Battle Ground Simulations

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.

Realistic tactical simulations are beginning to proliferate, but the developers focus on simulation fidelity not on training. If used in a training context, the simulations are employed as a substitute for the live ’sandbox’. Basic data is collected and diagnostic evaluation is conducted by human observers. On the other hand, the training community has been developing intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) that can perform the key functions of a live tutor/coach. An excellent opportunity exists to couple an intelligent tutor with realistic simulations to provide supplemental training to the CTC experience.

Proposed Solution

The Virtual Combat Training Center (V-CTC) will develop an intelligent tutoring system that is plug-compatible with existing PC-based simulations. Evaluation of student actions is performed by a combination of deductive and Bayesian reasoning, not fixed decision trees. Thus the tutor has an expert level, active knowledge of domain concepts, rules and solutions and develops a rich model of what the student knows and does not know. The student model is continually updated, and influences the tutor’s strategies so that it customizes interactions and instruction to the individual student.

The tutor is hooked into an existing simulation, using software connectors, rather than extensively modifying simulations or building new ones from scratch. This approach will be demonstrated with an existing high-fidelity tactical simulation of combined-arms warfare at the battalion and company level (Armored Task Force). The tutor system is a modular to allow re-use of key components for other applications. In particular, the separation of tutor and simulation, the use of software connectors, and a software architecture approach where the tutor knowledge bases are built from reusable ontologies should all enhance portability, extensibility, and reusability.

Expected Benefits

The proposed approach will provide improved training effectiveness and cost reduction. Improved training effectiveness is due to a richer student state model, more customized tutorial interactions, and more realistic training in simulations. This improved training complements existing CTCs by providing advance training before rotation, refresher training after rotation, and greater time on task outside the CTC. System cost reductions will be due to reusable ITS components and plug-in connectors to existing and future simulations, thus leveraging millions of dollars of development cost.

The Need and Opportunity

Army training in most FORSCOM units revolves around preparing for and participating in Combat Training Centers (CTC). At these centers, the troops fight against intelligent, experienced live opponents using equipment and tactics of enemy forces. The CTCs provide invaluable live training opportunities, however these training experiences are limited due to their availability and expense. For example, in a typical National Training Center (NTC) rotation, there is only enough time to practice two to three missions on offense and on defense. According to some estimates, it costs one million dollars a day for a brigade to train at NTC. Commanders are often reassigned to new positions after a CTC rotation, leaving the new commander of the unit to learn anew what his departing predescessor had just learned.

Due to these limited resources, it is critical that the training experiences at these CTCs be optimized. The benefits of these live training experiences can be extended by providing low-cost, readily available, realistic, and relevant PC-based training prior to CTC rotations to better use the time there, and subsequent to rotations, to enhance retention and allow for in-unit follow-on training that builds on what has just been learned. This supplemental training also allows much greater time on task, allowing trainees to spend more time developing a wider range and more in-depth tactical skills and increased automaticity in applying those skills.

Simulations and games that apply to Defense needs are beginning to proliferate, some from the DoD and from entertainment. These developers are usually domain experts who do not have the interest or resources to add significant training (if any) to their simulations. If the simulations are used in a training context, they are typically employed in a similar manner as the live training centers. Basic aggregate data (e.g., number of kills) is collected and diagnostic evaluation is conducted by human observers — a reduction in equipment cost of CTCs, but still requiring observer personnel. High-end workstation simulations such as JANUS, may also require additional personnel to operate the interfaces for trainees.

A segment of the technical training community focuses on development of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) that can perform the key functions of a live tutor/coach. These tutoring systems tend to be handcrafted for each application and are expensive and time consuming to build when so developed. The members of this community are not ususally subject matter experts in military subject matter so any simulations developed by them tend to be rather low-fidelity by comparison to those developed by military subject matter experts.

We see an excellent opportunity to couple intelligent tutoring systems technology with existing subject-matter developed high-fidelity simulations to provide supplemental training to the CTC experience.

