MS&T Magazine - Issue 3/2009

www.halldale.com The International Defence Training Journal Medical Technology

Wounded Warriors, Rehabilitation and Technology

Training Technology

It’s a Math, Math World Training Technology

A History of Simulation: Part IV – Russia and the USSR Training Application

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Editorial Comment

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Walter F. Ullrich MS&T Europe Editor

Old Enough to Stop Growing!

At the beginning of April the Alliance celebrated its 60th anniversary - in full bloom – to the applause of the Free World’s leaders. What a spectacle it was: France reintegrating into NATO’s military command structure, Albania and Croatia joining the Alliance.

Twenty-eight nations are now members. And more want to join in - mostly former USSR republics, countries directly bordering the Russian Federation. If these are potential candidates, then why not Japan or Australia? European Member States would be ill advised to follow calls for eastward enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty. Some candidates are potential powder kegs, where even the citizens’ political opinions are divided. Or it has been suggested that they are seeking NATO’s shield just to have a safe haven from ongoing quarrels with their big neighbours. Their membership would not be advantageous for Continental Europeans. More members would also mean more compromises, finding the lowest common denominator merely for the sake of harmonisation. The displeasing dispute about the successor to NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer shows the difficulty of trying to suit everybody. More NATO Members would lessen the influence of the old European NATO nations, and increase the strategic importance of the United States even more. This is not in the interest of the Europeans; and in the end would not benefit the Americans either. Under such conditions, European NATO members might favour European Union rather than NATO forces when it came to the allocation of troops and equipment. And, ultimately, NATO would become the world's police – and even US President Obama has given up that idea now.

However, it is not even necessary to be a NATO Member to share the many advantages the Alliance has to offer. Admiral Mark P. Fitzgerald, Commander, US Naval Forces Europe and Commander, Allied Joint Force Command, Naples named them all in his keynote at ITEC in Brussels. The Partnership for Peace Programme (PfP) allows the 22 Partner countries to forge an individual relationship with NATO, choosing their own priorities for cooperation. Amongst them are nations which some years ago you would not have mentioned in the same breath as NATO: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine or Uzbekistan. The NATO Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) promotes and conducts cooperative scientific research and the exchange of technical information amongst 26 NATO nations and NATO partners.

The NATO-Russia Council (NRC) has several RTO activities in areas of common interest, in particular counter-terrorism. The relation between NATO and Ukraine is based on a Distinctive Partnership, which also includes Defence R&T cooperation. Seven nations (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) are participating in the Mediterranean Dialogue Programme (MD). Within this non-discriminatory framework, MD countries are free to choose the extent and intensity of their participation and cooperation with NATO. In addition to its formal partnerships, NATO cooperates with other partners across the globe.

These “Contact Countries”, which share similar strategic concerns and key Alliance values, are Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand.

In Modelling, Simulation and Training, there are means of taking part and even taking responsibility. The best known is the NATO Modelling and Simulation Group (NMSG) not only promotes cooperation among Alliance bodies and NATO Member Nations, but also with PfP Nations. Then there is the NATO Working Group on Training and Simulation (TSWG), a platform for interested nations to discuss concepts for simulation in Army training, headed by a Swiss staff officer. In fact, it is not even necessary to be a member to take on leadership in the Alliance. Sweden has a most important role in the future Persistent Partner Training and Simulation Network (P2SN). It is under this neutral nation’s management that in years to come real-world coalitions will be being prepared. Isn’t that the best example of how a fairly small non-NATO member country can actively participate in shaping NATO? There is great deal of return for nations below formal NATO membership – we don’t need more members. It is simply a case of better exploiting what already exists in the form of cooperative ventures.

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Soldiers field testing Virtual Iraq PTSD rehabilitation system. Image credit: Institute of Creative Technologies, University of Southern California.

front cover

contents ms&T 3/2009

03 Editorial Comment

06 Training Technology 06 training technology

feature Articles

NATO at 60. Europe Editor Walter F. Ullrich notes that NATO has reached the ripe age of 60 with 28 members, and questions the need for more.

A Well Stocked Toolbox. Tools for everything – well, almost everything.

Rick Adams examines the tools that give developers a running start.

10 Medical Technology Wounded Warriors. Researchers and clinicians are finding that therapy can be greatly enhanced using simulations and virtual worlds. Chuck Weirauch describes some recent applications.

14 Training Application

10 medical technology

Journalists Need Training Too. Journalists may be experts at their trade, but they need preparation to practice in conflict regions. Walter F. Ullrich describes the German approach.

16 Training Technology Getting Together. When it comes to motion based devices, losing weight is not a simple matter. Rick Adams catches the interplay between the CGs.

20 Training Technology A Historical Review. Flight simulation has a long history in Russia and the USSR. Walter F. Ullrich provides a review

ITEC 2009. Show attendance reflected the times, however organisers were encouraged with the results. Walter F. Ullrich reports.

26 NEWS Seen and Heard. A round up of developments in simulation and training.

Edited by Lori Ponoroff and Fiona Greenyer.

20 training technology

14 training application

24 Show Report

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It’s a Math, Math World 06

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Wind tunnel testing specialist Bihrle has recently been working with NASA. Image credit: Bihrle Applied Research.

Shrink-wrapped software tools have made it ever-easier to develop powerful training simulations. Rick Adams looks at a few of the seemingly countless engineering aids for modeling training applications.

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ontrary to urban myth, the word “algorithm” was not coined to honor Internet inventor Al Gore. It is most likely from the surname of 9th century Islamic mathematician Algorismus or the Greek word for number, arithmos. An algorithm (al-guh-rith-uhm) – a term you’ll hear in about every other sentence when talking with a simulationist – is a step-by-step procedure or set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, especially by computer.

“It all gets down to math.” The aerodynamics, propulsion, fuel systems, hydraulics, autopilot. Even the synthetic images represented on the screen in front of a flight training device cockpit – and the precise distance the screen is located from the pilot’s eyes. In essence, Concurrent Computer’s Ken Jackson says, a simulation is a sequence of “math equations strung together.”

A programmer needing a software tool to develop a simulation of how the various subsystems work together when an aircraft is in flight or how to create a virtual world out of photo sources, materials properties, and tables of data has literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of options available. Some of the tools serve niche applications like HailCalc, which translates kinetic energy from radar data into hailstorm footprints, or PedSim and Simwalk for simulating pedestrian crowds. Other tools such as DiSTI’s GL Studio produce standardized OpenGL source code. Or monitoring of real-time data such as LiveGraph freeware. The US Air Force’s naval-sounding SEAS (System Effectiveness Analysis Simulation)

Screen shot of Concurrent’s SIMulation Workbench Tool.

Image credit: Concurrent.

enables construction of scalable joint warfighting scenarios to explore proposed operations concepts.

If none of the off-the-shelf tool packages quite suits the programmer’s purpose, he or she may just write their own.

To keep the discussion manageable in the finite space of this article, we’ll focus on examples of three predominant types of tools currently used by the military simulation and training community: tools for accurately representing vehicle dynamics, those for replicating the synthetic environment in which the vehicle operates, and a relatively new “enterprise” approach to front-end instructional systems design.

Cracking the Code The technical computing foundation for many simulation add-on products is Matlab, described as “a fourth-generation programming language” by John Freedman, aerospace defense marketing

manager for MathWorks. The company claims more than a million engineers and scientists in over 100 countries use Matlab and its companion Simulink interactive graphical environment.

Simulink enables development of component models by a hardware supplier – a landing gear, for example – starting with basic mechanical equations, then adding test data. It can then be used to auto-generate code. “Writing code for simulators can be complicated,” Freedman notes.

Although Simulink is ubiquitous throughout the automotive industry, adoption has been somewhat slower in aerospace. So there’s a mix of handwritten models and off-the-shelf models for various aircraft systems. Concurrent’s Jackson says their SIMulation Workbench tool “allows those worlds to coincide.” So long as the naming convention is common between them, Workbench can ingest the hand-coded models, share data with Simulink models, and even run them at different rates. “Say your avionics model is already written, your radar is written, but you’re re-powering the aircraft. You simply plug the model for the new engine into Simulink.”

Bihrle Applied Research’s SimGen is a paper napkin designer’s dream. You can scan in a front view, side view, and top view of a notional aircraft design... even from a napkin... and the tool will output aerodynamic data, according to Brian Wachter, director, marketing and business development. “You can be up and flying with a simulation in a couple of hours. It’s a great tool for assessing an initial design, whether it’s viable or even flyable.”

