Senior Army NCOs Share Training Insight During I/ITSEC Panel

By Shane Klestinski, Associate Editor

Experienced, noncommissioned Army leaders discussed training the next generation of warfighters, particularly in areas where technology and readiness converge, during the “Army Senior NCO Perspective” panel during the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida, Dec. 4.

 

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.

 

Army Sgt. Maj. Tom Dow, senior enlisted advisor assigned to Program Executive Officer Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, moderated the discussion. Panelists included Army Sgt. Maj. James Card of the Army Training Support Center; Command Sgt. Maj. Bradford Smith of the Army Test and Evaluation Command; Army Sgt. Maj. Robert Haynie of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology); and Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Haydt of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM).

 

Dow began the discussion by asking Haydt about involving soldiers in the development process when looking at new capabilities. According to Haydt, the soldier is always the No. 1 priority, and that involvement is crucial.

 

“When you hear ‘soldier touchpoints’ and things of that nature, which we’re now calling ‘soldier-centric design,’ that means [soldiers] aren’t just touching it, they’re testing at the beginning and we’re leveraging soldier feedback across the whole gamut,” Haydt said. “Ultimately, what [that involvement] will do is accelerate technology, accelerate promising ideas, save time and money, and deliver capability. In addition to that, we have a program call ‘Catalyst Pathfinder’ that… is a primary builder of soldier innovation within the Army, [which represents] bottom-up refinement and innovation from the user level.”

 

According to Haydt, “Pathfinder” addresses emerging operational needs, develops government-owned initiatives, and accelerates technology transitions. The program also involves an app on most installations that allows soldiers of all ranks to submit ideas that research developers and DEVCOM personnel can use to solve problems.

 

“We’ve seen incredible [solutions, like] camo nets attached to Abrams tanks, a thermometer system to measure condensation in the barracks, and a plethora of things,” Haydt said. “The soldiers love the innovation, and junior leaders are all in on this stuff – they really embrace it. They want to innovate, they want to be part of it, and they want to ultimately give soldiers the best technology as soon as possible.”

 

Card noted that, from a developmental perspective, the soldiers’ input is important because “what may have worked in the lab, does not always work once you get it out to the field.”

 

When the conversation turned to safety, and the assumption and management of risk in prototype equipment and concepts that haven’t completed full testing, Dow inquired about the positives and negatives on how simulation factored into the training equation.

 

“Fort Sam Houston did a study, and they found that medical residents using virtual reality were five times more likely to make training progress, and six times more likely to make less errors than someone who’d gone through the [training] blind,” Card said. “The downside of simulation when we look at gaming in the military, [is that] a lot of older leaders hear the word ‘gaming’ and… they think of video games. They don’t understand where our younger generation of soldiers are, how they learn, and what they need at the squad/team level. When we look at simulations, it’s a foundation for initial training… and you can’t succeed strategically if that engineer team or that aviation unit cannot do their initial job, and they can [train] for that through simulations prior to reaching [real-life] events.”

 

Dow concurred, emphasizing that simulations provided a risk-free environment for warfighters to fail, learn and grow when training for complicated, risky operations. According to Dow, this preparation helps make their later training in a live environment, “exponentially better” due to previous repetitions. Smith pointed out that his organization was also using modeling and simulation to help test products, which showed further promise of saving money during developmental testing going forward.

 

“We were going to blow up an M10 Booker [armored infantry support vehicle] to see what would happen,” Smith said. “The engineers had their predictions, and modeling and simulation had its predictions, and once we did a live fire on that vehicle, the modeling and simulation [projection] was very accurate of what was going to happen. If we can use data like that in the future, just imagine how many M10 Bookers we don’t have to blow up… and how many millions of dollars can we save by not firing projectiles and [instead] doing modeling and simulation.”

 

Later in the discussion, Dow asked the panel for examples of how they had seen simulation or some kind of synthetic environment shape the way the Army fights and trains its soldiers. Haynie related an experience that involved training observer-controllers who were to train National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers, which provided the opportunity for those future trainers to observe the student behaviors they needed to recognize, but in a simulated environment. He went on to describe another training program focused on aviation maintenance that familiarized soldiers with reassembling an engine on an iPad prior to looking at the actual engine and “turning wrenches,” which helped reduce the risk of breaking expensive equipment.

 

“In medical simulation training centers, where [Army medics] are working on simulators, the ‘dummies’ have blood moving and their vital signs are on the screens, the environment has sounds, you can turn out the lights, you can turn on the smoke, and going through that synthetic training environment is just as real as when I was in Iraq in 2006 – all those sensations come back,” Haynie said. “We had one instance where a soldier was going through that training, and they decided they didn’t want to become a medic anymore because that simulation was so real. [Instructors] did some retraining and coaching with that soldier – and that soldier did become a medic – but at that specific point in time, the stimulus was so overwhelming that that soldier couldn’t perform their mission. I would much rather find out [about those issues] in training or in a synthetic environment where we can take corrective action than out on the battlefield.”

 

Dow noted that programs like STE LIVE provided opportunities that he didn’t have as a junior soldier, such as the ability to use simulated hand grenades to achieve “kills” through the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (also known as “MILES” gear) for more realistic training. Such equipment also let soldiers understand the battlefield outcomes and change behaviors when using other weapons systems like mortars and “Stinger” missiles.

 

“[Younger] soldiers are more adept at using those systems in combat for real,” Dow said. “It’s pretty powerful stuff, the things this community does for the Army, and how we shape the way we fight and win.”