Proposed Solution

The Virtual Combat Training Center (V-CTC) is an intelligent tutoring system that is plug-compatible with existing PC-based simulations through the use of software connectors. The tutor increases the level of knowledge and expertise that commanders acquire. It does this by promoting expert ways of thinking. It teaches the leader to model the battlefield in his mind, analyze the situation against doctrine, and make doctrinally sound decisions, and rehearse these skills in a variety of situations until they become automatic.

This approach will be demonstrated with an existing high-fidelity tactical simulation of combined-arms warfare at the battalion and company level, called Armored Task Force (ATF). The predecessor to ATF, Brigade Combat Team (BCT), has been used at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) Leader Training Program (LTP). The tutoring system will be developed so that the main components (student model, domain knowledge, and tutor strategies) are reusable for other simulations. The tutor component is also intentionally designed as a separate component to existing simulations to promote its reusability.

Tutoring System. Most computer-based tutoring systems build student models based on recognition-based exercises, such as multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, and fill-in-the-blank exercises. While these types of measures are easily collected, they do not provide a full assessment of student state. Not only is it important to have knowledge about a domain, but one must also be able to apply those skills necessary to perform the tasks and do so with confidence. This tutoring system will build a skills and knowledge student model within the context of realistic scenarios and simulations. The V-CTC builds a skills and knowledge student model within the context of realistic scenarios, such as CTC exercises, and in the context of task performance in these high-fidelity simulations.

The tutor provides a real-time assessment of student state that is richer than current approaches. It includes performance-based measures of actions and choices during a realistic simulation, as well as knowledge-based measures of student plans, perceptions (e.g., of enemy threat), and explanations for actions taken or not taken. A dialog capability between the trainee and simulated instructor also provides a rich source of user modeling information, in addition to allowing the trainee to directly ask and answer questions in a natural way. The data collected includes latency and self-assessment measures that provide information for a model of confidence. A Bayesian analysis takes these various measures and forms a student state model consisting of knowledge, skills, and confidence.

Evaluation of student actions in the simulation is performed by deductive reasoning. This knowledge-based reasoning is supported by a domain knowledge representation which is a domain specific knowledge base built over domain-specific ontologies ultimately backed by a standard upper ontology. The ontologies provide a high-level organization of the knowledge, and furthers the user model’s extensibility and reusability. The domain-specific knowledge base provide the tutor with an expert level of active knowledge of domain concepts and rules and solutions. The student state model is continually updated, and influences the tutor’s strategies so that it customizes interactions to the individual student.

The tutor system will be hooked into an existing high-fidelity tactical simulation, using software connectors, rather than either extensively modifying simulations or building new ones from scratch. These hooks into the simulations allow the tutor to control basic operations of the simulation, such as starting, freezing, or replaying particular scenarios at specified points in time. They will allow the tutor opportunities to gather input from the student and provide feedback and explanations.

The tutoring system will be designed with a generic, modular architecture to enable re-use of the key components for other applications. Re-usable components include the student state model, tutoring strategies, domain knowledge representation, and the methodology for connecting the tutor and simulation. We also build the tutor separate from the simulations to allow reuse of each in multiple applications.

Simulation. The Virtual Combat Training Center concept will be demonstrated with a high-fidelity tactical simulation of combined-arms warfare at the battalion and company level, called Armored Task Force (ATF).

ATF is the recently released successor to a previous simulation called Brigade Combat Team (BCT). BCT was an innovation in that it provided most of the fidelity of JANUS (a simulation used extensively at the Command and General Staff College) but eliminated the need for high-end workstations or controllers to interpret commands. BCT included detailed scenarios from NTC training rotations, and combat situations from the first Gulf War to hypothetical engagements in Kuwait, North Korea, and Cuba. Brigade Combat Team has been used for training at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), Leader Training Program. ATF and BCT were developed by an active duty Army artillery officer, who is an observer/controller at NTC, and was previously stationed at JRTC.

The ATF game pits a friendly force of up to battalion/company size against an enemy force of up to brigade/regimental size against each other in simulated combat. ATF allows a user to take the role of the friendly forces while it plays the opposing force (OPFOR). It randomly selects from multiple enemy course of actions (COAs) stored with each scenario. The user manipulates NATO-standard icons that represent companies, platoons, or sections. Commands can be given from the company-level on down to the platoon-level and specify paths and orders for individual vehicles. Just as in modern land warfare, the user fights with and against units consisting of a wide variety of assets. These include armor, infantry, artillery, engineers, air defense, and aircraft. These units must be synchronized and massed at the key point on the battlefield to win. The cybernetic battlefield is a digitized elevation map of actual terrain and uses UTM coordinates. Actual National Training Center (NTC) maps (e.g., of Crash Hill) are used in the NTC scenarios.

ATF includes scenarios from National Training Center, the Fulda Gap in Europe, the first Gulf War and a hypothetical second Gulf War. It improves on BCT by providing a better simulation of military command since missions can now be assigned to companies and platoons and they will carry out their orders independently. ATF also includes more accurate vehicle and turret modeling, better modeling of weather effects, the addition of civilians, the addition of vehicle smoke capabilities, and an improved user interface and graphics. The maps are not hexes, but continuous terrain features including trees, buildings, and roads in contour-map representations.

BCT and ATF are real-time simulations (1X, 2X, 4X, or 8X of battle real-time) of combined arms warfare. Note that this real-time aspect is very important in helping trainees acquire an intuitive feel of how fast the battlefield changes and in learning how to synchronize different battle operating systems such as artillery and armor.

Operational concept. The Virtual Combat Training Center (V-CTC) could be used for individual development in the unit prior/after CTC rotations. The tutoring component emulates an Observer/Controller (O/C) at NTC. The virtual coach ‘pops-up’ and points out poor tactical decisions as they are being made, teaching Army doctrine at that time. Later, in the After-Action Reviews, the virtual coach summarizes what the commander did wrong and what he should have done.

The V-CTC and simulation can be used in the classroom to illustrate tactical concepts. It can be used to train commanders in different echelons and for networked team training for different roles such as FSO, S-2, and S-3.

Expected Benefits

The Combat Training Centers (CTCs) provide invaluable live training opportunities, however these training experiences are limited due to their availability and expense. Providing relevant training with high fidelity simulations before and after CTC rotations can benefit live training experiences and enhance retention. It is only through the use of simulations that trainees can acquire the hundreds to thousands of hours of training that is required to developed expertise without incurring the time, expense, and risk inherent in live training and real combat.

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) coupled with high fidelity simulations can provide this supplemental training. ITS provide individualized instruction with the potential 2 sigma (standard deviation) improvement that good human tutors can accomplish.

We expect that the proposed Virtual Combat Training Center will provide the following advantages and benefits:

Improved quality of training

• With richer student model to inform tutor strategies
• With tutor strategies adaptive to the individual
• With more realistic simulation-based training

Reduced cost of training

• With re-usable ITS components
• By leveraging the millions of development dollars for PC-based simulations
• By providing advance and refresher training to supplement live training exercises

Low-cost training available anywhere and anytime

• Inexpensive platform and software
• Runs on a lap-top PC (lightweight, compact and portable)
• Requires no special peripherals (just a keyboard and mouse)
• Works well in remote and noisy environments as the primary interface is visual, not auditory

A high-fidelity simulated task environment coupled with an intelligent training system with a rich student state model is a vast improvement over current computer-based training programs. This new approach can transform military training by providing continuously available, on-demand mission-level training for all forces at all echelons.

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.

“It tells you everything. The computer calculates time, space and distance to the second. On every shot fired, there’s feedback. And all it costs is electricity,” Graziano said.

One of only six EST facilities in the Army, Fort Bragg’s EST has been open for five years, said Graziano. Each setup can accommodate up to 10 Soldiers, who employ computer-connected weapons.

The difference between EST and video game: realism

As real-life combat scenarios play a screen before them, the Soldiers’ reactions are collected and analyzed by the computer for review. Depending on what the Soldiers do or don’t do, the computer adjusts the scenario.

What separates the EST from first-person shooter video games is its realism, said Graziano. Every weapon used in the EST is a real weapon that has been modified, rather than a replica. The action, recoil and feel of the weapons are no different than they would be on the range, he said.

