Australia becoming Indo-Pacific standard for military live, virtual and constructive training.
Military training has taken on new urgency as the Indo-Pacific region reacts to sterner security threats such as a more aggressive China, and as lessons are absorbed from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
A prime example of the valuable combination of live, virtual and constructive (LVC) training was Talisman Sabre 2023, a massive multilateral exercise held in Australia. The centre of gravity of the live training was the Townsville Field Training Area, where approximately 10,000 soldiers conducted wargames.
Colonel Ben McLennan, Commander of the Australian Army’s Combat Training Centre (CTC), explained: “This activity that’s occurring here is just the richest, most immersive and most realistic, no-consequence training environment that we can possibly create. We’re calling it the Olympics of wargames, because it’s the biggest, most ambitious Talisman Sabre ever.” As well as soldiers on the ground, the exercise involved significant LVC elements. For instance, extra brigades to both the west and east were simulated in the land battle.
Colonel Bryan Martin, the U.S. Army’s Operations Commander for the Hawaii-based Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC), highlighted two experimental firsts for the JPMRC during Talisman Sabre 2023. “The first is we’re fully integrated and developing interoperability with the Australian CTC to increase the capacity and capability in both of our armies to exercise in the Indo-Pacific. The second part, we’re working on initiatives from U.S. INDOPACOM to connect digital warfighting, digital wargaming, all the way from Oahu down to the tactical level here in Townsville.” The JPMRC’s ‘exportable’ combat training centre model simulates the kind of pre-combat training that occurs at Fort Irwin and Fort Polk in the United States.
During Talisman Sabre, the CTC Fusion Cell located in Townsville was managed by Cubic. Mick Reilly, director of learning, said the idea was to act as a mirror, not as a ruler, when providing feedback to participating units. Coaches were embedded in forces down to the combat team level, and these provided interactive and immediate feedback and mentoring. An example of inputs might be reminding an officer of recommended tactics, or showing a video recording of a recent action using a tablet connected digitally to the Fusion Cell. Cubic employed around 100 staff in Townsville during the exercise.
Case study – Australia
Continuing the Australian theme, that particular country acts as a useful case study for LVC training. Indeed, one industry source regarded Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) training as being among the most modern in the world, and certainly within Asia-Pacific.
Mark Horn, Cubic’s director of business development, Oceania, told Asian Military Review that Cubic supports Australia’s three armed services. It provides the technical solution for the CTC’s deployable live instrumentation system, plus it holds another service contract called Exercise and Advanced Training that entails varied elements such as exercise planning, management, coaching, medical training, role players and pyrotechnic/non-pyrotechnic events. Horn said the contract is dynamic because it depends entirely on Australian requirements. “As a provider, you need to be in a position to accept that dynamic workload and be flexible enough to respond to it,” Horn related.
Cubic also works with the RAAF’s Air Warfare Centre and Air Combat Group, providing LVC instrumentation to improve performance and generate readiness outcomes. Although normally based at Williamtown and Amberley, this system is deployable in Pelican cases, meaning it can be taken overseas to places like Guam and Thailand.
“We do that in the air by providing plotted telemetry for jet fighters,” including inboard equipment on the F-35, “and then allowing resolution of an air battle in terms of shot evaluation and also tracking of the progress. So I’d say that we’d provide simulation of the air battle effects that can include ISR as well as kinetic effects and some cyber effects, and then the ability to control the exercise whilst it’s actually occurring.” Cubic then offers analysis and feedback to enable understanding of what really happened.
Cubic also supports the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) for exercises, readiness planning and management. “In the training space, we execute mostly constructive simulation for the purposes of training the operations room of ships,” plus its simulations support the principal warfare officers’ course.
Mark Graper, senior vice president, Global Solutions at Cubic Defense, pointed out that his company has a major presence in Singapore where thousands of national servicemen are trained annually. “We’re privileged to support that training. But equally, the Singapore Army deploys to Australia to take advantage of its very large training ranges, each of which is larger than the entire country of Singapore. So having training operations in both Singapore and Australia, we’re uniquely poised to support those deployed operations for the Singapore military” at places like Shoalwater Bay, Queensland.
Cubic has an engineering facility in New Zealand, where training equipment is designed and made. Such equipment is used regionally in places like Indonesia, Japan and Singapore.
