The Pentagon's Ultimate Home Theater

Steve Silberman writes "I was the first reporter to see the inside of a new battle-simulation system designed by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 'military-entertainment' think tank sponsored by the Defense Department. Starting in September, Marines, infantrymen, and Air Force pilots will train for war in Matrix-like rooms in Oklahoma simulating urban and desert environments, with surround sound and photorealistic rendering of bombing runs and other scenarios. It may or may not be the future of military training, but it's certainly the future of home gaming. My article, 'The War Room,' will appear in the September issue of Wired."

Comments

Re:Wait

[Ieshan]

Heh. No.

But it's a good point.

Simulations can be designed to train soldiers to take unneccessary or life-threatening risks so long as they involve a high amount of simulated payout and little or no punishment for simulated failure.

I seriously wouldn't be surprised if this is the way simulators are used to train soldiers.

I'm not trying to say that the Military has no regard for human life, but it's no secret that military operations are often valued in terms of numbers of soldiers killed per objective gained. Convincing young kids that they're supposed to risk their life for any intermediate goal is difficult, but not impossible (note that it's now "the country" young men risk their lives for, not "securing the powerplant" or "capturing person X". No one wants to be told that they're giving their life for a small piece of the puzzle.).

Making it easier to convince these soldiers by pre-simulating rewarding scenarios based on risk-taking may make soldiers more compliant.

At least he was honest

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times have we seen people pass off "stories" when they're just trying to get some attention. This guy was completely upfront and honest about a story he wrote that is of interest to many here.

Where's that dang Peace Simulation?

[xactuary]

Anybody know of a peace simulation?

Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation?

[the gnat]

I'm sure every sociology (and economics, political science, or psychology) department in the country would love to come up with this, but unfortunately normal human interactions are infinitely harder to simulate than modern battle tactics and military technology. Although our current administration makes it seem even more difficult than necessary.

But seriously, the point of all this high-tech military wankery is to figure out how to inflict very brief and intense moments of horrific violence with the objective of ending wars as quickly as possible. Which is much better for innocent civilians in the long run. To take a recent example, the Iraq war hasn't exactly been kind to the Iraqis themselves (aside from the obvious benefit of no more Saddam), but imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn't pounded the hell out of their army immediately and instead had to slowly chip away at their lines. (And I suspect that this would have been much worse for their army, too.)

Re:Replacing training with intution....

[ashkar]

By instinct, the author probably meant the instant reflex of which you speak. The situation given was only one out of many that the military would train in. Most likely, they would attempt to get soldiers to the point where they could instantly analyze the situation, decide upon the best course of action, and act upon it. So, no, I don't think that this kind of training is a bad idea at all.

Conventional War

[orthogonal]

Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?

Seriously. The leadership failures that allowed (or even encouraged) the US military atrocities at Abu Ghraib have cost us far more than any VR simulation, and will continue to cost us as a nation for decades, in both world respect and in the recruitment of America-hating terrorists.

Perhaps the miltary should shelve some of this gee-whiz "VR-tainment" favor of simple classrooms with wooden benches and a blackboard and high-ranking instructors who state unequivocally that torture is un-American, repugnant to our values, and will not be tolerated at all in the US military.

Paraphrasing the Christian Bible, Mark 8:36,for what shall it profit an army, if it shall defeat the whole world, and lose its own soul?

Re:Conventional War

[Daniel Dvorkin]

[sigh] People like you just don't get it, do you? Shit like what happened at Abu Ghraib hurts us, it does not help us. It makes us less likely to win, not more. Stories and pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners are the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda has. The same twisted "logic" that says Abu Ghraib was useful to American forces would indicate that 9/11 would have made Americans say, "Gee, this Osama bin Laden guy is pretty tough, we'd better do what he says."

Re:Conventional War

[orthogonal]

"History And Moral Philosophy" class from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"

Better Col. Dubois than Chickenhawk Cheney or Wolfowitz.

I just recenty re-read Starship Troopers (for the, what, 10th time? I'm a big Heinlein fan); for those unfamiliar with the novel it is perhaps Heinlein's most controversial novel (it's often maligned as "fascist") because the society Heinlein approvingly depicted in the novel limits the franchise (that is, the right to vote) to persons who have voluntarily completed a term of "Federal Service", which (essentially) means military service.

Heinlein was not necessarily advocating this form of goverment (any more than the constitutional monarchy in Double Star, the world government in Stranger in a Strange Land, or the Howard Family gerontocracy on Secundus in Time Enough for Love), nor did he claim that such a government would be wiser than another form (indeed, he has that government specifically teach that that form is not necessarily wiser).