Soldiers using the EST are not limited to firing only M-4s or M-16s. The facility has versions of virtually every weapon system used by the Army, Graziano said.

“If they’ve got it in the arms room, we’ve got it here,” he said.

Each “round” that the weapons fire at the screen is actually a laser beam that is tracked and analyzed by the EST computer. If the round hits one of the enemy fighters on the screen, the computer adjusts the scenario to show that he has been wounded or killed.

Paratroopers from 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, trained on the EST April 19.

Inside one of the dark rooms, Sgt. 1st Class Donel Hagelin monitored the computer while five Paratroopers got into position on the firing lanes. Hagelin commanded them to lock and load.

On screen, a white van came to a halt at the end of a sandy, desert road. Two unarmed men dismounted and began yelling in Arabic. Then, from the back of the van, two additional men ran out with AK-47s. Instantly, the Paratroopers unleashed a hail of simulated bullets at the screen. In seconds, it was all over.

During the replay, it became clear that one of the Paratroopers had shot at the unarmed men running away. Hagelin corrected him on the spot.

“Situational awareness, men – I can’t stress that enough. That’s something you’re going to have to live with if you kill someone who is just caught in the crossfire,” he said.

After running through several more scenarios, Hagelin was enthusiastic about the value of the EST. The simulator allowed him to give precise feedback to his Paratroopers, and gave them a chance to work on their techniques without having to waste rounds at the range, he said.

“It’s the fastest way to train troops and the easiest way to save money,” he said.

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.

Fortunately I didn’t get a scratch though, as contrary to the rumour going round the office I haven’t signed up for a tour of duty with a mercenary company – I’ve been taking part in these real-world conflicts on my PC using VBS2.

Virtual Battlespace 2, or VBS2 to its friends, is a battlefield simulator developed by Bohemia Interactive Australia, the sister company of Bohemia Interactive, the developers of Operation Flashpoint and Arma: Armed Assault. However, although OFP and Arma are a good deal more realistic than most games, I’d hesitate to describe VBS2 as a game.

VBS2 is based on the same graphics engine as the game Arma: Assault Assault.

For starters, up until a couple of months ago you had to be a government organisation with a multi-million dollar IT budget such as the US Marine Corps or the British Ministry of Defence to even buy a copy of VBS2. That all changed recently though, as BIA decided it was okay to sell a version of VBS2 direct to consumers. At £275, VBS2 Personal Edition is still a lot more expensive than a typical PC game, but being the sort of person who enjoys arguing the merits of the seven different marks of Sten gun, I thought it worth taking for a spin.

Apart from the eye-watering price a number of things quickly become apparent when you try VBS2 for the first time. For starters, because even the cut-down Personal Edition version includes so many different units and maps it’s supplied on two DVDs. Secondly, like some professional graphics applications VBS2 PE is supplied with a USB dongle. This comes in a variety of colours, depending on the length and type of license you have purchased and prevents the simulation from loading without it being inserted in a USB port.

My first experience of VBS2 PE didn’t get off to particularly good start. Like most gamers I’m used to clicking on the game icon in the Start menu and then diving in. With VBS 2 PE however the default icon loads a ‘rights limited’ version of the simulation. In this mode you can’t adjust any of the graphics or audio settings, let alone remap any of the controls. I suppose this is to stop squaddies messing around with the computers they run VBS2 on, but VBS2 PE is the first ‘game’ I can think of with such a limitation. A quick visit to the manual suggested trying clicking on the Administrator mode icon – which treats you like a responsible adult and unlocks all the menus.

The next hurdle is trying to find something to ‘play’. Unlike other games, even non-linear games such as Team Fortress 2, which include a lot of pre-made missions or levels, VBS2 PE is surprisingly sparse. The main menu provides several options, but none are really conducive to jumping in and playing. There are a couple of training scenarios, but these are only really designed to get you used to the default controls as you navigate your avatar through an assault course.

The best menu to try is the Library – which allows you to view in 3D all the units and objects included in VBS2 PE. These vary from the insanely detailed; such as 13 different models of Warrior MICV, to the more mundane; four different breeds of dog, a tractor and a concrete mixing truck, just to name a few. The Library also allows you jump in and control any of these objects, setting you a number of different challenges, from the bizarre; racing a Challenger 2 MBT around a track, to the humdrum: shooting up a collection of trucks in your Apache attack helicopter.

The plethora of sea, air and land (both pedestrian and vehicles) units is one of the biggest differences between VBS2 PE and most games. Although VBS PE doesn’t simulate aircraft as well as Flight Sim X or boats as well as Ship Simulator it provides enough realism for soldiers from various military disciplines to train together in one giant virtual environment. This networking is hugely important, as one of the most crucial parts of training is teaching soldiers to work together as a unit. A virtual battlefield simulator such as VBS2 is thus immensely useful, as it allows soldiers to train to work together without much of the cost, or risk of training out in the field.

You too can walk the streets of Baghdad and get shot at by guerillas if you want. Just be careful not to shoot any civlians.

Unless you have downloaded some user-made missions from one of the several end-user accessible VBS2 forums such as Razors Edge, you’ll need to make a mission of your own to play. This can be done in the Mission Editor, which allows you to create hugely detailed scenarios with full control of the environment including the date, time and weather. In addition to simply plonking down units onto the map you can also script them to behave in a certain way, for example to wait in ambush or patrol a certain area. If works in much the same way as the scenario editor included in Bohemia Interactive’s games, but has many more options.

You can easily make your own missions in VBS2 – in this case a recreation of the Iranian Embassy siege of 1980.

The final part of VBS2 is the After Action Review, which acts much like the ‘instant replay’ feature found in the TV coverage of sporting events, allowing you to view what just happened in the game world. While this provides limited amusement for gamers, for the military it’s a key feature, as it allows instructors to show the troops where they went wrong after the battle so that they learn from the experience.

Although, on the surface, VBS2 plays like pretty much any first person shooter/driving/flying game it soon becomes apparent that this is no game at all. For example, while mainstream PC games have been slow to introduce a limitation on the amount of weapons and ammo your avatar can carry around, VBS2 has a sophisticated inventory system that takes into account the weight and volume of items. No more carrying around four rifles, half a dozen rockets and a crate full of ammo then.

VBS2 is also very uncompromising when it comes to the level of difficulty. Although it’s far easier to aim and shoot with the mouse than it is to aim and fire a real assault rifle, staying alive in VBS2 is still a real challenge – the 21st century battlefield is positively crammed with sharp bits of metal flying through the air at high-speed with your name on them. While you can slow down and accelerate time if you’re fighting a single-player battle, in multiplayer missions you can’t tweak the laws of physics to help you out in this way.

As VBS2 was first made available to government users in April 2007, it doesn’t have the best looking 3D engine. Still, although its graphics are several light years ahead of traditional military simulators, such as the British Army’s £400 million Combined Arms Tactical Trainer built by Lockheed Martin, it’s no Crysis. Still, the maps in Crysis are typically no more than 6,400 hectares, barely enough for a fast moving aircraft to turn around, compared to VBS2’s up to one million hectare maps.

The graphics in a traditional military simulator, such as the British Army’s CATT are truly atrocious by PC game standards.

As a gamer however, even one with a strong interest in military history, VBS2 has one principal fault – it’s not much fun. This is no doubt in part due to the tiny user community – VBS2 is only really worth playing online with other people, and at £275 precious few gamers have bought VBS2.

It can be hugely rewarding to complete a tough and realistic mission, but when you can get a very similar experience from a heavily modded version of Arma for £24.99, VBS2 PE suddenly isn’t a very attractive proposition, even for a hardened military geek such as myself.

Perhaps if the developers had decided to sell VBS2 PE sooner, then it would have given more time for the price to trickle down to a more acceptable level and allow the modding community longer to get to sink its teeth into the engine’s huge potential. After all, out of the box Arma suffers from many of the same problems as VBS2 PE – but most of issues have been addressed by an extremely active modding community.

