Interactive Training Blog

By David Ostby, Chief Technical Officer, Visual Purple, LLC

The days of the ‘rifle and canteen’ soldier are gone. And it’s not that today’s soldiers no longer carry rifles and canteens. But in today’s complex military environment, more is needed to survive and succeed. More and better intelligence, more speed, more accuracy; in a word, more information. Lots of it. And quickly.

Of course, along with all this information comes a dire need to manage it. Imagine data streaming in from hundreds of sources and sensors. The acronyms alone are daunting. Acronyms like FCS, DCGS, CMT, ISR… the list goes on and on. They’re all part of the New Army’s plan to up gun today’s soldier into the next generation soldier. It’s been given the name “Future Combat Systems or FCS.”

FCS soldiers are expected to assimilate massive amounts of battlefield data and make actionable sense of it. Behind each one of those acronyms is a world full of complexity. The only way to collect and manage that amount of data is by the use of sophisticated systems and software. The learning curve is steep: FCS soldiers have to become quick experts in multiple complex software tools – their lives and the lives of their fellow war fighters depend upon it. The need to train the soldier in its use is as daunting as the complexity of the software itself.

This situation hatched the idea of embedded training and its maxim “train as you fight, fight as you train”. Instead of using tedious manuals and classroom lectures, embed the training inside of a simulator which resides inside of the software. Present the soldier with realistic scenarios inside the software, so that the soldier must use the actual software to resolve the situation.

This is easier said than done. The trainer would have to fit seamlessly into the mother application. Also, it would have to allow the user to make mistakes and robustly redirect the user onto the right path, all the while maximizing each learning opportunity as it appears. The mother application builders don’t usually have these kinds of simulation production skills.

To build an embedded trainer, you’d want to hire a company with extensive expertise in training simulations. And you’d want them to have worked with the DoD in that arena. Turns out that Visual Purple is just such a company, and we had our first opportunity to build an embedded trainer in 2008.

What does it look like? How does it work?

Stay tuned…

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