The Next SIMNET? Unlocking the Future of Military Readiness Through Synthetic Environments
Jennifer McArdle and Caitlin Dohrman
December 3, 2020
The soldiers prepared for the day’s training exercise — a force-on-force armored battle against their Soviet adversary. Yet, instead of maneuvering through the sands of the Mojave Desert — the location of the U.S. military’s Fort Irwin training ground — the soldiers prepared to enter a virtual battlespace, called SIMNET (short for “simulator networkingâ€). Ethernet cables snaked out from their M1 Abrams tank simulators, plugging the First Company of the 12th Armored Cavalry Unit into one collective virtual training ground. As the instructor uploaded Soviet computer-generated tanks and armored vehicles into the scenario, emulating Soviet doctrine to the best of his ability, the U.S. troops ranged across the virtual desert, in an attempt to outwit and out-fire their adversary. The Soviet and U.S. forces engaged, clashing in a fierce melee of man and materiel, but U.S. command and control quickly began to disintegrate. American troops began to virtually die at the hands of the adversary or, in the midst of the confusion, via fratricide. The troop screens in the tank simulators turned blank, as if to signal the onset of their mass extinction. The battle had ended, but for these soldiers the training had not yet finished. SIMNET allowed the soldiers to replay aspects of the battle “Groundhog Day-style†and identify their mistakes and failings. They could experientially learn before the crucible of combat, and not via a prohibitively costly, one-off exercise.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/the-next-simnet-unlocking-the-future-of-military-readiness-through-synthetic-environments/