Ultimately, while VBS2 is undoubtedly a fantastic training tool, and a huge leap forward in graphical fidelity from proprietary military simulators, for gamers, VBS2 PE is an interesting but costly distraction from Arma II.

by James Gorbold or bit-tech.net

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RSI has built a proud history and a leading market position in the government and infrastructure sectors by being a low-cost, high-efficiency and absolutely reliable service provider. Not only is RSI the largest contractor for the United States Army and a top-ten contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, it is currently the world’s largest defense services provider.

RSI is also an industry leader in transforming hydrocarbon resources into value across all sectors of the energy and chemicals industries. By designing and constructing energy and petrochemical projects that offer the latest and best process and design technologies, we have established a solid position as a partner to oil and gas operators in meeting the ever-increasing demand for energy.

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.

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.

The annual demonstration, Empire Challenge (EC), conducted by USJFCOM and its partners on behalf of the under secretary of Defense for intelligence (USD(I)), focuses on providing ISR support to warfighters. Empire Challenge participants include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and NATO.

Full article here: LINK

Science and engineering are advancing rapidly in part due to ever more powerful computer simulations, yet the most advanced supercomputers require programming skills that all too few U.S. researchers possess. At the same time, affordable computers and committed national programs outside the U.S. are eroding American competitiveness in number of simulation-driven fields.

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ensf%2Egov%2Fnews%2Fnews_summ%2Ejsp%3Fcntn_id%3D114718%26org%3DNSF%26from%3Dnews&urlhash=7DuE&_t=disc_detail_link

The Premier Asia-focused Defence Simulation Training & Wargaming Event of the Year!   In order to further simulation, training and wargaming initiatives throughout Asia, IQPC is proud to announce its inaugural event on the subject, focusing on local requirements, as well as international case studies.

Asian Armies, Navies and Air Forces in the region are training on newly purchased platforms, and working together through joint exercises and networked simulations. No other event in Asia provides a forum for true international discussion on strategic and operational level subjects for this community.

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Virtusphere was an invited co-exhibitor this past weekend with the traveling Virtual Army Experience at the Greater Binghamton Air Show, NY. Virtusphere was demonstrated by many members of the US Army and staff of the Virtual Army Experience with postive feedback.

Local Fox News affiliate provided coverage of Virtusphere at the air show and includes comments for Sergeant Tommy Rieman, Real Heroes Program Manager and can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/mrfuww .

Virtusphere welcomes any feedback and opportunites from defense industry customers and application developers.

In a large tan tent at the Inlet in Ocean City, the U.S. Army has set up a virtual battlefield in which people can participate in a simulated mission, based off the U.S. Army video game, “America’s Army.”

People who are at least 13-years-old can enter the tent and start with an orientation to a mission, like providing humanitarian aid to civilians in Iraq. Then participants enter a cavernous room with several mock military vehicles and a helicopter.

The simulation begins and the participants face enemy insurgents they must shoot with fake guns. Projection walls surround the vehicles with images of the battle scene.

“You just saw the insurgents around you, and you just made sure you had to get them and not get the civilians,” said 16-year-old Cy Jarrett.

The Army says it’s using the experience to get their own messages out and to get people thinking about joining the military.

“There’s a good chance after high school I’d join the military,” 15-year-old Julian Tyler said after participating in the simulation.

Recruiters and Army personnel were available to guide participants through the event and answer questions after their experience.

“This is a recruitment tool, but it’s also here for educational purposes,” said Sgt. Jason Mike, who was awarded a Silver Star for surviving a gun fight in Iraq and saving the lives of fellow soldiers. ”We’re here to educate people on what the army can offer.”

In the simulation there is no real-life gore or real violence.

“We’re rated ‘T’ for teen. Like I said, we’re here for an educational purpose. That doesn’t need to be shown. I think everyone understands that happens with warfare, so that doesn’t need to be explained,” said Sgt. Mike.

But some parents criticize the army for not showing the actual effects and consequences of war, and for allowing young teens to participate in the simulation.

“The games are there and the kids think nothing is going to happen to them when they get older. I think it has an effect on a lot of those school issues,” said William Bean, who is the parent of several young children visiting Ocean City.

Either way, the lines outside the simulation continue to grow.

Reported by Steve Dorsey