The British military has had to radically improve some of its simulated training war games to keep the attention of recruits who have grown up in the Playstation and Xbox generation, a Ministry of Defence scientist has admitted.
Troops
are so used to playing high-quality commercial games set in combat
zones that they tend to lose concentration unless the MoD simulations
look equally realistic. This has become an important issue at the MoD,
which is increasingly turning to digital simulations to help prepare
soldiers for duty.
Thousands of troops sent to Afghanistan have
been trained on Virtual Battlespace2, a spin-off from a commercial game
that can, for instance, test their responses when they come under mortar
attack from insurgents.
Though the military stresses that these
games only supplement traditional methods, it reflects the way
technology is transforming military training. With budgets being
squeezed across the MoD, simulations are also a comparatively cheap way
of giving troops a "virtual'' taste of what they might come up against
in a warzone.
Another idea involves issuing RAF trainee pilots
with tablet computers such as iPads, to save the cost – and weight – of
printing bulky flight manuals that need to be regularly updated and cost
£1,000 a student.
The scientists and engineers at MoD's Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory in Portsdown, Hampshire, are at the
heart of the developments.
Andrew Poulter, the technical team
leader, said the military was trying to keep up with the advances that
have helped turned computer gaming into a hugely lucrative global
industry. Bestsellers such as Battlefield 3, Killzone 3 and the Call of
Duty series have taken this genre of video games, known as "first-person
shooters'', to a new level.
"Back in the 1980s and 1990s, defence
was far out in front in terms of quality of simulation," said Poulter.
"Military-built simulators were state of the art. But now, for £50, you
can buy a commercial game that will be far more realistic than the sorts
of tools we were using. The truth is, the total spending on games
development across the industry will be greater than spending on
defence."
Poulter is in charge of Project Kite (knowledge
information test environment), which has been tasked with putting the
MoD back in the forefront of simulation training, in part by buying-in
technology from the big gaming companies.
The key to successful
virtual training is for the simulation to be realistic enough for people
to be properly "immersed'' in what they are doing.
"Certainly,
there is a level of computer games experience in recruits. So the plots
have to be realistic and the image generation has to be high quality. A
lot of the older systems can be very clunky. If you put someone behind a
block display, it is harder for them to be completely immersed." But
though the commercial games "may look graphically beautiful, they have
to be entertaining rather than realistic".
Poulter and his
nine-strong team will adapt the software so that the weapons perform as
they would in combat "The weapons need to be credible. If they fire a
rifle and the bullet travels three and a half miles, then that is not
right. If they are steering a vehicle, then that has to be right too.
Realism is more important than entertainment. Levels of immersion are
very important."
The MoD is using a variety of simulations, from
drills to put out a fire in an aircraft to what to do if a vehicle in a
convoy gets hit by a roadside bomb.
There are specific Afghanistan
simulations, designed to give troops an idea of the tough environment
they will find in one of the small forward operating bases in Helmand,
and the drills they need to use if they come under attack.
Putting
training simulations on tablet computers could be the next big shift in
training. It would allow sailors, soldiers and aircrews to practise
techniques wherever they wanted to. "Virtual Battlespace is quite good
fun, and we want trainees to want to do training," said Poulter.
"It is certainly a lot more fun than going through lists of checks and box-ticking.
"We
want them to think 'I would quite like to do a bit more of that kind of
thing'. So they might spend 10 minutes [on a simulation] after reading
papers in the morning, or in their spare time."
Cost has also
become a pressing issue. "If they have already learned some core skills
in a simulation, there is less to learn during live training, which is
much more expensive and may involve aircraft, tanks, and live round
explosions."
Poulter said a commander who came back from
Afghanistan told him that two soldiers in his unit had drilled
themselves so much on Virtual Battlespace2, he was sure the training had
saved their lives when they came under fire. "It has been invaluable.
It is being taken seriously. It's not just a game," said Poulter.
[via
The Guardian]
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