Army Creates Video Game To Prototype New Weapons.

AuthorHarper, Jon

Under pressure to save money while speeding up the acquisition of cutting-edge technologies, the Army is turning to online gaming to help develop and test new capabilities.

A newly created video game called Operation Overmatch is part of the service's effort to engage in what it calls "early synthetic prototyping" of future weapon systems and platforms.

"This has the potential not only to guide future science and technology research, but inform the way we fight," said Maj. Gen. Robert "Bo" Dyess, acting director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center at Training and Doctrine Command.

Soldiers already spend much of their free time playing games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, he noted during a presentation at the Association of the United States Army's annual conference in Washington, D.C.

The service decided to tap into that interest and "develop something that they would utilize, both to give us insights on how they utilize weapons but also what they need in capabilities ... so that we can help the Army be more agile and more rapid in our development of weapon systems," he said.

Operation Overmatch is a collaborative effort between ARCIC and the Army Research Development and Engineering Command. It is a multiplayer/multi-team game developed by the Army Game Studio that allows soldiers to battle each other in the virtual realm with technologies that haven't actually been built yet.

"Each one of the opposing sides will ... get to choose which vehicles they want, what type of weapon systems they want, what type of environment they want--urban, mountains, lots of trees," Dyess said. "Then they'll fight with their systems" and provide feedback.

Beta testing kicked off in October. More than 500 soldiers have already signed up to participate, but the service hopes many more will choose to play the game.

"We want to get a ton of soldiers trying a ton of different things," said Lt. Col. Brian Vogt, simulations operations officer and the project lead for Operation Overmatch at ARCIC.

"Then we're going to do the data analysis," he told National Defense. "If it's a good, enduring idea it gets handed off to the S&T folks that are going to make capabilities."

Insights have already been gleaned, Dyess said. "We've already gotten some feedback in alpha testing that is very interesting to pass along to both our acquisition professionals as well as the people who do requirements generation."

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