STE, PEO STRI Conduct Operational Assessment

Soldiers from Army National Guard and active duty components participated in an integration and reconfiguration event in Orlando, Florida, throughout June 2022.

During this month-long event, Soldiers from various occupational fields set up and broke down ground and aviation collective trainers, as observers timed their efforts to establish a baseline and check connections to ensure proper set-up of the equipment. The event also served as an opportunity for Soldiers to provide additional feedback.

Participants worked with the Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer (RVCT), a mobile, modular training capability that provides aviation, ground and dismounted platforms for military training.

“RVCT is part of an Army Futures Command modernization effort that will provide a virtual collective training platform at warfighters’ point of need to improve the Army’s readiness,” said Nathan Snook, public affairs officer for the Army’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE) Cross Functional Team (CFT).

Oregon Army Guard members and Soldiers from the 316th Cavalry Brigade, based in Fort Benning, Georgia, participated in the RVCT – Ground portion of the event. The RVCT – Aviation portion involved Soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard and Army aviators from the Aviation Center of Excellence, located in Fort Rucker, Alabama.

The RVCT’s ground platform includes training simulation options for combat vehicles like the M1A2 SEP v2 Abrams tank, M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle, and M1151 Humvee, among others. The aviation platform provides simulated training for the UH-60 Blackhawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters. The dismounted platform features the “Soldier” platform for individual warfighters on the battlefield.

“June’s integration and reconfiguration event served an important function by providing finishing touches and final Soldier participation and input before the operational assessment in August,” Snook said. “It also provided the opportunity for the STE Information System (IS) software to integrate with Gen2 hardware.”

August’s operational assessment, which will be conducted by Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation and STE CFT, will evaluate the ground platform’s ability to support company-level training. This month’s demonstration will be a significant milestone in the continued progress of the STE IS RVCT keeping efforts on pace for the Fiscal Year 2023 initial operating capability.