequent decisions that were made. The simulation can be run as fast as possible or in real time, depending on the requirements of the training audience. Particular sequences of events can be replayed to focus on critical training objectives. The flexibility of the design of the DLRC allows for the focus to be on the training audience, not the simulations. The glue that holds the whole thing together is the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office's new High Level Architecture (HLA). (See High Level Architecture.) The Run Time Interface of the HLA is used to provide the synchronized interoperability between these diverse computer programs. By using the HLA as the underlying architecture, the federation of participating simulations and C4I interfaces can be flexibly expanded based on the development of new C4I equipment and more advanced simulations and models. The Digital Leaders Reaction Course, in addition to its training value, provides a solid framework from which the military can better define requirements for its acquisition of future training simulations and within which new command and control doctrine and techniques can be developed and tested. For more information, please contact John Ogren using the employee directory. |
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The
Brigade Operations Officer has just seen a new enemy unit appear on
his screen and hears: