Defense Dept. shifts course in procurement of simulations.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Transforming Training

Pentagon officials are rethinking their approach to managing war-gaming simulation programs in a move to avoid costly missteps that led to the cancellation of a billion-dollar project a year ago.

At issue is the need to provide officers with better simulations for battle-command and other forms of leadership training.

Although each service owns an extensive array of computer war-gaming systems, the Defense Department has been pushing them to consolidate their simulations into a "joint" rather than service-specific setup.

In 1994, the Pentagon launched the Joint Simulation System program, which was aimed at combining land, air and maritime simulations into a single digital environment. A decade, and a billion dollars later, JSIMS failed to accomplish that goal. The program was plagued by cost overruns, delays and overall poor performance. Its funding stream dried up in 2004.

Officials at the office of the secretary of defense were directed more than a year ago to assess the state of the technology and report back with recommendations on how the Defense Department should fund and manage joint simulations programs. The study, titled, "Training Capabilities Analysis of Alternatives," was completed in August. It concluded that, rather than start a new program to replace JSIMS, the Defense Department should backtrack and reassess its requirements for joint-simulation systems.

The report noted: "Improving joint training is a complex problem, and all issues could not be resolved within the time and resources allotted for conducting the training capabilities analysis of alternatives."

Representatives from the office of the deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness, Paul Mayberry, and officials from U.S. Joint Forces Command were in charge of the study. The goal was to make an "assessment of joint service training with an eye to coming up with cost effective methods to accomplish that training," said Fred Hartman, one of the study's directors.

"The nature of our study changed from what people had anticipated--go back and figure out how to do another JSIMS program--to wisely take a step back and look at training on a larger perspective, try to find cost effective methods to solve the current gaps in training," Hartman told National Defense.

Joint simulations are not as complex from a technology standpoint as they are difficult to manage and oversee, the study concluded.

JSIMS serves as a cautionary tale, Hartman said. "It became a large...