U.S. Army Training conforms to shifts in strategy, tactics.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

Emerging threats to U.S. national security and growing restrictions on the services' ability to conduct live training are key reasons why advanced simulators and virtual combat environments must be adaptable and, preferably, portable, said Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Seay, head of the U.S. Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM).

Soldiers today train for a wide range of missions--from peacekeeping and nation stabilization to small-scale and full-blown conflicts, he explained. That makes it imperative that training equipment be flexible.

"You never know where you are going to be called," he said during a speech to an industry conference. "You don't know what you don't know."

U.S. troops, he said, have to have "the ability to potentially spin the dice a different way."

"You are not going to be able to call all the players on the ground at one point in time before you go. In some cases, you have to have the ability to interoperate thousands of miles away," he said.

Diminishing land available for live training, urbanization, airspace restrictions and environmental regulations all curtail the opportunities available for live drills. Ideally, a soldier wants to train "on a piece of dirt or a piece of terrain where you can do it again and again," he said. For that reason, Seay emphasized, simulation and war gaming are essential to closing the gap in training, or to addressing shortcomings that soldiers suffer when they deploy to certain theaters of war for the first time.

The simulators should, preferably, be transportable. "We have to have the ability to do this on the move," he stressed. "We never had the opportunity to bring everybody together to make sure we understand who is on the right and who is on the left. We have to have the ability to train wherever we are. We have to be able to train on the move and in the air."

Further, Seay explained, "We need the ability to interoperate as we move. ... This is the type of capability to give everybody--the ability to do mission rehearsal and mission planning en route."

Future Combat System

Much of the technology that Seay talks about eventually could come to fruition when the Army fields the Future Combat System, during the next decade.

The FCS is a family of manned and unmanned combat vehicles that operates as a network, or a "system of systems." Not only is the Army spending billions of dollars on the development of FCS, but it has also chartered the Institute for Creative...