"Looking at our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—how can we leverage all the missions they've done? The checkpoints they've manned? The room sweeps, the convoys they've driven?" Grosse said. "When they leave, how do we transfer that knowledge to new units that are heading over? Because the units, old and new, don't get to interact."
"This tool allows the new people who are ready to deploy to be at their home stations, go onto the Net, and get into scenarios where the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan can be the role players and play these things out," Grosse said. "[Experienced soldiers] can say, 'Hey, this is what happens in these scenarios, these are the lessons we've learned.' That can be a powerful thing."
As missions are played out, the data and information generated will remain available as the environment grows and evolves. "We don't need to keep reinventing the wheel," Grosse said.
Both the Army and game developer There are anxious to get the system into the hands of some real soldiers. They hope to have their chance this summer and fall, when a prototype environment could be tested by soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division—recently returned from very real duty in Iraq.
Human Element
The U.S. armed forces have used computer simulations for decades. Computer modeling came of age during the Cold War, an era when the United States faced more conventional enemies and combat scenarios.
The latest virtual trainer, however, represents a new type of training tool. Participants can access the system from computers anywhere in the world. And the program is designed to train soldiers for what's known as asymmetric warfare.
"Today, with what we face in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, we don't know where the front lines are," Grosse said. "Every building could potentially hide a sniper, or a car bomb could suddenly appear. We have hostage situations and special forces missions. It's not the traditional stuff that our troops have trained for in the past."
Experts say a key to computer-based training for such situations is the human component. Real people will control the virtual characters that populate the simulated environment.
Gehorsam, the There vice president, gives the example of a prototype scene set in downtown Baghdad: "If we have a hundred or a thousand people involved in that scene, they could be accessing this system from anywhere on Earth," Gehorsam said. "The real value is in having those real people act like real people. If you have large numbers of people in there acting the way they do in real life, you'll learn more things."
He notes that the system could potentially accommodate a hundred thousand players or more. While artificial intelligence will be able to control some characters, such as large crowds, Gehorsam says the unique value of the system is in the human input of living players. Many of those players will be soldiers well qualified for the task.
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