PM TRASYS Provides Acquisition Updates at I/ITSEC 2024

By Shane Klestinski, Associate Editor

Senior representatives of the Marine Corps’ Program Manager for Training Systems office gave attendees of this year’s Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) an acquisition update in Orlando, Florida, Dec. 2.

 

I/ITSEC is the world’s largest modeling, simulation and training (MS&T) event that occurs every year during the week immediately after Thanksgiving. It draws thousands of MS&T professionals to the Orange County Convention Center, to include high-ranking civilian and military government officials, C-suite industry executives, and senior academics from leading research institutions.

 

John Taylor, deputy program manager for PM TRASYS, led the session that included Marine Lt. Col. Rory Hermann, product manager for Range Training Systems (RTS); Elizabeth Tygart, product manager for Synthetic Training Systems (STS); and Marine Lt. Col. Marcial Garcia, product manager for Warfighter Training Support (WTS). The session focused on discussing updates for requirements and opportunities PM TRASYS was working toward with respect to its various programs.

 

Hermann described his RTS portfolio as “basically everything you would think of as traditional, Marine Corps training.” This included live exercises with Marines on a physical firing range shooting live rounds in realistic settings to prepare them for deployment. In the case of force-on-force training, for example, the Marine Corps’ Tactical Instrumentation System in Hermann’s portfolio involved blank rounds with lasers that indicated effects on targets in real time. This type of training records hits if a Marine is “shot” during an exercise, and was once considered “laser tag for Marines,” but he noted that the system is more advanced than in earlier iterations.

 

“I can tell if a Marine is standing up, lying down, running, walking or being carried by an aircraft,” Hermann said. “It also instruments buildings, and we’ve instrumented up to 28 buildings in Twenty-nine Palms and 300 basic vehicles… that Marines use to get from point A to point B on the battlefield. This gives us the ability to look at, not just how Marines fight in a tactical engagement, but how they move logistically in a tactical environment from point to point.”

 

Hermann said this system has completed its initial fielding and evaluators have achieved its initial operating capability, and his team is now working toward full operating capability with Saab, the prime vendor.

 

Tygart’s portfolio update involved collective and virtual training simulators and simulations. She went on to explain that PM TRASYS currently had 12 programs of record that included staff training, and the live-virtual-constructive training environment (currently in a state of transition). Other training systems included those that focus on vehicle driving, convoys, gunnery, marksmanship and the family of (vehicle) egress trainers that recently transferred to the STS portfolio.

 

“This includes the dry and underwater egress trainers,” Tygart said. “The Multi-Use Egress Trainer is in the process of getting a ‘milestone C’ decision for us to go into production. It is a sole-source opportunity through the Navy contract, but it will be a one-for-one replacement of the submerged vehicle egress trainer, and it will replicate the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, and the Light Armored Vehicle.

 

Garcia explained that WTS was “a little bit of a different program office.” He said that WTS had evolved over the years, although his portfolio mainly existed to enable PM TRASYS activities and to support the efforts of the other two portfolios, as well as the needs of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command and the Fleet Marine Force. Garcia went on to emphasize that his job has him principally act as “an enabler” that focuses on things already fielded. He regularly interacts with customers, and he is the manager responsible for all the forward-position PM TRASYS personnel across the globe. Another requirement of his office involves meeting the training needs that differ among various units and regions, for example, those of Marines in Camp Lejeune versus Marines in Twenty-nine Palms.

 

“The [Marine air-ground task forces] think very differently overseas than they do in the continental U.S. [CONUS],” Garcia said. “As a result, we have relationship management concerns, communications management concerns, and we also have [to resolve] material solutions and the vendors who can support regionally, within CONUS, but they aren’t interested in a Guam problem. Those are just some of the complexities.”

 

Taylor led a brief Q&A session after the product managers presented their updates. PM TRASYS offers similar updates during its monthly PALT sessions, which it often co-hosts with U.S. Army Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation.