Recoil, hold the smoke: the latest in military sims

ORLANDO, Fla.—It took some adjustment to nestle the heel of the M4 rifle in the pocket of my shoulder. I lined up the iron sights with the bullseye  and squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession. The rifle bucked and the system recorded my prowess. All that was missing were the shell casings and the smell of gunpowder.

Laser Shot’s mobile marksmanship trainer was just one of the many shooting simulators on display at I/ITSEC, the biggest annual conference for military-oriented training and simulation gear. The company counts the Navy among its customers for its ranges, which enable users to practice their skills with firearms, including sniper rifles, that have been converted to use with a simulation. Bullets are replaced with lasers and pressurized carbon dioxide which can replicate up to 400 shots, depending on temperature conditions. 

The mobile ranges furnish many of the tactile trappings that help troops hone their technique—without having to go to the armory. 

“Our system can be put up in the barracks room or in the duty hut there, you know, in the lounge, you could set it up there, and you can have four shooters shoot at any given time,” said Laser Shot’s operations manager, Dave Jobe. “We are working with [the] training command at Quantico, Virginia, right now to put a [prototype] system out there for 45 days.”

The goal is to seek feedback and see whether the product meets requirements. 

Outside the handful of sedan-sized ranges, the I/ITSEC showfloor looked almost like a military-themed gaming conference. Beyond the popping sounds of fake rounds, there was a mesmerizing eight-foot semi-domed LED display that would instantly make any simulation feel more realistic. There were pilots “flying” F-35’s from a bucket seat parked on carpet and countless craniums bobbing in virtual- and augmented-reality headgear. 

But could any of the sims on offer fix military training problems? Possibly. Here’s a round-up of what Defense One saw at the Dec. 2-6 conference:

An upgrade for ‘militarized laser tag’

Lockheed Martin demoed its digital force-on-force trainer, SIMRES, which is vying to replace the Army’s MILES, or Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System. 

MILES has been described as a “militarized laser tag” that doesn’t accurately reflect the battlefield. 

“The problem is that lasers just don't act a lot like real bullets,” said Daniel Hyatt, Lockheed’s chief engineer and senior manager for land training solutions. For example, “using that laser-based system, soldiers can line up behind a brush…and they're invisible because the laser can't penetrate it. No one can shoot them.” 

Similarly, when shooting moving targets with real ammo, shooters have to anticipate where the target is going. That’s not the case with lasers. 

SIMRES attaches a weapons module about the size of a juice box that simulates direct fires for various firearms, including the M320 grenade launcher. It also creates a digital twin of the live-fire environment—soldier, weapon, and targets—similar to a first-person shooter game.

“That's an infantryman's weapon; he really needs to be able to use that [during training]. Well, he's not using it now, and he hasn't been able to use it for the 10 years we've had it,” said David Cogdall, of Lockheed's ground training business development. “I've been to combat three different times. You know, you don't want to, like, be testing things in combat. So I think that that's the part: The more realistic the training is, the better.”

First-person drone training 

The handset of MVRSimulation’s new first-person drone simulator reminded me of a Sega Game Gear, but the rest of the system was less nostalgic: laptop, virtual reality headset, and a unique physics model that mimics the behavior of a drone in flight. 

It proved quite difficult to fly the whirring virtual drone at 80 mph, hunting for targets while keeping an eye on the swiftly draining battery. I needed assistance to hit targets. 

But that was all by design and with a keen influence from the war in Ukraine — “where drones of this caliber with warheads strapped under them were being flown into tanks or armored vehicles, bunkers or just any, any target,” said Dylan Melin, the associate aerospace engineer at Bihrle Applied Research, who designed the flight model system based on his own experience racing drones. 

Melin said the trainer is designed to help drone pilots gain more experience and increase the chance of drones hitting their targets. 

“We used a scaled-down version of a model of a drone that Bihrle already owns…with off-the-shelf components that are readily available, so that this can be mass-produced,” Melin said. “We're able to put in any flight model that you realistically can implement.”

Augmented reality + flight sims

Varjo offered a surprisingly light augmented-reality headset that seamlessly went from the virtual world to the real world. My favorite part was the auto-focusing lenses which corrected my myopia, allowing me to use the headset without my glasses. Similar to how human eyes work in real life, the headset automatically adjusts to objects placed near or far away. It was a smooth, near-real-time virtual-reality experience that didn’t make me nauseated or dizzy.

That gaze-focused feature also enables trainers to track users’ eye movements to see whether trainees are looking in the right places. 

A short walk away from Varjo’s booth, the headset was also a part of Vertex Solution’s flight simulators. Earlier this year, I tried out their F-16 simulator at SXSW; I asked Vertex President Dennis Wikoff what’s changed since.

“We've delivered our first 50 simulators for the T-6 to the Navy. That started off a new relationship with the Navy,” Wikoff said. Vertex also recently teamed with Archer aircraft to develop a simulator for their aircraft “We have finished most of the development on that,” he said. 

The company has also since upgraded its reconfigurable flight simulator and plans to add T-138 and F-16 settings to the device. Wikoff also said there are early conversations with the Air Force about adding F-35s, F-22s, F-18s, and F-15s. 

The Federal Aviation Administration also awarded Verex, Varjo, and Aechelon a collaborative research agreement to study virtual-reality flight-simulation standards and their effects on pilot training. 

“In 2025, we're going to be focused on generating return on investment data for all of the savings that can be produced by using mixed-reality simulators, Lightweight, low cost simulators, to augment at least, and perhaps even in some cases, replace, at least to some level, the large, full-motion simulators,” Wikoff said. “The other big emphasis is going to be on data analytics to demonstrate that these simulators train as well, or nearly as well, as the full motion simulators. And to actually provide some objective baseline data on, okay, here is really what they're capable of, so that the whole community can make informed decisions about the effectiveness of mixed reality.”