Team Orlando: A Strategic Global Resource

By Dolly Rairigh Glass and Susan Walden

Today, many people are quite familiar with Team Orlando and its mission. As a unique collaborative alliance, Team Orlando is leading the way globally by improving human performance through simulation.

But what might surprise many is as a part of its overall mission to strengthen the U.S. Warfighter through simulation and training, the impact of Team Orlando members spans the globe and directly supports the engagement strategies of our nation’s Geographic Combatant Commands and their mission to operate and train with our allied and coalition forces.

By delivering modeling and simulation training capabilities to foreign militaries, Team Orlando is building partner capacity of allies and coalition partners, supporting and building enduring relationships among allies and coalition partners, bolstering the strength and vitality of NATO and other multilateral international partnerships, and pursuing new partnerships with a growing number of nations.

The support for the U.S. Warfighter and its allies is a complete process, in training and on the battlefield — from identifying a need of product or service, finding and delivering a solution, to sustainment.

Foreign Military Sales plays a major role in making sure key foreign militaries, who are approved by the U.S. State Department, can acquire, field and sustain current can future simulation technologies that interoperate with U.S. simulation capabilities in an integrated live, virtual and constructive training environment anywhere on the planet at any give time.

On behalf of the foreign customer, Team Orlando members procure defense articles and services. Many companies in the Orlando area, as well as elsewhere across the country, work closely with Team Orlando, and through Requests for Proposals, win contracts and assist in equipping allies.

More than 50 countries on six continents are currently being served by Team Orlando’s Foreign Military Sales mission area. As nations are more aware of the advantages of the program and how it is essential to their defense and security, FMS rise annually, and on any given day, Team Orlando active FMS programs total more than $1.7 billion.

Along with FMS, Team Orlando members also focus on research and development of behavioral and social sciences, and simulation technologies for learning, training, testing and mission rehearsal. Researchers work to develop state-of-the-art technological tools and methods that build upon fundamental simulation and training science so they can be applied in a military context.

One example that is part of Team Orlando’s science and technology mission, is their members’ work in adaptive and intelligent technologies for training, which includes adaptive tutoring and virtual humans; synthetic natural environments; distributive Interactive simulation; immersive learning; and training application areas including individual, crew and collective training.

Team Orlando is the world’s M&S leader, researching, prototyping and testing technologies designed to provide learning and performance aids that are tailored to individual needs and delivered anytime and anywhere. With the primary focus on enhancing the next generation learning environments for the next generation learner, Team Orlando shares this information and teams with allies and coalition partners in working groups and panels focused on modeling, simulation and training and advanced learning technologies.

Networking with other nations promotes building enduring relationships and partnerships with their allies and promotes peace and strength.

Through training policy integration and implementation, Team Orlando completes the C2 circle of collaboration and cooperation. They facilitate, advocate and support training for the U.S., allied and coalition Warfighter, and work on every aspect of the process – from development to delivery, from solution-seeking to product and service implementation.

Team Orlando members effectively facilitates the prioritization of efforts and interacts with the developer so the Warfighter, both domestic and international, gets what they need. Requirements are gathered from the customer and a solution is determined through existing capabilities or by enhancing those in the current portfolio, advocating and influencing decisions for training systems.

Whether it’s Foreign Military Sales, the innovative research and development, or the work in the area of training policy integration and implementation, Team Orlando’s impact spans the globe and is a strategic global resource for collaboration and cooperation.