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Army Discusses MMO Troop Training Sim
An anonymous reader writes "Over at GameSpot, there's an interview with Dr. Michael Macedonia of the U.S. Army about the AWE training sim, a 'massively multiplayer simulation [based on the There 'virtual world' game engine] that will be used by military personnel to train troops in urban situations before they are airlifted to a battle zone.' Macedonia says 'We built downtown Baghdad in this environment', and also says 'we call our games tactical decision aids. Our thing is not making people shoot better; it's making people think better.'" We previously featured an initial announcement of this project in January.
Battlefield confusion when the commander dies? Their own death? A commander in chief willing to sacrifice American lives for a people who would be better off left to their own devices?
I have been pwned because my
How long before war game training/simulation slides into becoming real-time tactical control of the battlefield?
It's probably already technically possible, and just requires a generational change for the generals to accept it.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Will this also be available to the general public (possibly in a dumbed down version)?
If so, will "terrorists" be able to learn from this as well, to see how the US soldier gets trained?
Personally, I'm interested, could be a fun game, IMHO there's nothing wrong with virtual killing (in RL I'm kind of a pacifist)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
'we call our games tactical decision aids. Our thing is not making people shoot better; it's making people think better'
... if only they could build a game to help the leaders think better rather than shooting their mouths off!
hmmm
In any case, these games will only take the soldiers upto one point. After that, comes the most important aspect of urban warfare... the mind of the enemy. That is where the battles are won or lost. And every adversary is prone to thinking differently in a given situation!
What we need is a MMO Peace sim for the Neo-Con so-called think tanks (think? tanks!). A complete political / economical earth simulation.
So they can find out that their first-strike / secure-the-oil - global strategies will end up having the whole world against them while not really achieving any of their original goals.
As it is, they play it out in real life. To the detriment of the U.S.A. and it's citizens, as in: Terrorist attacks are ever more likely, Americans are coming home in body bags, the economy is severely damaged, a few profiteers run with the money. It's a disaster.
That's why we need an MMO for political leadership. The best army in the world cannot make a flawed strategy work. Just think what they could do with good leadership!
How about training on the difference between Friend and foe. I'd feel happier thinking US troops had a couple of hours training showing them the equipment used by allied and enemy troops, than a frag fest, before going into combat.
Sims work! With the amount of hour spend playing Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, I can say for certain that I'm tatically ready for battle in the real world. Here are some things I've learned.
1. Never..EVER stand in the middle of an open field without cover. You will get your sniped.
2. Always reload when availble...and NOT in combat.
3. Team work...use team work.
4. Stay low, and quite.
Life is not for the lazy.
Sorry but *I* don't think you quite get it.
If you have a large well trained army that can go into virtually any conflict, win and come out with minimal losses, do people "try it on" with you? No. It's all about fear.
From what I've read in Vietnam went in with heavy weapons thinking they would flatten everything. This is where they failed. The Viet-Cong was "sneaky" and used there grey matter.
War is thinking mans game, outright heavy weapons don't work anymore.
Armies aren't just for war either.
Paintball sucks as a marksmanship test. I could put a 5.56mm round through your head at 100m but i doubt i could do that with a paintball.
For close quarters fighting, i suppose it could be useful, but then doesn't the US use something called "Miles" for training (laser based targets?)
Using a weapon other than your standard issue for training is a bad idea IMO.. How do you simulate reloads / missfeeds / stoppages with a paintball gun?
What's not to get? It's just like all the other one liners the left seems to like using. You know, like "fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity." They seem funny or insightful at first, but there is no substance.
Right, right... Those idiot speeches made by the so called "conservative" guys are much better. You know, the ones where they put their hand on their heart, stare into the sky and try to form ~10 sentences containing as many words as possible from this list: freedom, bad, good, evil, right, wrong, light, god, jesus, humanity, fight, brave, cowardly, struggle, defend...
They sound all the same. Everytime I see someone giving such a speech, I can't help but think he's watched way too many cheap action movies. Substance? No way.
Example: let's say an enemy wants to subjugate your country will you be more free if you successfully fight them off? Of course you will.
I can see where this will lead. Please let's not start that discussion again. Iraq didn't attack you and didn't have WMDs. The glorious "conservatives" lied and we all know it.
And BTW, I'm not American, so he isn't my president.
So you're from the UK. Blair is not really that much better, you know.
Yet the insurgents don't stop, obviously, and the killing breeds ever more hatred against you Americans.