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Quoth the Raven, “More Robotics” A Tom Clancy-branded commercial video game that can be purchased on the Internet for US $10 provided sufficient capability for analysts from the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Alion Science & Technology, SA Technologies, and two universities to determine the value of teaming unmanned vehicles with dismounted soldiers in urban rescue missions.

Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield served duty as a battlefield simulator for a series of “Blackhawk Down” style rescue missions. Raven Shield lets the game player lead a group of “elite international counter terrorists” equipped with high-tech gear and high-power firearms, according to game developer Ubi Soft.

A primary finding, notes Alion’s lead human factors engineer Patty McDermott, was that soldiers were detected “significantly less often” when they were aided by an unmanned aerial or ground vehicle.

Rescue teams performed their mission faster and were not detected as often when teamed with a UGV robot.

However, participants preferred the flexibility and “big picture” of having the UAV overhead.

Advantages were perceived for having the information manager (the person monitoring the unmanned vehicle) co-located with the rescuers, enabling face-to-face communication. But this was skewed by the fact that remotely transmitted images “often confused the rescuers because they didn’t have a good reference point for the image.”

The inexpensive game required some workarounds to make the test scenarios viable. And Raven Shield was not designed to collect the type of data needed, so researchers had to take detailed notes and watch videotapes of the experiment. McDermott, who is also program manager of ARL’s Advanced Decision Architectures Collaborative Technology Alliance, says Alion’s Human-Systems Integration organization (the acquired Micro Analysis and Design) has been evaluating alternatives such as Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament, which “provide more flexibility in authoring environments.”

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Above MÄK’s flagship product VR-Forces.

Image credit: MÄK Technologies.

Left Screen shot from Ubi Soft’s Raven Shield.

Image credit: Ubi Soft/Army Research Lab.

Bihrle, which specializes in wind tunnel testing, has recently been modeling the effects of ice buildup. They designed a simulated scale model with “ice shapes,” then worked with NASA’s Glenn Research Center to instrument a de Havilland Twin Otter for real-world data collection. “The biggest effect was buildup on the horizontal tail,” says Wachter. “This puts a great deal of pressure on the control wheel.”

A “defect” in the High Level Architecture (HLA) distributed simulation specification can lead to bottlenecks when interoperability is required between simulation systems from different providers, according to José María López, business development director at Spain’s Nextel Aerospace Defense and Safety. “Different RTI [run time infrastructure] software are not compatible with each other. Also, the complete simulator can be HLA-compliant but not its subsystems; therefore, you only can reuse them at the system level.”

Nextel’s proposed “open architecture” solution is a real-time networking middleware product, NCWare, “based on the publish/subscribe paradigm which,

through a single API, unifies DDS [Data Distribution Service] and HLA standards.”

MÄK Technologies marketing communications director, Michelene St. Amand, says their VR-Exchange is a “universal translator” which allows users “to move beyond just integrating network standards” to interoperability of HLA RTIs, federation object models, and other standards.

Lots of COTS In the synthetic environment, or content creation space, CAE-owned Presagis has steadily bought up several leading commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software companies and now markets a “common work flow” package under the brand name Aeria. The flow for developing a simulation terrain, buildings, vehicles, and computer-generated forces (CGF) would start with the TerraVista tool from the former Terrex, add 3D structures (including building interiors for dismounted training) and vehicles using Creator from the former MultigenParadigm, add weather patterns and CGF with Stage (from Engenuity), inject AI Implant’s artificial intelligence and crowd behaviors, then deliver a visual rendering of the scenario with another Multigen product, Vega Prime.

Robert Kopersiewich, Presagis VP product and program management, says one of the new capabilities they plan to roll out in the next few months is a worldwide database, plus off-theshelf 3D models and weapons platform behaviors. “One of the requests we’ve had over the years is more and more capability in terms of data.” The database will be created in a Common Data Base (CDB) format, which CAE originally developed for the US Special Operations Forces.

MetaVR, which traditionally developed performanceenhancing tools for its own image generator, now makes its terrain tools available to other users. The underlying platform is ESRI’s ArcGIS, which dominates the commercial geographical information system market.

MÄK’s flagship product, VR-Forces, “can be used to build a tactics trainer, as a behavioral testbed, as a threat generator, or computer-generated friendly or enemy entities,” says St. Amand. VR-Forces was used recently to develop the pilot interfacee, sensor manager, and simulation manager for an air defence ground environment simulator (ADGESIM) for the Royal Australian Air Force.

