Simulation industry lays groundwork for whatever challenges come next.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

During the decade, rapidly improving computer games and graphics met the military's demand for training systems.

While many of these systems concentrated on driving or flying vehicles, the counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan created a need for new trainers designed to boost ground troops' cultural understanding of local populations.

With the war in Afghanistan presumably winding down, and an announced strategic shift to the Asia-Pacific region, the Army's program executive office for simulation, training and instrumentation and programmers are already looking at how to adapt to new areas of operation and conflicts that may be different from the past.

"We recognize that the future environment is going to include that range of infrastructure building--handing out books and basketballs at a school in a counterinsurgency environment--up to a tank-on-tank very kinetic fight. We need adaptive leaders and units that can succeed in any of those environments," said Scott Pulford, strategic integrator at PEO STRI.

While the Army is looking at shifting training to focus on what he called the "higher spectrum of conflict," the service is not going to discard the lessons it has learned--and the investments it has made--in counterinsurgency operations, Pulford said.

Simulations where soldiers are asked to interact with a villager in order to extract information on roadside bombs, for example, will be woven into larger scenarios, he said.

But where is that next scenario going to take place? The U.S. military may find itself embroiled in a conflict in a region that is radically different from Afghanistan, both in language, cultural norms and topography.

"PEO STRI has made the investments, together with our industry partners, in flexible architectures and common components that will allow us to very efficiently move the needle towards the decision action, higher kinetic spectrum of conflict," he said.

The underlying software in these systems should allow programmers to easily change what a helicopter pilot or combat vehicle driver training sees outside his or her virtual window. They could be looking at jungle canopy rather than an arid, agricultural region found in Southwest Asia--if that is necessary.

As for the cross-cultural skills needed to win in a counterinsurgency scenario, those simulators should be malleable enough to be adapted to other situations, said James Reilly, senior training and technical support specialist at Alelo Inc., a...