CAE is another company supporting Australian military training with technology, design, instruction, engineering, maintenance and project management, its support dating back nearly 30 years. For example, CAE delivers rotary-wing training for naval aviators, plus technical training to enable sailors to operate and maintain systems and technologies aboard Canberra-class landing helicopter docks, Hobart-class destroyers, Supply-class replenishment vessels and Huon-class minehunters.
CAE also trains aircrews and pilots, employing Hawk 127 full-mission simulators and providing instruction for fast-jet pilots undertaking the RAAF’s lead-in fighter conversion and lead-in fighter tactical courses.
Wider region
CAE has a regional presence in Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore. Indeed, its footprint extends to more than 200 training and simulation devices across the Indo-Pacific, supported by 350+ specialist staff.
A spokesperson told AMR, “CAE has heavily invested in the research and development of training approaches and technology specific to the needs of the region, including data-informed networks and artificial intelligence-driven tools that enhance the training experience for instructors and students. These advancements offer clearer management across the entire training continuum, with insights on performance throughout the entire journey to improve coordination between training cycles.”
Since 2014, the CAE Brunei Multipurpose Centre has served Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) customers as the region’s largest helicopter training facility. “It offers an immersive training experience for Sikorsky S-92 and S-70i rotary-wing operators through the provision of classroom and synthetic training, with full mission simulators delivering the most precise mission training required for offshore operations, ship landing, oil rig operations, search and rescue, hook and hoisting operations,” the spokesperson explained. Its courses have trained some 9,800 ASEAN students to date.
CAE supports multi-domain training and multinational exercises. As one example, it recently worked with industry partners to support LVC exercises on Guam. This involved linking fast-jet small footprint trainers with the Joint Terminal Controller Training and Rehearsal System (JTC-TRS) and Virtual Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance Training Application (VISTA) to support training and operational mission networks across the Indo-Pacific.
CAE has the ability to integrate systems and devices to incorporate live and virtual participants in the same training environment. This is “partially hosted through a cloud-based common environment that links training devices such as simulators to enable a more distributed, networked and cyber-secure mission training experience,” the company elaborated. In fact, “The Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards (SCARS) programme provides a classified network for personnel to train in a synthetic all-domain mission setting, anytime and anyplace, improving their ability to plan, execute and learn from their missions in a more integrated and effective manner.”
Assessing the regional market, CAE’s spokesperson said: “There are a few aspects of operations in the Indo-Pacific that make it unique compared to Europe or the Americas. Firstly, the geographical distance is incredibly vast, with thousands of miles separating the various airfields, ports, logistics hubs and potential operational areas. This makes the distribution of command and control, communications and logistics capacity especially challenging for whole-of-nation or multinational operations. For forward-facing deployed forces to train together in a realistic and timely manner, at the desired level, the need for synthetic and advanced solutions is fundamental.”
Saab is another company with a prominent training footprint in the region. Without divulging individual customers, Hans Lindgren, head of business development at Saab’s business unit Training & Simulation, told AMR, “Saab has a number of customers in the Asia-Pacific region who use our training solutions, and we see potential in the region that will enable multinational training, including Australia.”
Lindgren added: “Saab, including its Australian operations, leverages its global experience delivering training solutions to more than 40 nations around the world.” Saab’s products encompass live, virtual and live-fire training, plus training services. Lauding their realism, Lindgren said the company’s systems can be used at the individual soldier level through to combined-arms brigade collective training. It has contracts with the U.S. Army and USMC, the latter’s instrumentation systems offering “additional possibilities for their organisation to deploy forces and train within an interoperable framework in order to maintain regional stability and alliances,” including within Asia-Pacific.
Lindgren noted: “Interoperability and cooperation between nations is becoming more common among armed forces around the world. The Saab solution is technology-agnostic, meaning laser as well as other technologies such as geo-pairing, can be used to enable a blended solution, facilitating the possibility to include artillery, combat support and long-range missiles in training. Additionally, by including virtual and constructive aspects to a live training scenario, more holistic and effective training can be executed.”
Technologies
In August, Bohemia Interactive Australia announced that New Zealand’s military had granted it a contract to upgrade VBS4 virtual desktop simulation systems. This VBS4 suite is used for collective tactical and mission rehearsals. Ryan Stephenson, Bohemia Interactive Australia’s managing director, said, “The NZ Army’s Command and Control Systems School are real power users of simulation tools, and have developed considerable expertise in leveraging simulation as a multiplier to produce training effects for their servicemen and women.”
