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On Training, Recruitment Uses For Army Games
wgrover writes "The New York Times Magazine (reg yada) has a new longform article exploring computer games funded for training/recruitment purposes by the U.S. military, as previously covered on Slashdot. 'For the past three years, the military has been entertaining the surprising idea that video games, even those that you play on a commercial system like Microsoft's Xbox, can be an effective way to train soldiers.' Aside from training, the games also improve young people's perceptions of the military: '30 percent of a group of young people with a favorable view of the military said they had developed that view from playing America's Army.'"
The Making of an X Box Warrior
It was only a virtual Baghdad, baking under a virtual sun. As in real life, though, troops were dodging gunfire. I was at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina Del Rey, Calif., playing a new X box video game called Full Spectrum Warrior. Leading eight men in an Army squad on a patrol of the war-torn city, I got a taste, however approximate, of why Iraq is such a hard place to be a soldier these days. My job, as squad leader, was to order my soldiers where to go and what to do. First, I sent half of my men into an alleyway, where they immediately came under fire from insurgents hiding nearby. Scrambling for safety, I ordered us to duck into a building, pausing to marvel at the detail of the architecture. I then led us back out onto the street, directing my team to crouch behind a car while we tried to locate the snipers. This was a bad idea. Despite what you see in action movies and other video games, cars do not provide good cover from bullets. The snipers cut loose, and my troops crumpled to the ground. It was surprisingly distressing. In barely three minutes, I had led every single one of my soldiers to his death.
I play video games regularly and, modesty aside, usually do quite well. Though this was my first attempt at Full Spectrum Warrior, the reason that I played poorly was not that I was inexperienced but that the game was not designed solely for entertainment. Full Spectrum Warrior was created by the Institute for Creative Technologies, with help from the Army, to teach soldiers realistic strategies for surviving what the armed forces call ''military operations in urban terrain.'' As a result, the game is unforgivingly precise. The soldiers you command are programmed to respond the way a real soldier would. There are no magic weapons to bail you out. All you have going for you is the real world. ''This is what you'll really see when you're out there,'' said Maj. Brent Cummings, a soldier then stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., who worked as a consultant on the game and walked me through it.
For the past three years, the military has been entertaining the surprising idea that video games, even those that you play on a commerical system like Microsoft's Xbox, can be an effective way to train soldiers. In fact, the Army is now one of the industry's most innovative creators, hiring high-end programmers and designers from Silicon Valley and Hollywood to devise and refine its games. Some of these games are action-packed, like Full Spectrum Warrior. Others, like one that the military's Special Operations Command is currently designing to help recruits practice their Arabic, are less so. All the games, however, speak to the military's urgent need to train recruits for the new challenges of peacekeeping efforts in places like Iraq.
Teaching someone to be an accurate shot is not particularly hard to do. Military trainers have learned that if you put someone through a week of intensive work with a point-and-shoot simulator (not unlike today's commerically available shoot-'em-up video games), he will be reasonably good with a rifle. Teaching judgment, however, is much harder than teaching hand-eye coordination. Today's military is in the market for games that train soliders, in effect, how not to shoot -- how to avoid conflict whenever possible, to recognize danger and find a route around it. As a squad leader in Full Spectrum Warrior, you do not even carry a gun that fires, which makes it the first military-action video game in which the player never discharges a weapon.
Some skeptics worry that if the military's games are not realistic enough, they will encourage bad habits and incorrect strategy -- tactics that work on the screen but get soldiers killed on the battlefield. It is certainly true that many video games for sale in stores would be disastrous for training and would trivialize a task that is literally a matter of life and death. James Korris, the creative director of the Institute for Creative Technologies, said that he once anal
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Was Marine Doom the first example of using a video game as a military training tool or does something predate it?
this distinction of military, "favorable vs. unfavorable", is kind of bullshit.
the military follows orders. it's the orders, from the pentagon and the white house, that roll downhill, that give the military such a reputation.
