Rear Admiral Randy Mahr from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) recently posted a blog entry on virtual worlds. While we have seen some RFP’s and dealt with some other military specific virtual worlds it seems like it has been a long road to go down to see traction that virtual worlds so deserve. So I was pleased to hear RDML Randy Mahr’s thoughts on the subject. Looking at virtual worlds to improve their training systems, albeit Second Life but nevertheless it’s a virtual world, right? According to the Rear Admiral “While this type of “real” training is valuable, for some recruits the shock of experiencing the events can sometimes slow the learning process down. Using a virtual world to pre-immerse and familiarize the recruits holds the prospect of having them better prepared, and helping them get more out of the event.”

Mahr goes on to state: “Before we get too excited we need to acknowledge there are problems we’ll need to overcome. Our existing security firewalls and the NMCI system are not designed to permit this type of virtual interaction. We’ll need to overcome the perception that the virtual world is for “gamer”’ only, just like we finally accepted search engines were powerful tools used by everyone for things other than shopping online. (Did you realize that over 1500 colleges and universities, including Harvard, are already using virtual world technology to deliver some of their education for credit?)

Finally, we’ll need to further bridge the digital divide between the generation that has grown up fully immersed in electronic technology, and the generation that is still making the decisions about where to invest our budget.”

Urghh the firewall thing again, I just hate when that comes up (but we have found solutions to that problem). In my opinion virtual worlds are a big step in the right direction to train our future military personnel.

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The ITEC Conference held May 18-20th, 2010 in London is Europe’s largest and most established Defense Training and Simulation Conference and Exhibition. ITEC 2010 provides expert insight into the opportunities and challenges driving developments in the Defense Training, Education and Simulation industry, along with hands-on experience of new and proven solutions from world leading defense companies and smaller specialist suppliers. The UK is second to the US in terms of defense training spending and is ideal to play host to Europe’s annual defense training, education and simulation event.

On May 18th, 2010 Ed Heinbockel, President and CEO of Visual Purple will be presenting a session entitled “Embedded Training: Overcoming Challenges to Train the United States Military.” Covered within the session will be the drivers that created and influenced the identification of the need for embedded training and the process employed to produce the simulations. Not for the faint of heart, the harsh realities of a nine month production cycle will be shared along with anecdotes and lessons-learned from both production and client perspectives to include cultural and technical challenges.

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