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.

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!

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.

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

[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!

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.

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.