‘How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him. ... Read More
The Combined Arms Center Capability Development Integration Directorate Battle Command Battle Laboratory completed the most complex, challenging and significant experiment ever undertaken by the Experimentation Community of Practice May 21. What distinguishes Talon Strike/Omni Fusion 2010 from other Army experiments is that it was designed to investigate United Kingdom-U.S. battle command interoperability for a 2010 U.K. joint medium weight capability brigade operating as part of a 2010 U.S. modular force division and provide an assessment of current force battle command capabilities to enable a more effective and interoperable U.K.-U.S. coalition force. ... Read More
The military pours plenty of money into training and simulations, but their video game-style trainers are often dull and static, and involve sitting or standing in front of a large, unmoving screen. So now the Army is trying out a more immersive approach with a new training helmet that allows trainees to move around in a 360-degree virtual environment. ... Read More
A defense division of Cubic Corporation has developed a new weapon simulator that replicates the characteristics of a Gatling-style gun, firing up to 3,000 rounds a minute. The Cubic division recently received a total of $5 million in contracts to supply the M134D trainer and other training equipment to multiple locations in the United States. ... Read More
To help enhance its computer-based games for training efforts, the U.S. Army brought together about 150 of its best Virtual Battlespace 2, or VBS2, players and developers from around the country from Feb. 23-25 2010. ... Read More
The Combat Training Centers (CTCs) provide invaluable live training opportunities, however these training experiences are limited due to their availability and expense. Providing readily available, relevant, and realistic training prior to and subsequent to CTC rotations can significantly enhance the benefits of these live training experiences. ... Read More
September 1st, 2009
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Soldiers have a time-honored way of figuring out what happened after a firefight. They sit down together and hash it out, endlessly going over every moment of the battle as they try to determine who shot first, who hit their target, who missed, etc. Because of the limits of memory and perspective, some of those questions could never be answered. Today, however, a high-tech device called the Engagement Skills Trainer is giving Soldiers new insights into the anatomy of a firefight. The EST is an interactive combat simulator. Using the EST, Soldiers encounter virtual combat engagements and receive instant feedback from the computer on every shot fired, without the costs or safety risks of firing real ammunition, said Michael Graziano, EST facility instructor. ... Read More
This week I’ve performed a stop and search patrol in downtown Baghdad, escorted a convoy of trucks through Basra and taken part in a heliborne assault on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. ... Read More
Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs Director Daniel W. Grant undergoes a virtual reality combat simulation that is used to help treat military veterans with Post-traumatic stress disorder. ... Read More
It’s a ghost army which exists only on video screens, but it is helping U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) as it conducts a live joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) demonstration that spans locations around the globe. ... Read More