Trevor Smith, a senior instructor at Bohemia Interactive Simulations, explained to AMR that its virtual-reality software allows unlimited training space for personnel to walk, drive or fly through. The company provides the sandbox, so to speak, and militaries can add their own elements such as enemy combatants. The software helps train decision-making, records everything from every angle, and a head-mounted helmet can give participants 360° views. Other regional customers include Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
Systematic is well known for its SitaWare battle management software, and it offers a training product called SitaWare Aspire with which to trains users at all levels. A recent customer was the British Army, which trained 200 personnel in just six days.
As an example of an application of virtual reality, the Australian company FLAIM Systems recently announced an Australian Army contract for its Sweeper product. Sweeper is a fully immersive countermine and explosive hazard awareness training system that builds muscle memory. It uses virtual reality to simulate mine and explosive hazards across diverse scenarios, whether it be in Ukraine or Solomon Islands.
South Korea’s army is expanding its number of instrumented live-fire training sites from four to nine by next year. Seoul will also expand indoor shooting ranges and shooting ranges with barriers, with 25 new facilities to be added in 2025. This year it released a tender seeking three instrumented ranges for urban operations too.
Virtual-reality training systems depend upon suitable headsets or goggles. Microsoft, for instance, is working on the US Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) with its commercial HoloLens head-up display. IVAS is billed as a device for soldiers that can be used in combat, in darkness and for mixed-reality training, though the programme has had difficulties. So far, the US Army has acquired 5,000 1.0 glasses, with plans to buy 5,000 1.1 units for limited use. Microsoft is also working on a new “make or break” 1.2 version, with tests starting next year to determine whether the project should continue.
The future
Cubic’s Graper predicted LVC will become more popular and more useful in the future. “I think we’re just at the beginning, and the reason is there will always be live training and there will always be some things that are done in simulators only. But increasingly, high-value training will be a blend of live and synthetic, and the thing about the LVC blend is it allows us to replicate training effects that you see in the news from Ukraine, but we can’t necessarily do it all live.” LVC training can thus go beyond direct fire – such as laser on laser, or tank gun versus tank gun – to replicate an almost infinite range of effects.
As technology advances, “The greatest benefits have yet to be realised,” Graper enthused. Indeed, industry is mostly ready to move forward, but it can only do so at the pace of requirements issued by militaries. “So we try to encourage our end users and customers to think about what the offerings are, what the possibilities are.”
Graper shared that pilots, for instance, cannot always fly live, “Because, for one, I don’t want to show all my cards in peacetime. And number two, it’s very expensive and I might not have a range space and it may not be safe. But if I can replicate the scenario with the realistic threat density and complexity, then I’m forcing blue [force] to train to a tough scenario in a realistic fashion.”
Some Asian pilots might consider it beneath their dignity to fly in simulators rather than a real jet. However, most are getting beyond such a prohibitive mindset as the realism of simulators increases, plus some air forces cannot afford to fly as much as they would like to. CAE also sees further LVC training opportunities as regional militaries introduce next-generation platforms and increase manned-unmanned teaming.
CAE observed that “popularity is growing in the creation of a distributed LVC capability using both dedicated training and operational networks, as well as adding training capability to existing operational systems. Live training missions must be able to benefit from the addition of virtual and constructive blue and red forces to make training as realistic and challenging as personnel would experience when they’re deployed.” However, the importance of enhanced cybersecurity measures cannot be understated when moving simulation systems to new networks.
CAE observed that, to achieve agile command and control, personnel must be able to access centrally managed training at their deployed locations. These must be “connected securely and systematically, planned and executed together with allied participation. LVC capability for the Indo-Pacific region must therefore span all echelons of military operations – from tactical to operational and strategic.”
The company further remarked: “Defence forces and governments continue to find ways to maximise efficiency and enhance readiness through training, which includes allowing active-duty personnel to focus on operational requirements and reduce demand on live platforms. There has been a growing trend among defence forces to adopt synthetic training environments for a greater percentage of their overall training, and outsourcing a variety of training and operational support services to reduce cost, risk and operational demand.”
Virtual and constructive training mitigates risk, and multi-domain scenarios can be tailored and repeated until desired proficiency levels are reached. Furthermore, virtual training significantly reduces carbon footprints compared to live training. As CAE put it: “LVC training systems deliver efficient, consistent and repeatable training environments that keep up with the operational tempo of forward-deployed forces, allowing them to train on their schedule and extend their continuity of training through rehearsal in theatre.”
by Gordon Arthur
