Welcome back from the Thanksgiving hiatus. It’s a wonderful time to reconnect with family — my favorite holiday, one with no religious bars, just a day dedicated to feasting, friendship, and gratitude. A quintessentially American holiday, that emphasizes what different peoples and cultures can accomplish when they work together in the spirit of friendship and cooperation, rather than competing relentlessly with each other for resources or influence.

Today’s story looks at an annual conference that focuses on businesses that offer training and simulation support to militaries. It also considers the advantage troops derive from this type of training.

THE BIG STORY

Training the Military of the Future, Today

The U.S. military trains units and leadership for conventional wartime tasks better than any other country. That training requires robust preparation and support from industry.

Everyone knows that defense is big business — weapons, bullets, equipment, and vehicles consume a huge portion of a country’s political energy and its GDP. Modern war demands a modern professional military, and a modern professional military requires expensive, advanced systems capable of communicating with each other.

It also requires well-trained formations of troops and officers. And that training is time and resource-intensive.

An annual conference that dates back to 1966 connects industry and military leadership with academics to explore what’s possible in the future, as well as examining the utility and effectiveness of existing training resources. MILES gear, simunitions, AI, video games, and simulations are some of the concepts under consideration for 2023.

Organized by the National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) is the world's largest modeling, simulation and training event. This year’s meeting falls on the week after Thanksgiving, from Monday, November 27, to Friday, December 1.

The theme of I/ITSEC in 2023? Maintaining a Global Force in a Digital World (ok, that’s not a theme, that’s a topic). A review of this year’s agenda reveals a heavy focus on the capabilities of AI and digital-assisted (or digital-only) tools to enhance existing training, or enable new training.

This isn’t just big money, although it is that (an opportunity for businesses to showcase big new systems the military can employ in training). It’s imagining new opportunities to employ technology to get soldiers better prepared for the battlefield. It also considers board games and video games, which I’m always happy to see.

In basic training, we spent days at a digital marksmanship range before heading to the real range with our rifles. That looked like a giant double-wide trailer in an air conditioned room, with M16-style rifles that reminded me of duck hunt, and a video game popup range that tracked shots from the “rifle.” In infantry officer basic training we used a similar setup to practice call for fire. While it would be unjust to describe these events as useless, they were shadows of what they represented — actual physical training with artillery or rifles. Furthermore, this sort of training requires training of its own — an explanation of the rules, how to use the training equipment, which in both cases experienced software problems and had to be shut down early — and ends up being useful only as a means to support further training. The few times I was able to call for fire a couple times in even canned set-piece live fires, that stuck with me in a way the simulations did not.

Were they wholly absent of value? Of course not; playing through a video game or going through a simulation of some sort is more valuable than a thought exercise, just as a thought exercise is more valuable than no preparation at all.

Still, this trend of companies and the military embracing digital and AI solutions (which I observed at AUSA in October) feels somehow off. In an effort to save money — not too much money, presumably — and mitigate risk, we’ve shut down the capability to manufacture ammunition and weapons platforms. Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money on training soldiers on real weapons and systems instead?

It will be interesting to watch the panels and hear what academics are thinking, as well as what industry is developing, and leaders are seeing in the field. But I’m skeptical of what sounds to me like the exuberant and idealistic promise of future technology, when existing technology will do just fine to train the military of the present.

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