Page 48 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2019
P. 48

LAND FORCES
RANGES
“Another challenge is crafting ranges that can accurately simulate combat against different enemies, either asymmetric or a near-peer competitor.”
One particular challenge is sourcing am- munition that is as close to live rounds as possible but won’t destroy expensive targets and robots.
“In particular, we’re looking at the Close Target Round, which is a new innovation that’s come from industry,” LTCOL Harri- son said. “It’s a frangible training round. It’s hard to adopt, because there’s a lot that goes into bringing into service a new munition, but what it’s done is effectively allowed us to design our ranges so they’re not having to withstand operational rounds.”
Whilst the overall approach is largely quantitative – measuring soldiers’ lethality as a product of accuracy and speed, for ex- ample – the program is also seeking qualita- tive results.
“We need to get recruits to what we call a ‘pre-combat veteran’ before we put them in harm’s way,” LTCOL Harrison said. “That’s a combatant whose experiential learning is indistinguishable from combat.
“Combat places the ultimate demand on the human mind, and the more a combat- ant can rely on experience and familiarity, that increases their ability to deal with the unexpected.”
A quantitative approach, however, may only go so far. Soldiers that perform well in training can often behave very differently in the moment that survival instincts over- ride years of training – when the first round cracks the air overhead. So how can a train- ing range simulate that sense of danger?
“Danger has to be introduced at the right time and when they’re ready for it,” LTCOL Harrison said. “When I say ‘pre-combat vet- eran’, there’s a few checks and balances to put in place before we start putting people in harm’s way.”
One answer may lie in virtual reality. Army has teamed with the University of Newcastle to conduct a world-first trial of stress analysis based on biomarkers measured during free- roam virtual reality simulations.
“We’re working with the University of Newcastle on free-roam virtual real-
ity based on a combat resilience project through the Defence Innovation Hub,” LTCOL Harrison said. “That is trying to better understand the biomarkers associ- ated with combat stress and starting to build the bell curve of what combat resil- ience looks like.”
Another challenge is crafting ranges that can accurately simulate combat against dif- ferent enemies, either asymmetric or a near- peer competitor.
“It comes down to delivering a technol- ogy solution that has three main elements – flexibility, variety and realism,” LTCOL Harrison said. A good example of how we do this is through the Marathon robots. They don’t have to be combatants – we dress them up in civilian clothes, there’s weapons on them, so in the mind of a combatant they are an asymmetric threat.”
LTCOL Harrison was keen to emphasise the critical role Australian industry is play- ing in solving the vastly complex problem his team is tackling.
“We’re not the ones solving these engineer-
ABOVE: Australian Army soldier Trooper James Mulholland from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment provides security after debussing from a CH-47 Chinook during the Human Performance Centre – North Queensland's peak performance course culminating activity.
ing programs ourselves. The engineers who started Marathon Robotics were once PhD students, and now they export to Europe, to the Asia-Pacific, they’re even exporting to the US Marine Corps,” LTCOL Harrison said.
“You can imagine how sensitive that might be for an Australian company to be exporting into the US market something that is so fundamental to what we do.”
Army’s efforts have certainly not gone unnoticed overseas, particularly as the Aus- tralian-Singapore Military Training Initia- tive gets underway across the north.
“I’ve done some engagement with the Sin- gaporeans and they’ve been extremely for- ward-leaning in understanding these meth- odologies, so I’m very hopeful that will have a good outcome,” LTCOL Harrison said.
All this, of course, is part of much larger picture. If the goal of the Enhanced Target Systems and Ranges team is to better prepare troops for the reality of combat – the noise, the confusion, the bloody trauma – then the ultimate result may be a positive effect on the long-term mental health of soldiers.
“Imagine how complex that problem is,” LTCOL Harrison said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done. But ultimately we’re trying to get everyone home physically, mentally and emotionally.”
48 | September 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
DEFENCE


































































































   46   47   48   49   50