“System integrators have realized that they don’t want to reinvent the wheel by building in-house solutions anymore, and that using COTS solutions was a more flexible and less expensive approach,” offers Gaël Ramaen, European marketing development manager for Antycip Simulation. “Today the trend is to use both serious games and COTS technologies to complement the pitfalls of serious games technologies.” Antycip’s approach is to integrate COTS packages such as MÄK’s VR-Forces, part of its new MyModels toolkit.

Ground vehicle training specialist Raydon recently developed a database of Kabul, Afghanistan that features over 200,000 buildings. Chairman Don Ariel likens developing training system capabilities to “balancing a recipe” of visual terrain, interactive entities such as people, vehicles, and weapons effects, and artificial intelligence behaviors. Despite tremendous advances in computing power in recent years, “there is still a finite budget of ‘clock ticks’ in any computer.” Even though current servers may support hundreds or even thousands of moving models, “you run out of clock ticks if you make all the entities ‘smart,’” Ariel explains. Terrain complexity, such as robust physics properties, can limit the number of entities in the scenario.

schoolhouse locations, classrooms, instructors, web- and computer-based training, task trainers, mission trainers, and actual aircraft or vehicles. “We model the whole flow, the parameters, and constraints, to determine the number of training assets needed and where. Typically [using non-automated ISD], the number of high-cost simulation assets tends to be overstated,” Delisle suggests.

Tools such as Websphere, which features a visualization component, can enable “what-iffing” by depicting students as graphic icons on a screen (rather than one of hundreds of numbers in an eye-straining spreadsheet). The visualization presents “a holistic picture,” Delisle notes. Proposed resources can be increased, decreased, or shifted, and decision-makers “can immediately see the trade-offs.”

Link’s first order of business is to apply the enterprise tools to current customer programs, modeling the full life cycle of the schoolhouse to predict how they might become “more efficient with fewer people.”

“In the end, it’s all about logistics and economics,” says Raydon’s Ariel. “It’s not how to build the most audacious school for $400 million. It’s how few hours can I get you to the standard you need.”

Raydon has been applying “virtual reality” infrastructure models for Army National Guard customers. To Ariel, the solution requires “having training capabilities pre-staged where the training audience is,” as well as a mixture of equipment of varying training fidelities. Several of Raydon’s ground vehicle training products incorporate “multiple courses of instruction per trainer,” enabling gunnery, maneuver, and combined arms training on the same device. ms&t

Go With The Flow If you’re thinking about designing a training schoolhouse, think fluid dynamics. With students, instructors, and training media as the fluids in the pipeline. L-3 Link Simulation & Training VP of engineering, Frank Delisle, views enterprise-style “automation in the analytical space” as potentially saving 30-40 percent of the cost of a training pipeline by eliminating inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

The current process of instructional systems design often includes “a lot of SMEs [subject matter experts], PhDs, and psychologists getting into the action,” Delisle explains. “It tends to be fairly intensive, not automated.” There are a number of relational database tools, but “they require a lot of manual intervention and a lot of analysis to make it work right.”

Link is turning to a commercial product from the business IT sector, IBM’s Websphere, to help model the workflow, or in this case the student flow, to outline the optimal solutions for MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

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Wounded Warriors, Rehabilitation and Technology There is a revolution underway. Rehabilitation specialists see a bright future in using simulation and virtual worlds in therapeutic programs. Chuck Weirauch describes some current applications.

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eliving the horrors of war might not seem to be the best way to rehabilitate US armed forces personnel suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). But when just such a therapeutic approach is conducted in the safe environment of a virtual world, initial results show significant improvements in patients’ ability to recover from the mind-altering condition. More than ten years of clinical research and study has indicated that general psychology can be practiced in a virtual and perhaps networked environment to help cure a wide variety of psychological and even physiological disorders. Wounded warriors returning from the battlefield are regaining ambulatory and driving skills in simulated environments. And therapists are reaching out to patients to provide counseling and support using a virtual world.

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worlds for therapy is just beginning. Pioneers in this area of research and clinical practice consider the application of these technologies to be a revolution for the rehabilitation field and they foresee a bright future in both military and civilian worlds.