Of course they hate us, they are supposedly a very proud people known for thier toughness and we squished them in days, just like we did 10 years ago. What DOES concern me is that car bomb yesterday that killed 70 people (12 children) nobody in the middle east/europe/al jazeera seems to care about. but have an american soldier shoot one woman on accident, or return fire to a mosque, school, and everyone screems how sick we are.
It shows the truth, it doesn't matter WHAT America does she will still be hated. I feel like defending america but don't want to ruin my slashdot karma.
Their policy is to not do what they do? IANAL, but I thought that under the Geneva convention if you invade somewhere (and win!) you have an obligation to occupy until you can install a new regime.
Back on topic, I'm sure the sim they're developing would be a great game to play - particularly if you could play on your own local map. Wandering round your local town centre shooting people would be fun.
I wonder if they'd sell advertising space in them, too?
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
Just because it didn't work out exactly as planned doesn't mean it's bullshit.
Austin Meyer, the author of X-Plane has been working with some military and implemented some functions for them so that they could turn X-Plane into a UCAV pilot training program. The details can be read in the Beta new features announcement.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Totally agree with this point. Read Starship troopers (not the movie) to get a better grip on this.
The point about training your tactical force is to teach them to apply the amount of force needed the situation.
Ongoing training of this nature is what the armed forces doing when they are not on Operations. They are called Exercises.
Now for operational purposes the preparation phase becomes even more important. The more important the objective, the better the model. I know when the SAS were training to pull hostages out of Lebanon, they used floorplans and real buildings.
Doing this training virtually is just another way to do this. IMHO it would only augment existing training.
1. We have lost more than that, last I heard, we just broke 700 coalition troops...
2 (the main point). Kill ratios don't mean shit. It is all about who can suffer the kills most effectivly. We had a kill ratio well over 10 to 1 in Vietnam, but the enemy did not mind losing half a million nearly as much as we minded losing 50,000, that is why we lost. They simply wanted victory more than we did. I think the same thing will happen in Iraq (I hope I am wrong). Also, we have already lost more troops in Iraq than we lost in the first 5 years we had troops on the ground in Vietnam... we had smaller numbers there until about '68 then the troops built up, and along with them, the casualties.
3. (About Islam) If all Islam teaches is to be a power hungry, mentally challgened idiot than i am glad I am not Muslim. I thought bush was a "Christian" (sorry couldn't resist) Seriously, there are members of just about every group who are power hungary ass holes, it has little to do with the particular group and a lot more to do the the human condition. It you think that is what Islam is about, spend some time around engineering graduate students, you will meet a lot of foriegn muslims, and you will see that they are clearly not power hungary, or mentally challenged...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
In the specific case of India v Pakistan, using nukes in Kashmir is a lose/lose for India. No matter which time of year India strikes, the fallout falls on India. Also in that conflict, India currently lacks the logistic capability to launch a sustained ground offensive. They have numbers, but if it goes beyond a few weeks, its a stalemate
Spc Gruhn
Keyboard Infantry since 2002
Japan? Germany? The entire Soviet bloc?
Read a book.
Then network them together and they can do the whole war over the internet.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
We were explicitly told not to ever drive off the map. Doing so reset your height variable to 0. Driving back onto the map didn't change this, so you became a "submarine tank", able to see (and kill) everyone but nobody else could see you. They'd had several simulations ruined by people doing this, and SIMNET was very, very expensive to run in terms of time, money and personnel. It was cause for serious disciplinary action.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Since 1944, the US tactical dogma for urban fighting has been, essentially, to re-invent and modify the terrain as needed. This involves making new connections between buildings by cutting through interior walls, making "mousehole" firing ports in exterior walls, tunneling from one basement to another, moving through sewers, and improvising bridges on higher levels. Conversely, terrain can be modified to stop the enemy from doing the same thing: welding manhole covers shut to keep someone from coming up out of the sewer behind you, for example.
A simulation modeling all of this would pretty much have to have fully-destructible environments.
It is increasingly clear that the Marines at Fallujah are working from a playbook that was forged at Aarnhem and Manila. Military Operation in Urban Terrain (MOUT) is an extremely evolved, sophisticated system, requiring intensive training (example: how you enter a room differs greatly depending on if you have 3, 4, or 5 men doing it, how many exits and windows there are, and where they are located in the room). It works very well indeed.
World War Two Online.
www.wwiionline.com