Army leaning on new crop of soldier system simulators.

• Author: Feuss, Taylor

* As limited budgets and time constraints make live training more difficult, the Army must continue to rely on simulators to prepare soldiers for combat, industry and government representatives said at a recent exposition on Capitol Hill.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said simulators help train warfighters in a way that saves money, time and lives. "It makes sense. It does save lives. It's a step into the future," he said at the Capitol Hill Modeling and Simulation Exposition sponsored by the National Training and Simulation Association.

Vendors and military program managers lined up at the event to show their latest wares.

Modeling and simulation has "underpinned" Army training, experimentation, analysis and operations for more than three decades, according to a statement by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Its Athena Simulation, a laptop-based decision support system, is TRADOC's latest contribution to the field.

The Army uses Athena to better understand how different social, economic and political situations can affect an area over time, said Matt Reynolds, senior analyst at TRADOC's data science, models and simulations operational environment lab.

By evaluating all political, military, economic, social, infrastructure and time variables, Athena provides decision makers with potential outcomes for their anticipated courses of action, allowing them to make better informed operational decisions, he said.

"[You] say, 'okay, here we are' and you want to do X, Y and Z in a given area ... What comes out of it is trend lines. It will show influence of a given actor, of a different force group that's in an area over time. It will show control that that actor has in a given area. It will show the mood of the population ... It will go from day one to three years out and you can watch the political control, influence [and] security change in each neighborhood over time," Reynolds said.

Greg Mueller, a TRADOC spokesperson, said the trend lines Athena produces "indicate changes in non-combatant populations' satisfaction levels or mood, levels of volatility and/or stability in an area, and the relationships between actors and civilian groups and/or force groups."

The software was previously deployed in Jordan in 2013 to assist Central Command Forward in understanding the Syrian refugee crisis. Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve and its support staff in Kuwait now uses it to aid in the fight against ISIS, Reynolds said.

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