Exposure Therapy The most recent VR application for PTSD is Virtual Iraq, a PC-based program developed at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) in a partnership project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Currently this therapeutic tool is being employed by clinicians and is under evaluation at more than 30 military and civilian medical centers throughout the country. A Virtual Afghanistan variant is under development.

The therapeutic approach behind Virtual Iraq is cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) with prolonged exposure

Above Virtual Iraq – a life-like simulator that represents a new form of PTSD treatment.

Image credit: US DoD/John Kruzel.

(PE). This is a form of individual psychotherapy where the patient is encouraged to employ his or her imagination to recreate that person’s most traumatic experiences, then repeatedly be guided by the clinician to relive and mentally process those experiences in a safe environment until they are no longer perceived as a threat.

During Virtual Iraq treatment, the patient wears a VR head-mounted display that projects graphic scenarios set in Iraq that include such elements as ambushes, improvised explosive device explosions, dead or severely wounded soldiers and other traumatizing events.

The clinician can add sounds, smells and vibrations to the scenarios while keep-

ing an eye on the physiological monitors attached to the patient.

According to Skip Rizzo, Research Scientist and Co-Director of the Virtual Reality Psychology and Social Neuroscience department at ICT who was primarily involved with the development of Virtual Iraq, 80 percent of the first group of 20 PTSD patients who underwent therapy in up to 120-minute sessions over five weeks at the Naval Medical Center at San Diego showed dramatic improvement.

Comparable results have been achieved at the Madigan Army Medical Center at Ft. Lewis, WA, with similar results expected at other medical centers participating in the clinical evaluation studies.

“The PTSD virtual reality program is just starting to gather the evidence that it’s better than conventional therapy, and the VR therapy relies on already established psychotherapy principles,” Rizzo said. “Some people are not so good at imagination, and therapy avoidance is one of the key symptoms of PTSD. So when you are dealing with imaginal forms of therapy, even though they are documented as the best form of treatment for PTSD, you never know what’s going on in the hidden world of imagination. So what virtual reality does is become a more potent and hopefully more effective way of conducting exposure therapy.”

Walter Reed occupational therapist and driving rehabilitation specialist who coordinates driver simulator rehabilitation therapy, in addition to actual driving skills, the device is used to train mobility skills and muscle memory training needed to transition to an actual vehicle.

Patients can choose to begin simulator therapy whenever they feel they are ready to do so. About 40 patients have successfully completed the therapy program so far.

“Patients choose to begin driver simulator training quite early in the rehabilitation process, and it’s a great motivator,” Phipps said. “Our results have been anecdotal so far, but the greatest effec-

SIMULATION

VISUALIZATION

tiveness of the therapy we have seen so far is in motivation and education.

Overall, driving simulators have become widely accepted as an adjunct to conventional therapy by clinicians, and such simulators offer a safe environment for clinicians and patients to start to address driving rehabilitation.”

Learning to Walk Another simulation-based rehabilitation system at Walter Reed is the ComputerAssisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN), developed and manufactured

by Motek Medical of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Another CAREN system is in operation at Brooke Army Medical

HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE

CONTENT CREATION

PRE-LIVE THE FUTURE CLIENT PRESAGIS

Learning to Drive Again One of the more conventional simulation-based tools being employed for the rehabilitation of wounded warriors is the driver simulator. At the Military Advanced Training Center at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital, such a sim is being used to help soldiers with a wide variety of disabilities, including the loss of a limb and traumatic brain injury (TBI), regain their driving skills.

The Walter Reed driver trainer is a prototype comprised of components from a number of sources, including a donated pickup truck cab and body from General Motors and scenario software from America’s Army, and coordinated by the Army Center for Enhanced Performance. The sim features projectors and screens that provide both front and side views, and can be equipped with the adaptive medical devices that aid handicapped drivers According to Tammy Phipps, the

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rapid advancement of technology. Our customers benefit from the highest levels of maintenance and support, and experience cost savings through the interoperability of our software. With our established COTS product

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lines, Presagis has built the foundation for the world’s first truly integrated suite of modeling and simulation software tools.

