This is a guest post by Walt Long, Business Analyst at TAPE, LLC.
In this post we’ll continue our recap of the 2017 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), in Orlando, Florida, the world’s largest modeling, simulation, and training conference.
While we were there, we visited Marines conducting a training exercise as part of the 2017 Operation Blended Warrior (OBW), a yearlong collaborative, live-virtual-constructive (LVC) planning and execution event that culminates during I/ITSEC with the purpose of uncovering and documenting the challenges in the rapid development and integration of diverse simulation systems and components.
We’re proud that this work was supported by our Orlando TAPE office in Research Park. There, we provide contracted subject matter experts to support the Program Manager Training Systems (PM TRASYS) program office. In this specific case, we provided analysts who supported the set up, execution, and breakdown of the OBW demonstration at I/ITSEC.
In a video for I/ITSEC TV, OBW Manager Kent Gritton discussed the need for this type of event:
“There are multiple ways of doing training: you can do it live where you actually jump into your aircraft and go fly with your actual system itself; you can do it virtually, where you are in a simulator actually controlling the event – it’s a man-controlled event; or you can do it in constructive where it’s a computer controlled event.
Each of those capabilities are used for certain objectives in the training world. With the richness that [an LVC event] can provide by blending all these three together we have a better training environment for whatever we want to accomplish. Plus we have some warfare capabilities now that cannot be trained solely within the live realm and so it’s a necessity to go ahead and bring that virtual and constructive into the live domain so that we can train all of the capabilities of the new warfare platforms.”
Team TAPE devoted extensive time and effort over these many months in setting up the network infrastructure, developing the scenarios, and coordinating with multiple government and industry participants to execute the four-day Ground Scenario portion of OBW. Team TAPE’s professional presentation of the ground operations set a high mark of achievement and received many accolades from senior government and industry personnel.
Carlos Cuevas, project manager of Orlando team, shared the support team’s highlights from the training event:
• Operation Blended Warrior (OBW) is a unique forum to assist military services, industry and academia in meeting tough challenges associated with live-virtual-constructive simulation environments. I/ITSEC 2017 was an overwhelming success. PMTRASYS/TEAM TAPE were among the 38 government and industry organizations that participated.
• Team TAPE PTSS support to I/ITSEC/OBW was comprised of extensive coordination prior to IITSEC commencing. This included, but was not limited to loading specific software on designated laptops and creating and rehearsing scenarios in Virtual Battle Space (VBS), and working directly with the Reserve Detachment; these Marines would serve as the actual operators for the OBW demo.
• Upon I/ITSEC start, Team TAPE personnel participated in the setup of the TRASYS booth and assisted in booth duties as required throughout the week. During this time, several OBW scenarios or “vignettes” were executed; this required communication, coordination with other entities participating, as well as any last minute troubleshooting.
• At the conclusion of I/ITSEC, Team TAPE personnel assisted with the teardown of the booth, and return/accountability of the equipment utilized. Additionally, all provided detailed after-action report comments.
In the final post in this series, TAPE’s Information Systems Analyst Jeff Long will share his notes from the I/ITSEC Build a Game workshop.