But Heinlein was making the argument that those who voluntarily place themselves at risk to defend their country are demonstrating that they consider their country's survival more important than their own, and that thus they can be better trusted to put the national interest ahead of their particular interests when voting or otherwise exercising power (but also see Heinlein's possible rebuttal to himself in his much later The Cat Who Walked Through Walls).

Heinlein's argument seems particularly timely when a President who managed to avoid Vietnam by getting a heavily sought after post in the Air Guard defending Alabama from the Viet Cong and a Vice President who "had other priorities" during Vietnam (enough other priortities to get five draft deferments!) have sent 970 American men and women to die in what increasingly appears to be an unecessary and ultimately pointless war -- and are questioning the patriotism of an opponent who actually volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, got shot at, saved the lives of his men, and won numerous decorations for that.

For Paul Wolfowitz, the Iraq war is pieces on a game board (and in testimony to Congress he even forgot about 200 dead American soldiers), for Dick Cheney, numbers on a Haliburton balance sheet, for George W. Bush, the chance to pose for re-election ads in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But for 970 American soldiers, Iraq has been a place to die; and for countless others a place to leave arms and legs and youth -- or at Abu Ghraib, honor -- behind.

Maybe Heinlein had a good idea. We can do better by our soldiers and by our country than the Boy President.

Re:Conventional War

[Flower]

Go back and read the article and note when the officer talks about making sure they present the right stories in the simulations.

The ethics debate about interrogation is very high level and complex. When I was on vacation last week I think there was an article in US News and World Report which discussed the differences in interrogation methodologies used by the FBI and CIA. They are about as 180 degress from each other as you can get. The FBI goes for a hearts and minds stategy and the article made note that in one case they put together a deal with someone where for information they worked it out that his son would get a heart transplant. The CIA is total intimidation. CIA got one suspect and as he was boarding a plane the CIA interrogator threatened to find and rape the suspect's mother.

But what I got most out of the article was that there is no "unequivocal" definition of torture that can be brought down to the common soldier. They really do make individual cases out of every interrogation. This guy is known to have needed and reliable info which is time sensitive and he's not talking. Are we allowed to simulate drowning him (example from article) or do we turn him over to another arabic country which can take measures we won't. Believe it or not, this stuff goes by legal staff to determine whether we are crossing the line or not.

Personally I buy into the FBI's methodology. From the studies I've seen torture is not an effective interrogation tool. But obviously there are those up high who don't subscribe to that philosophy. Unfortunately that shit rolls downhill.

Re:Conventional War

[stefanlasiewski]

You cannot promote democracy and torture prisoners at the same time.

Re:Conventional War

[Pomme de Terre!]

Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?

I am a military policeman for the Air Force. (For the record, in the USAF, we're called Security Forces.)

Troops are briefed on the Geneva conventions every time we mobilize to deploy. We're briefed everytime we get to a foreign nation. We're briefed every time we simulate deployment. Practically any time someone mentiones mobilization... the briefing comes. Further, every year we are required to take tests verifying our understanding of the conventions. In simulated exercises, we have to abide by the rules. In every briefing, we're told what we can and cannot do and we're told what the consequences are for breaking the rules.

Those soldiers at Abu Ghraid knew the rules. This wasn't a case of ignorance of the law. Further, they knew quite well that only lawful orders are to be followed. So the "My commander made me do it!" excuse is laughable.

More training isn't needed. And as we're seeing from the many investigations and courts martial, Geneva Convention rule violations are not tolerated.

The prison abuses aren't an institutional problem, they're a humanity problem. They're a byproduct of war, and nothing will change that reality. As members of the armed forces, we strive to be better than that; in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are. But, unfortunately, we'll see the darkness of man again when the next conflict breaks out.

War is ugly, and it brings out the worst in humanity.

Pomme de Terre!

Re:Conventional War

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Thanks -- you answered that pretty much as I would have.

I'd like to add one thing: as a medic, I took the Geneva Conventions pretty damn seriously. Most of the wounded I treated in Desert Storm were Iraqis who, in some cases, had been trying to kill me a little while before, and I gave them the exact same level of care I gave wounded Americans. Part of the reason for upholding this standard is entirely pragmatic: enemy soldiers are much more likely to surrender, rather than fight to the death, if they know they'll be treated well. (E.g., Germans toward the end of WW2 were much more likely to surrender to US and UK forces than they were to the Soviets.) The other part of it is moral: it simply does not matter if those we fight are evil, whether in their treatment of prisoners or in any other aspect; we have to be better than that, or we risk losing everything we have sworn to defend.

Re:Wait

[0racle]

Of course the military has no regard for human life.Their entire purpose is to kill or be killed.

Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes?

