MS&T continues to report and comment on diverse innovations across the warfare domains. 

Representative of the forward-leaning advancements in the broad simulation and technology space, we reported earlier this month that Leonardo and ST Engineering Antycip formed a new partnership aimed to develop a new simulation and high-performance image generator concept for aircraft digital design and pilot training.

Concurrently, a number of other milestones are being reported by the military-industry S&T team for ground operators. While no single development provides a silver, virtual “bullet” to advance individual, unit and staff training into the next generation, taken together, these advancements are accelerating the ability of ground forces to better train for diverse missions, from humanitarian operations to military operations in urban terrain and beyond.

The US Army’s long-anticipated Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), supported by prime contractor Microsoft, is gaining speed with the recent contract award to Virtra for training hardware. This January, this author also reported on the US Marine Corps’ quickening pace to field Saab’s Marine Corps Training Instrumentation System as a replacement for the tired, legacy-era Instrumented Tactical Engagement Simulation System II.  

Progress to advance land warfare training is accelerating in other sectors. This April 22, MS&T posted the announcement that Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) and uCrowds have enabled massive crowd simulation in VBS4 through an integration with TerraCrowds, which provides predictable crowd simulations. Another timely solution, you bet! As this author noted earlier this month, the complexities and visibility of missions in low-intensity operations and beyond are exponentially increasing. Miscues of unintentionally inflicting civilian casualties in the fog of urban combat or during an evacuation event are certain to cast commanders and their forces at the front-end of the 24/7 news cycle and, more significant, in a negative light in the court of public opinion.

Virtual technologies and other enablers noted on MS&T are allowing services to advance their training competencies at a pace not recently observed by our staff. We look forward to focusing on training advancements in this warfare domain.