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

How long

[Lanzaa]

How long will this take to get to home gaming though?

Or will these leave millitary use and get sold to private companies to have people pay to play in them?

Replacing training with intution....

[freedom_india]

The goal of the punishing routines and endless drills was to replace thinking with instinct so that at the sound of gunshots, a soldier would automatically return fire.

Intution is of no use when there are snipers hidden in a street to kill you and you panic. That is the army tries to replace intution with training.
As a man under fire, my friend used to say how many times training and automatic reflex saved his life instead of intution. if pentagon thinks they can replace training with intution they are building a bad army.

Re:Replacing training with intution....

[thermopylae300]

There are already many video-game type training methods being employed to train infanty riflemen (and police). These include reaction-time scenarios (with friendlies mixed in) and some decision making scenarios.

I remember one particular scenario that showed a group of shadowy figures running toward the user's position through the forest. Gunshots are heard from the forest and many riflemen will open fire before they properly identify the target... which is a group of women and children running from their unseen attackers. That was memorable training for anyone that opened fire.

I've read a few posts from slashdot's armchair generals informing the masses that it is a bad idea to do training in a video-game type environment. At ease, Rambo, the military isn't scrapping tough training for Counterstrike. You can not accurately simulate combat during training. The military must do their best by simulating as many aspects of combat as possible. Food, water, and sleep deprivation along with fatigue simulates some of the stess of war. Combined arms live fire exercises teach the sounds (and some fear) of battle. Blanks, paintballs, simunitions , and MILES gear allow you to fight force-on-force instead of pop-up targets. And simulations like this war-room give soldiers and Marines a chance to repeatedly practice scenarios in an easily-manipulated environment that would be extremely expensive to replicate outside of a video game.

I've seen it once or twice

[Bruha]

It's called Snow Hall I believe and it's at Ft Sill in Lawton, OK. I have friends up there that work at the place but they've never mentioned any signifigant upgrades. But being the military it does not mean that it didnt happen and they were probably not allowed to tell anyone at the time. I'll have to visit sometime to check it out hopefully.

4 Years too early!!

[Big Yak]

I joined the Air Force as an officer 6 years ago, and just left a few months ago. When I originally went to Carnegie Mellon University, I took multiple classes in Virtual Reality. Unfortunately, the AF would not allow me to take the time off to pursue a Masters in Virtual Reality there... as they needed my computer skills immediately.

I guess I was just 4 years early... those skills are in very high demand, now.

they need that much hardware to

[joeflies]

play military spec Battlezone?

Why do they still need pilots in the planes?

[FyRE666]

Since the VR is so realistic, why not use it instead of sending the pilots up in tin cans to get blown to pieces by the enemy? Actually, for the bombing runs, you wouldn't need any simulation - program the plane with a target, press the big red "Go Bomb" button and sit back to watch the wacky results. Same goes for the tanks - in fact they're even more simple (much like the people who usually drive them I guess).

Why are the machines of war still designed to carry meat-sacks around inside them?!

Re:Oh great...

[centipetalforce]

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.

That's only a half truth, really. Yes, the majority of the public was against the war, mainly because of the previous war, which was needless, but FDR knew war in Europe was necessary.

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

And yes, the soviets did most of the killing, but the US' lend lease arguably prevented Moscow from falling in the first year, and provided millions of tons of materiale to drive them westward into berlin.
So really, lets not go into the gray shades of history. I do probably agree with you that we definitely should be isolationists now that the world is stereotyping us as dumbfucks.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

"FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies."

And, all too often, against his buddies. About half the persian gulf war casualties were friendly fire, not even counting murders and self-inflicted casualties. And sometimes they buddies you're fighting against are high on speed

Back on topic -- training soldiers in a video game will just make them that much more careless in this regard. You lose something when you bomb the canadians in the simulation, and then go out drinking with the same guys that evening.