P2P Goes To War

lostdogfound writes "OpenP2P.com has an interview with Michael Macedonia, the chief scientist and technical director of the U.S. Army's training facility known as STRICOM, who says peer-to-peer technology could help the military build less expensive and more effective training simulations. It sounds like a holodeck sort of environment, and he hints that some major theme parks are interested in the technology."

Comments

Desensitization

[steveo777]

I suppose the best way to desensize people is to put them inside of a Quake III environment and having them blow crap apart. I know I don't cringe when I see someone on Saving Private Ryan get blown in half anymore. I don't even feel bad, although I probably should.

I've read that many of the guns found on Civil War battlefields had been loaded numourus time without being fired. People just diddn't know how to be trained killers then.

I may get flamed for it, but I know this kind of stuff is part of the reason kids are brining guns into schools and shooting people up.

The Army Groks Simulation

[DG]

I've had opportunity to train in the Close Combat Tactical Trainer at Ft Knox, and it's one of the best things I ever encountered in my military career.

When you train live, in the real world, there's really no good way to tell who killed who. I've seen exercises with millions of dollars of equipment and dozens of highly trained, professional soldiers degenerate into a game of "I shot you first!"

In the simulators, you get to actually employ the weapons against targets, and work with the results. Make a mistake, and you get killed. Get killed a few times, and you start learning.

And besides, it's a kick-ass game. :) Beats Q3 down cold.

Even as rough and clunky as the system was around the edges, it was still the best training I ever had. My biggest regret was that we didn't have one at the home unit - if we did, I'd've had the boys spend hours in it every day, practicing, and getting better and better at the job.

Simulation is the next big military advantage, and the Army has really grabbed ahold of the idea. Watch for some cool stuff to come out of this space.

Re:The Army Groks Simulation

[Coz]

Ha HA!

I actually worked on that puppy! Rough and clunky it may be, but remember, it's a DoD procurement :> - we did the best we could with what we had at the time. Hundreds of thousands of lines of Ada - yes, Ada... and it's still one of the best things I've ever worked on.

We used to play in 'em - "test" sessions where we'd do all kinds of strange stuff to try to crash the simulators or the CGF (computer-generated forces, everything that moved that didn't have a person behind it). We joked that if the budget fell short, we could roll up the high-bay doors and charge folks $15 for 10 minutes. You'd need to come as a crew - it takes 4 to run an Abrams (ok, 2 can do it in the sim, but the person in the turret running the gun and sights is gonna get bruised on the equipment).

Wow. CCTT on Slashdot. My career is validated ;-)

History of Military Simulators

[hillct]

The military has had a rich history of network based simulations. Since the dawn of real networking (with decent bandwidth) there have been military simulators, the first of which were of Naval battle. The navy sunk billions into such projects in the early 1980s, connecting unitssimulating various American, Brittish and French vessels (including submarines), as well as computer generated russian vessels which had all the unique characteristics of each. Durring that period of the Cold War, the navy has some of the most advanced network based simulations available. The technology discussed in the article isn't really that new. Granted, now we have a lot more bandwidth and processing power. You have to admire the systems built in those days specifically because of the accomplishments made dispite these limitations.

--CTH

SAT Range?

[Usquebaugh]

This sounds very much like the 'Small Arms Training' range.

I've been in the process of setting one of these up in my living room :-) Well ok maybe a simplified version. It's no where near complete yet http://home.pacbell.net/ajmoir/LightGun.htm

It also helps that the old American Laser Games, MadDog McCree etc are soon to be released on DVD :-) http://www.digitalleisure.com/pr010517.html

If you like the idea of playing these sort of games then drop me a line.

Not just desensitization

[sconeu]

The Marine Corps at one point used a customized version of DOOM for training... wish I could remember the URL!

Now to more serious stuff...

STRICOM is the Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command. They are heavily into distributed simulation (especially DIS and HLA).

I recall that at one point they ran some exercise (I think it was REFORGER, but I could be wrong) completely simulated, involving units from all over the world. This was back in the '95-'96 time frame.

Also, simulation isn't just for desensitization. It's mainly used for vehicle simulations. Remember, those planes/tanks/whatevers ain't cheap! Not to mention the ability to train soldiers under battle conditions without risk to their lives.

Another SIMNET/DoD Simulation alumnus

[mr_death]

I was one of the original SIMNET developers at BBN in the 80s. One of the problems we had at that time was scalibility -- we used broadcast ethernet to relay vehicle state to all other vehicles. As you might imagine, this doesn't work very well once you get up to 500 or so vehicles.

HLA uses a single or multi-server architecture, which allows entities to "sign up" for objects and event they find interesting. Each entity can also be a server, which might be the way to make the P2P part work.