Inside simulators, soldiers learning to operate Strykers.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Tactical Vehicles

* For years, the Army has taught soldiers how to operate its vehicles by putting them behind the wheels of tanks and trucks and letting them drive around in the motor pool. But as those vehicles become more technologically sophisticated, they're becoming less expendable for driver training and even more complicated to teach.

In new vehicles such as the eight-wheeled Stryker armored personnel carrier, drivers sit in a space that resembles more of a cockpit than a traditional vehicle cab. "You can almost compare it to an aircraft because of the numbers of systems he's got to operate, as well as drive," said Maj. Dan Gamel, assistant product manager of the common driver trainer at the Army's program executive office for simulation, training and instrumentation, or PEO-STRI.

Just as the aviation industry has embraced flight simulators to train pilots inside virtual airplane cockpits, the Army is turning to immersive trainers that realistically replicate the driver cabs and motions of its vehicles.

Last month PEO-STRI completed deliveries of 14 simulators called the common driver trainer. Set upon a six-degree-of-motion electromechanical base, the simulator not only replicates the interior of a vehicle driver cab, but it also mimics the vehicle's performance characteristics.

"The driver gets in the vehicle and gets all the inputs and outputs that he would in an actual vehicle. It acts like a real vehicle, and it acts according to the driver's inputs," said Mike Kerrigan, program manager for simulations at Science Applications International Corp., during an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference.

The trainer can accommodate different types of vehicle cabs. So far, the team has produced a Stryker combat vehicle variant.

The eight-wheeled Stryker vehicles have an air braking system, so the trainer also contains an air system to simulate the braking, and the motion base reproduces the rocking motion in the cab.

"Stryker drivers told us they could feel the different axles in the simulated trainer," said Gamel in an...