[YrWrstNtmr]

So that you can recall them
So that the pilot, upon seeing the target is not quite as imagined, can abort the mission
So that you can have an accurate, in person, assessment of the actual scene. There are quite a few videos floating around from Iraq that show last minute targeting changes only possible by an onscene human.

program the plane with a target, press the big red "Go Bomb" button

We have those now. They're called cruise missiles. Or in the ultimate sense, ICBM's.

But they're working on mutiple types of UCAV's. I expect we'll see a scenario whereby a few of these are slaved to a piloted control A/C (F-22 or AC-130 maybe). Give the UCAV's a simple AI for the flight to the target area ("Stay next to Mother"), and then the human aircrew can designate one or more targets to each. ("#1, these coordinates, #2, that truck, #3 circle until further notice)

Finally, it is MUCH harder to hack or jam the control system of a human piloted vehicle. You really don't want your unmanned vehicle to be captured in flight and turned against you.

Re:Oh great...

[Aardpig]

he dumbfucks whose ways to kill saved your ass in WWII, if memory serves correct.

A few years late, IIRC. Britain entered the war from the start, because they had promised to help protect Poland. The USA only entered the war because Pearl Harbour forced them to; until then, they couldn't care less that the Nazis were taking over the world.

Oh, and if any country could claim credit for winning WWII, it would have to be the Soviet Union.

Are you high?

[Flower]

If you look at the costs involved in training a soldier it's self-evident that the military has a high regard for human life. A soldier represents a serious investment of time and money into a limited resource - far more limited than any missle/warplane/submarine/etc. Once a soldier is gone all that experience, ability to adapt and make decisions is gone and simply cannot be readily replaced.

I also think that, especially in today's environments, that the military has a healthy respect for human life outside of its own. How one achieves an objective is rapidly becoming just as important as accomplishing it. US policy is being judged on how well a soldier responds to a shoot/don't shoot scenerio or how much collateral damage is inflicted in an operation. Especially now that media organizations around the world can publicise every incident in near real-time.

Yes, as a profession of war, the military must accept a doctrine of kill or be killed when in combat but it is simplistic in the extreme to imply that means the military has no regard for human life.

Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes?

[stienman]

There are lots of reasons, but two which you should be intimately familiar with as a computer professional are:
Latency and DoS attacks.

Even if the soldier is within 10 miles of the UAV, even if they use hardware instead of software, even if they reduce latency to the absolute minimum possible with today's technology, the soldier is still milliseconds behind in the actual action on site, and the equipment is milliseconds behind the soldier's reaction time.

Secondly, even with super secure communications, spread spectrum, frequency hopping, multiple parallel channels, etc there still exists a significant possibility that someone else could adversely affect the operation of the UAV with a fairly simple and cheap electronic circuit. Even if it only increased the latency by a few mS as the systems try to cope, employed at the right time in a battle, it could easily give the opposing force the window they need to disable the UAV. It wouldn't be easy to track down and bomb like the GPS jammers Iraq used in the beginning of the war since it would only need to be on for a few seconds at a time and could be carried.

-Adam

Toys for Boys

[Ars-Fartsica]

Meanwhile in the rest of the Western world, a startling tactic for maintaining homeland security has been in use for decades - do not screw over people in foreign lands for fun and profit and you will tend not to make enemies.

I am tired of the miliporn covered on /., its getting to be like Popular Science. Not one of these billion dollar toys could prevent twenty halfwits armed with boxcutters pulling the US economy down to its knees and dragging the entire nation into a paranoid delusion that is likely to last decades.

Re:Toys for Boys

[Tolwyn_993442]

Heh, the US military (nor any other military) isn't a solely anti-terrorist force. They have parts that do CT work and parts that don't. I imagine this training sim might help the latter.

Wow.

[Azureflare]

If this setup eventually becomes popular and widespread, and we as a nation are playing these videos games...which soldiers play to get trained for fighting in battle...

How does that make you feel? Knowing that you are playing the same games that are used for training for soldier's in the army?

Am I the only one that is scared by that thought?

Is our nation a nation of war and destruction? Are our future young children going to grow up being trained to kill?

I know it's a bit of a stretch to say that playing one of these games makes you suitable to the army. But it's still kind of frightening. Aren't we as civilians supposed to be spending our time actually building our country? Does anyone else think that we should be thinking about this?

I value the future of our country; and I do not want us mentally to be become hardened killers... I honestly hope I am not alone in this.

By the way, did anyone else think of Bradbury's short story "The Veldt" when this article came up?

P.S. Strange that this short story is available on the web... Hmm, google is great, what can I say... Buy one of Bradbury's books if you haven't, he's a great read.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's likely, but Counter-Strike is quite a poor game for what the military is trying to simulate. It'll never be used to simulate anything real-life.