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Army to use MMOG for Simulation Training
Anonymous Coward writes "Military Training Technology (online edition) has an interesting article, 'The End Game', containing revelations about a Research, Development and Engineering Command project 'that is as timely as the nightly news' - a Massively Multiplayer Simulation for Asymmetric Warfare, or simply MMP: 'essentially a virtual world [developed by There Inc.] intended to train soldiers well beyond the goals of war gaming'."
I've always wondered why the army didnt use RTS-like interfaces to control their troops in things like the iraq war. Select the units, choose the formation, right click on the target whatever.
Liberty.
I was in the Army, and I don't know if this type of simulation is being targeted at the right place.
From the story, it seemed like this was going to be a vertical solution- from the top, all the way down to the individual soldier.
I don't think that anyone below an E-7 (Platoon Sgt) would benefit from this type of training. Below that level, and you are really dealing with more of a human aspect, not tactical. The typical private is going to have more personal issues confronting a hostile crowd, than tactical. Someone else will be there to tell his dumb ass what to do- the question is, can he actual do it- and are his balls big enough.
Contrary to all the dick swinging here on Slashdot- your balls don't get bigger while sitting in front of a computer- they get bigger by experiencing real-world confrontation.
Later on- this might be of use- but one thing a typical soldier has a lot of, is time. Train them like crazy, to prepare for the real world.
No reason to lie.
sorry, should have put this in the other post, but there's also ARTT - above real time training, where you run the sim 30% faster, people's reflexes speed up, and then in the real world they often have a 10% edge once they've reacclimatized to regular speed reality.
I really do worry about the simulator-shock aspect of this: both in terms of creating unrealistic expectations on the part of the soliders, but also in terms of people slipping into "gamespace" on the battle field.
ARRL (advanced robotics research limited) used to do a lot of VR work in Britain, and they wouldn't let people drive for about an hour or two after they'd been in the VR because people often drove in very odd ways, including being very agressive and taking foolish risks. They pinned it down to two things, if I remember correctly:
1> Simulator artefacts, as outlined in the other post.
2> The sense of "unreality" which pervaded the real world after having been inside for a while...
People didn't feel like the real world was real any more after even three hours in a VR system. Somehow the brain figures out "well, I can run into walls and I don't feel anything, I must be dreaming(?)" or something like that?
I don't know exactly, but stories like that give me a very, very bad feeling about extending the use of simulator based training even further. it might not be VR, but I won't be surprised if the problems are similar.
The psychological effects are so subtle, but potentially so important. I think we might do much, much better investing these resources in better real-world training for troops than sims.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
But if it turns out more over-enthusiastic rookies with unrealistic simulator expectations, people are going to get killed
Umm maybe you aren't too clear on the job of a soldier?? If it works, a lot more people are going to get killed than from it not working. They will be "enemies" though, so you probably don't care about them dying. Just remember how quickly a friend can become your enemy.
Seriously though, I wonder if the fact that the government thinks video games are great tools for creating mindless violent automatons lends any weight to the naggy soccer moms claiming the same?
=)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
war is easy, guided missiles ?, shock and awe, its all so easy when i just press a button on my screen and 1000's die i don't even have to think they are real people
a lot of war is already like a video game, and killing is so much easier when you don't have to look at your enemies face when you kill him and his family
Asymmetric Warfare? Is that what you call it when America attacks another country?
More or less, yes. Asymmetric warfare is when one side has a tank, and the other has a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
"When I play Couter-Strike, or BattleField, I don't care if I die."
You don't have to deal with an irate drill seargent.
Also, you're just doing it for entertainment. They are doing what they want to do with their lives. Different motivations.
Ever see that movie?
I'm not so sure this is a great idea.
Firstly, I don't know of any guys on the pro golf circuit who got there because they're the man at sim golf. I doubt that I'd want someone who kicks butt at rollercoaster tycoon making amusement parks and rollcosters for public use. You get the idea.
Sure you have simulators which people use for training - but those are incredibly expensive incredibly specialized pieces of equipment. Real life pilots aren't using MS flight simulator to get their licenses. And this war game stuff sure doesn't sound like anything more than Everquest set in a modern day war zone.
Secondly, do we really need to be spending more public funding to reach an even larger audience to teach them the best way to kill people? Even if it's just the abstract virtual kind of killing with no "real" repercussions. I mean, if you want to be a soldier, go ahead and sign up, get the real training, see what it's like to actually have to wake up at 0500 and hit the obstacle course, fire off a few rounds, get disciplined, maybe even go off and have to be personally responsible for the death and maiming of a few other human beings because that's your job. Do we really need an MMORPG for this? Shouldn't we be spending this money on teaching people how NOT to kill each other, or adressing the issues that make it so people want to kill their fellow man in the first place? Then we might not need so many soldiers.
Sorry, that's just crazy talk - by all means it's a great idea to teach Johnny and Janie how to frag. That's invaluable job skill training that will benefit humanity. Heck in that case, why not make it a required course to graduate High School? Sponsored by the military-industrial complex near you.
My tax dollars at work indeed.
American military superiority is now so huge that nobody in their right minds is going to face us on an open battle field without air superiority, which basically ain't going to happen.
