Analysis of Military training; Literature review and preliminary selection of military fields
report
The EUCLID program enables the European Industry to develop and produce in a cost-effective way the systems that can fulfil future European military needs. One of the Research Technology Projects (RTP) within EUCLID is RTP 11.8, entitled: Low-cost Simulators. Low-cost simulators are defined as a new family of training devices that, through the use of commercially available and emerging technologies, can provide superior benefit-to-cost ratios when compared to full fidelity simulators. The research project which is carried out under contract of the Ministries of Defence of the five participating countries of RTP 11.8 (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands) is called ELSTAR, an Acronym for: European Low-cost Simulation Technol-ogy for the ARmed forces. Because training simulators are intended to teach people practical skills, transfer of training is the critical and conclusive issue in research, development, and application of simulators. Training value, of course, assumes high transfer of training to later phases of training or to the operational tasks and systems. The ELSTAR approach for developing low-cost training simulators is to identify the critical task elements and to select those that can be easily simulated with high fidelity.
As a first step, the ELSTAR project aims at the selection of military task domains that may be conceived as the most promising for application of low-cost simulation technology and for the generation of relevant knowledge (by relating to the most prominent questions). For this purpose a military task taxonomy was constructed, consisting of about 100 task domains (appendix 1). The ELSTAR taxonomy appeared effective in obtaining the required information on prospects for low-cost simulation. On one hand, the taxonomy proved to be an analytical and comprehensive overview of the most relevant dimensions of the operational field in relation to simulator training. On the other hand, the taxonomy matched with the way military training specialists see their field and it translated easily to concrete military activities and functions. On the basis of the expert-judgements, 29 domains were considered very appropriate for further investigation. This high number signifies a.o. the potential value of (low-cost) simulation for future applications. In order to further investigate the opportunities for low-cost simulation, a representa-tive and concise set of 9 military training areas that covered the selected task domains was identified and defined.
The remainder of the present work package consists of three steps. For each military training program/area, more detailed data will be acquired with respect to task- and cost-utility information. Subsequently, the results will be used to verify whether, and to what degree, the selected task domains are indeed interesting for low-cost simulator development and application. Finally, a set of 3-5 task domains will be selected for further research, which ultimately (after 4 subsequent work-packages) aims at a handbook comprising guidelines for low-cost simulator development, acquisi-tion, and its application.
As a first step, the ELSTAR project aims at the selection of military task domains that may be conceived as the most promising for application of low-cost simulation technology and for the generation of relevant knowledge (by relating to the most prominent questions). For this purpose a military task taxonomy was constructed, consisting of about 100 task domains (appendix 1). The ELSTAR taxonomy appeared effective in obtaining the required information on prospects for low-cost simulation. On one hand, the taxonomy proved to be an analytical and comprehensive overview of the most relevant dimensions of the operational field in relation to simulator training. On the other hand, the taxonomy matched with the way military training specialists see their field and it translated easily to concrete military activities and functions. On the basis of the expert-judgements, 29 domains were considered very appropriate for further investigation. This high number signifies a.o. the potential value of (low-cost) simulation for future applications. In order to further investigate the opportunities for low-cost simulation, a representa-tive and concise set of 9 military training areas that covered the selected task domains was identified and defined.
The remainder of the present work package consists of three steps. For each military training program/area, more detailed data will be acquired with respect to task- and cost-utility information. Subsequently, the results will be used to verify whether, and to what degree, the selected task domains are indeed interesting for low-cost simulator development and application. Finally, a set of 3-5 task domains will be selected for further research, which ultimately (after 4 subsequent work-packages) aims at a handbook comprising guidelines for low-cost simulator development, acquisi-tion, and its application.
TNO Identifier
9148