USMC Awards $5.1M For AI-Driven Crew Gunnery Trainer

XRT has been awarded a $5.1 million Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement by the U.S. Marine Corps to develop a crew gunnery mission rehearsal training prototype for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV). This is XRT's fourth OTA award in three years.

This award supports the Program Requirements for the ACV Suite of Training Systems. It builds directly on the proven success of the Wave Warrior ACV Driver Training System (DTS), now deployed at Marine Corps installations worldwide, which XRT continues to sustain and maintain as the program advances into its next phase of development.

The crew gunnery mission rehearsal prototype is designed to represent the next frontier of the ACV training ecosystem – and a step-change beyond the DTS. It is a shift from individual skill development to adaptive, AI-driven collective training with intelligent adversaries in peer-contested environments.

While this new platform uses the lightweight simulator base developed by XRT for the DTS, the Crew Gunnery Trainer (CGT) prototype will leverage agentic, multi-modal AI to ingest doctrine and autonomously construct natural behavioral hierarchies that produce a flexible-thinking enemy force. Rather than running scripted responses or predictable patterns, opposing forces will adapt dynamically to crew decisions, creating realistic peer-to-peer tactical scenarios.

Agentic AI friendly units will be able to communicate and coordinate action independently, introducing real-world battlefield geometry and small unit leadership challenges that static training environments cannot replicate. The prototype will employ AI to ingest planning documents to translate individual crew actions into maneuver force operations and synchronized fires across the battlespace.

Combined, these AI innovations aim to bridge the gap between individual proficiency and collective competency, enabling levels of immersion in multi-unit integration and mission rehearsal that have historically been possible only through real-world exercises.

"What we're building isn't a simulator with smarter scripting. It's a training environment with a genuine adversary that thinks, adapts, and challenges crews in ways the battlefield actually will. The OTA model exists because that kind of capability can't wait for a five-year acquisition cycle. Our job is to deliver it fast and build it to evolve. This award is another opportunity to prove that's exactly what XRT does," said Neil Levin, CEO, XRT.