So at that point, people are adapting rapidly and finding ways to attack american political will and infrastructure: in Iraq, that's putting GIs in body bags and blowing up oil facilities.
It's not clear to anybody that an organized, hierarchical military force is capable of victory against guerillas, even in a desert environment. Nobody's going to come out and say that, but it's implicit in the work of John Boyd, a fighter pilot and philosopher who is widely hailed as the father of the F16 and it's entire school of fighter design, and the Air-Ground War doctrine which is the bedrock of military strategy for the USA.
Boyd basically suggests that hierarchies are inherently a bottleneck on the battlefield, and that the time it takes information to percolate to the level a decision can be made on is a critical point of attack for fast, light, independent forces.
So if you have cohesion and collective planning, you have slowness and are vulnerable. But if you have no central control, then you're not an army, you're a rabble.
That's why there's so much of a focus on netwar and similar concepts in current US military thought: we're trying to figure out how to beat sheep farmers with RPGs.
You can read a lot of Boyd's though online: check out Google's pages Boyd's OODA loop for more info.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Twice in the past 50 years, the American people have defeated monsterous regimes: Hitler, and Stalin. Yes, the cold war never came to blows, but if we had not comitted to contain the USSR at any cost, they would have expanded out of all recogniction.
Staling murdered nearly three times as many people as Hitler, and Hitler murdered 22 million people, by the estimates of Rudy Rummel of the University of Hawaii, who's extensively studied mass murders in recent history. (search for Democide) on Google.
We didn't have the choice of "not playing" on either of those occasions, and the reason there are free people left is that we won those wars.
Don't knock it. American military strength is a good thing. It's just that our current leaders are imperialist assholes.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
News flash:
A strong Russian military and resource starved germany is why Hitler and Stalin didn't wind up ruling the world, and don't forget it.
Russia always strogn and The british caused the second condition. america helped with the second condition but mostly supplied resources and came in after to claim victory. The americans were important but not the #1 or #2 reason that the war was won.
Now a Strong American army is why we don't all have a mad itch to play pokemon and watch tentacle porn..... omg... Did we lose the pacific theatre?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
In just about any Western-style war (since classical times) it is typical that retreating troops will be attacked to the extent that it is possible.
Traditionally, the big no-no is to attack troops that have surrendered. But retreating guys are generally considered "fair game", especially since anyone who is not surrendering may just be regrouping to attack you again.
What was different about the Gulf War was that the US's overwhelming advantage meant the retreating Iraqi forces could be (and were) utterly slaughtered. And although each Iraqi soldier did have the opportunity to try to surrender or to desert, the nature of airborne attack is such that many targets don't see much reason to surrender until it is too late.
Fortunately the US learned quite a bit from the whole "highway of death" experience. So this time around, instead of crushing the entire Iraqi army, they concentrated on embarrassing the Iraqi government enough that the Iraqi population would finally reject it.
Whether or not I think the war was justified, I have to admit the US forces succeeded in deposing Saddam very quickly and with many fewer deaths on either side than anyone expected.
I disagree. I played in a few paintball tournaments, and what it really cofirmed in my mind is that any situation where people are spraying projectiles at each other involves a lot of luck. It doesn't matter how good you are, everyone gets hit eventually. In the games I played, you rarely were reacting to someone, you were just spraying whatever they were hiding behind hoping to nail them when they peaked out. Hollywood movies are way off. If you play a paintball game and really think about it as every hit as you dieing, it quickly reshapes your perception of war. The people who manage to get hit only rarely are the people way in the back with as little as possible of themselves showing, laying down a few cases of paint every game. The people who run to the front, who in the real world would be "heroes", are the ones who get hit the most. Skill certianly plays a factor in survival, but the main deciding factor is who exposes themselves to fire the most. I think in real world the majority of the heroes die, and only the very lucky ones survive. If I were to get drafted into a war, I would be very greatful for my paintball experience because it has taught me just how easy it is to get hit.
We, the USA, and the rest of the world spend far too much money on military affairs. Every year it just gets worse.
... is simply bad for business.
The purpose of the military is to protect the local country from invasion from other countries and their armies.
The Americans have 20000 nuclear bombs, no one is going to invade them, no one is even going to get close to invading and occupying them.
They don't need a military any more!! Yet they spend tons of their money on this unnecessary endeavor. It is really warping their minds and is making both their neighbors and the rest of the civilized world uncomfortable.
There is some twisted little defect in the American culture that makes their young people actually want to go into dangerous combat situations on the other side of the world and expose themselves to discomfort, death, and dismemberment against people that they have never even heard of. No one else seriously wants to do this.
But since they have so much powerful weaponry, no one wants to just take them aside for a little chat and suggest that they should just 'chill' because they don't have any real enemies that are dangerous enough for them to require this kind of behavior.
Creating an artifical environment where the young Americans can get their 'gook-killing' urges satisified is really money well spent, as long as the simulation is so good that they want to spend more time in it than in the real world.
Because, frankly, in this increasingly networked world of global corporations, having lots of young trigger-happy running amok with no idea of what they're doing, or who they're doing it to, or why they're doing it