Cultural radars: soldier at lowest ranks need better cultural training, officers say.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Training & Simulation

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

ORLANDO -- The objective is to teach a young soldier or Marine how to enter and clear a building.

The standard simulations that are used for military training will show various characters that pop up in rooms or hallways. Troops learn to differentiate an armed insurgent toting an AK-47 from a boy carrying a stuffed animal.

But the demanding circumstances of current wars require more sophisticated training tools, officials said. Trainees must make tough life-or-death decisions, such as what to do when they burst through a door and find a family inside. Are these innocent civilians or insurgents? Should they pull the trigger?

What is said to the family and to whom they address questions can have repercussions.

Eight years after U.S. forces went into Afghanistan, and almost six years into the Iraq war, computer simulations that are designed to teach troops how to interact with foreign cultures are still in the first generation of development. "There is a major leap forward that we have yet to make," said Frank Boosman, program management director for 3D Learning Solutions, a division of Lockheed Martin Simulation and Training Support.

In an urban setting where insurgents and U.S. forces might be in a battle for a population's "hearts and minds," how the lowest ranking soldiers and Marines conduct themselves could have far reaching implications.

Troops often must make ethical decisions in "nano-seconds," said Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, commander of the Joint Warfighting Center at Joint Forces Command.

"[Training] must replicate for these service members the kinds of tactical yet ethical based decisions upon which" their actions will be judged, he said at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education conference.

Jeff Bearor, executive deputy of the Marine Corps' Training and Education Command at Quantico, Va., said that U.S. forces, especially in Afghanistan, are operating in a more dispersed battlefield. Units there are sometimes 30 to 40 kilometers away from their support base.

Training them to operate in these environments is a "critical shortfall that all the services are going to have to be able to crack," he said.

Troops "are being asked to do more and more and we've got to provide them with capability," he added.

"The fact that they do so well, is a testament to the sort of kids that are coming into the services right now. [But] to say that we fully prepared them and trained them and prepared them to...