Page 56 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2021

56 SIMULATION & TRAINING
OCTOBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
The work was carried out by Lockheed Martin’s program team based in Canberra and also in Orlando, Florida. “This outcome is a positive example of Australia’s sustainable sov- ereign industrial capability in full swing, with our global teams working in concert to successfully plan and execute a PDR software on schedule,” commented then-CEO of Lock- heed Martin Australia and New Zealand Joe North.
DELIVERING A LAND SIMULATION SYSTEM
Another fundamental building block of Army’s simulation roadmap is the Land Simulation Core 2.0 (LS Core 2.0) program, which aims to develop a scalable simulation sys- tem that can be accessed on demand.
“LS Core 2.0 will address capability and staffing short- falls within the Land Simulation System (LSS) to deliver enhanced simulation effects to Army’s point of need,” De-
multi-echelon training and mission rehearsal capability which brings together the LVC elements into a single train- ing environment.
The STE is designed to facilitate “realistic, multi-echelon and multi-domain combined arms manoeuvre and mission command, live, collective training anywhere in the world.”
In August, Australia’s Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) announced it had been subcontracted by Cole En- gineering Services (CESI) to deliver components of the US Army’s Training Simulation Software/Training Management Tools (TSS/TMT) program. Under the contract, BISim will provide its VBS4, VBS Blue IG and VBS World Server as part of the overall solution. The TSS/TMT component supplies the central software capabilities of the overarching STE.
BISim Chief Operating Officer Peter Morrison said that the Newcastle-based company has been working with the US Army on its STE program since 2016 and as a prime contractor with CESI it has developed a prototype for a cloud-enabled virtual world training capability.
“TSS/TMT is very much a brigade-level capability and the US Army wants to put the entire brigade, from the brigade staff down to combat soldiers, into simulation,” Morrison explained. “They want to increase the number of what they term ‘bloodless battles’, the brigade-level training activities, they conduct every year. They can do that in simulation and the brigades will only go out into the field once they’ve reached a certain level of proficiency and deploy once they have proved ready to deploy.”
Morrison says the US Army is also leading the transition of simulation technology to the cloud. “They are really looking to provide a ‘Google Earth’ or ‘Bing Maps’ capability for sim- ulated operations, all cloud-enabled (and) accessible through any computer on their network,” he added. “The cloud tech- nologies in STE gives us tremendous processing power, we can do one to two million entities in simulation and we have demonstrated this to the US Army through prototyping.”
The Australian Army, as well as those of the Canada, New Zealand and UK, currently utilise BISim’s VBS3 software. A recent example of the benefits of the interoperability a com- mon approach allows, is the granting of VBS3 licences for in-
dividual soldiers in the Austra- lian Army and the UK’s Royal Yeomanry Regiment, enabling them to conduct joint training while in COVID-19 lockdown.
The US Army, US Marine Corps and at least one Europe- an country has purchased BI- Sim’s VBS4 software, which al- lows training to be performed at virtual locations across the world, rather than the relative- ly small areas offered by the earlier VBS3 product.
LEFT: An Australian Army Dry Support Bridge as rendered in simulation software.
“ANOTHER FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF ARMY’S SIMULATION ROADMAP IS THE LAND SIMULATION CORE 2.0 (LS CORE 2.0) PROGRAM”
fence said. “It will achieve this by de- livering a managed suite of common simulation software, improve data warehouse functions and interopera- bility with Land Command, C3ISREW systems and establish a complementary contracted workforce to support an expanded Land Simulation Network (LSN) for domestic and coalition train- ing beyond the scope of JP9711/1.”
The procurement aspect of LS Core 2.0 has been split into two tranches and a Request For Tender (RFT) for the first tranche, the acquisition of
Common Simulation Software, closed in October last year. Tranche 1 is overseeing acquisition of Common Simulation Software (CSS) under three separate packages, comprising Common Virtual Simulation, Common Constructive Tool Set and Common Image Generator.
THE US ARMY MODEL
As one of the leading services in the use of simulation, the US Army is developing a service-wide Synthetic Training Environment (STE) which aims to provide a collective,
BOHEMIA INTERACTIVE