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

"Battle Simulation"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's military code for "Doom 3."

Wait

[Luigi30]

If they lose a life in the simulation, do they die in real life too?

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.

Re:Wait

[Daniel Dvorkin]

FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies. "The country" is what makes idealistic kids enlist, but in a war zone, it's very far away; the guy to your left, the guy to your right, and the hill you're supposed to take are right there.

First Person Shooter

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the real FPS game.

Re: Home Theatre

[MichaelSmith]

Gentlemen this is the war room, you can't fight in here

Realistic

[LordHatrus]

So realistic, you'll leave with sand in places you've never thought possible!

Yeah, that's nice and all...

[MrDomino]

But the REAL question is, "where can I get one?"

Future solders

[GoofyBoy]

Bunny hopping their way to victory!

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....

[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.

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.

Training for what?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's a high-payoff target, brother," says Tyrrell. He gets approval to deliver a "limited lethality" fragmentation bomb to the hospital roof.

Jesus christ, this is the sort of training they get?!
Limited Lethality my arse. Nothing dropped from a fighter-bomber can be considered "limited lethality" - Kinetic energy alone does a good job of eroding that particular definition

Where's that dang Peace Simulation?

[xactuary]

Anybody know of a peace simulation?

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.

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

[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

[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.

Warning!

[doc modulo]

Spoiler alert!

The last paragraph of the article gives the main surprise away of one of the best science-fiction books on Earth: "Ender's Game"

I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article if you haven't already.

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.

That good huh?

[AndroidCat]

After Flatworld, the sight of Oklahoma senator James Inhofe buckling on a virtual reality helmet at ICT headquarters seems positively old school. A technician shouts "Load the flying bats!" and the senator is transported to a damp tunnel near a farmhouse that may be an enemy hideout. Insects whir and water trickles in surround sound while digitized bats swoop and dive overhead. Inhofe is impressed. "It's the closest thing to reality that I've ever experienced," he says. "My feet felt wet."

"Janitor team report to the simulation room."

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.