the people in the field rely on trust, teamwork and training--things that pretty much everyone depends on in their day-to-day life. the orders sometimes make them roll their eyes.
i'm gonna give you a long-winded example of what i'm talking about. in the news lately there has been a heated discussion about "atrocities committed in war" and whether "outing" tales of atrocities denigrates the warfighter.
my pop was a US WW2 carrier pilot around japan. as the war winded down, the "offical rules" from washington and the pentagon were "do not engage non-military targets unless fired upon" (i'm paraphrasing).
so my pop had to fly his plane down to fishing boats and stuff, overfly them, to see if they would shoot at him, before he would open up with his machine guns and kill them.
now, another pilot on the carrier got shot down doing this. immediately, the unspoken agreement among the pilots was "sink anything in your search area"--don't bother checking it out anymore.
this was an illegal act. not all fishing boats were armed resistance, but he and the other pilots stopped checking them out. they just started sinking them, in fact anything that moved in his search area was a fair target from that point forward. he wanted to live, not get killed from a "lucky" shot, from some guy hiding under a tarp on a fishing boat.
later, the same thing happened over land. he started strafing groups of civilians, because, early on, he would get shot at from the groups.
so now the questions are:
1) did same or similar things happen in vietnam?
2) do you really have to check out every boat, every crowd, putting your life on the line, when you damn well know what could be coming?
3) does washington and the pentagon make this shit up to cover their ass from a strictly legal point of view, while shifting the blame for anything that goes bad down to the fighters?
I already know the answers to these questions for myself (yes, no, yes).
A lot of people get pissed about number 2) saying you have to obey all orders and die on the field from a lucky shot, that's the way it goes in the military. it's called orders and discipline.
if you get caught, your career is shot; you probably go to military prison. if you keep checking out every boat and crowd up close, you die. the coice is simply one to be made. sometimes
sometimes i see news shots from iraq showing a gunbattle in the street, and kids and adults are standing outside, in the street, watching. ever hear of a ricochet? i wish i kept those pictures, just to send them to people who talk about the poor innocents dying in iraq. here's a lesson--when the shooting starts, get your ass inside!
in iraq, how would you like to be the guys going in an searching houses for suspects? total dependence on teamwork, training and trust. i suspect most of our dead in iraq are from "lucky" shots out of nowhere.
LTG Peter Cuviello (Army G-6/CIO 2000-2003)
LTG Stephen Boutelle (Army G-6/CIO 2003-present)
These are a new generation of Army commander who have much more in common with today's geek than you would expect. Both are technology-centric men who are interested in the network and the applications we run on it, including games. I've had the opportunity to meet both men and I have to say that the generational issues regarding technology have been overcome with the arrival of men like this in command. Before them, perhaps the Army's senior leadership was brought up in an era before personal computing. That is no longer the case.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
With drones such as the Predator seeing lots of action (which are now armed), and iRobots out in the field (not armed yet), it is only a matter of time before humans remotely control a significant portion of our military might. Sure, you have to worry about securing the control channels and there are lots of bits and pieces that need to get worked out.
Most of technology is already there, it just needs to mature a bit, let's say 5-10 years. DARPA should have set the Grand Challenge rules so that vehicles could be remotely controlled, with hundred of test targets all over that get tagged by lasers or something similar.
The army would be smart to collect gameplay data from America's Army, etc. I found it curious that I had to submit my training scores to the AA servers before I could even play the game, but maybe I'm just paranoid. It's doubtful that the Army has some grand plan here, but there are definately many who get it. Basically, the Army could recruit the most skilled operators/players, and lots of people would probably be more likely to serve their country in front of a virtual screen as opposed to seeing real combat.
Is it too out there to assume that the gamers who clean up in today's FPS and FSims may find yourself being drafted by the military one day...?
Of the obstacles to be overcome to make remote combat operations, it would seem most are straight-forward to overcome with time.
How do you go up stairs and handle rough terrain? How about a helibot? Take a remote controlled model helicopter, stick on a few cameras, various sensors, GPS, etc. Very much like today's FPS, it seems to me.