SEE FOR YOURSELF AT www.PREsagIs.com © 2009 Presagis Canada Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Cognitive Assessment and Vehicle Simulators From assessing the driving skills of elderly drivers using its Virtual Driver Station, the Raydon Corp. in Daytona Beach, FL is now working with military hospitals and the Veterans Administration (VA) to use that simulator, its Reconfigurable Wheeled HMMWV (Humvee) driver trainer module and its Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer (VCCT) for the cognitive deficit assessment of Wounded Warriors.

The assessments are geared to determine the presence of physiological conditions such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and psychological conditions such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Once properly assessed for these conditions, returning veterans can then be treated.

According to Debra Quackenbush, Raydon’s Senior VP of Virtual Learning, the Virtual Driver Station is installed at six VA centers and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital at Fort Campbell, KY. In particular, the simulator at the Boston VA Medical Center is being employed to develop the medical protocol to identify, assess and then rehabilitate wounded armed services personnel for TBI, Quackenbush noted.

“We were initially approached by the Veterans Affairs Office for this application,” Quackenbush said. “”One of the common tasks that everyone does that you can measure more effectively is driving.”

The Blanchfield Hospital employs the Raydon VCCT for innoculation therapy, exposing pre-deployment personnel bound for the Middle East region to the kind of scenarios and environments in the virtual world before they experience them in the real world. This type of exposure therapy helps prepare personnel for the kinds of conditions they may have to have to live through once they are deployed, Quackenbush explained.

Ideally, armed services personnel could be cognitively assessed before and after deployment, with medical records kept of their conditions for comparison. Then those returning personnel could be treated if needed and possibly kept from returning to the battlefield. Quackenbush noted that the company is currently working to initiate pilot programs with some states.

Raydon Humvee driver simulators are located with all US state National Guard commands.

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Center at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, TX. At both locations, the system is mainly employed as an adjunct to conventional therapy to train and improve amputees’ gait, or walking and balance skills. The system is also under study to assess the use of the system to improve neuromuscular skills in TBI patients.

Both CAREN systems feature a tilting floor with a treadmill that is surrounded by projection screens. A variety of simulated indoor and outdoor environments and scenarios, including one where patients work to develop their balancing skills while maneuvering a boat around buoys on a pond, can be projected onto the screens. The patients walk on the treadmill, while the floor, which has a six-degree freedom of motion, can be tilted up to an 18-degree angle to simulate the slope of a hill. The Brooke Medical CAREN unit is the larger of the two, with a 21-foot diameter floor and a wraparound 360-degree field of view.

The units also include a motion-capture system that records the movement of patients’ limbs and joints via reflective markers. This information is displayed as a stick figure of the patients so that they and the clinician can see and discuss changes in their gait during after-action reviews of their therapy sessions. These records are also used to set therapy goals for each patient. Both systems are operated in conjunction with biomedical research conducted in the GAIT and Motion Analysis Lab at Brooke Medical and the Biomedical Engineering department at Walter Reed so that they can be used together for the development of improved rehabilitation treatments and procedures.

According to Walter Reed CAREN operator and biomedical engineer Sara Kruger, she is seeing considerable improvement in patients who make use of

The Virtual Iraq head-mounted display can project a variety of scenarios set in Iraq.

Image credit: Institute of Creative Technologies, University of Southern California.

the CAREN system. A major factor in this improvement is increased motivation.

“Patients really push themselves on the CAREN system,” Kruger said. “We have a number of patients who have really excelled in our walking applications.”

Because of this success, more therapists are recommending CAREN sessions as an adjunct to conventional therapy, Kruger noted. While such anecdotal evidence is one way to assume that CAREN sessions are helping improve patient rehabilitation, both Walter Reed and Brooke Medical personnel are continuing ongoing research with their CARENs to document the system’s therapeutic effectiveness and advance rehabilitation therapy research.

“Therapists are really coming around because of the potential of the CAREN system, and patients are very positive about it on all fronts,” said Brooke Medical CAREN system manager Ben Darter. “Our ultimate goals in addition to therapy are to develop training scenarios where we can maximize function beyond the level which can be attained by conventional therapy. We also want to better understand what works in therapy and where to focus therapeutic intervention so that therapists who don’t have a CAREN system are more effective in doing what they do.”

Care and Treatment This August, Greenleaf Medical plans to provide its Advanced Telemedicine System for Enterprise-wide Behaviorial Healthcare under its ongoing contract

with the US Air Force Surgeon General for the development and delivery of therapist clinical training for the treatment of wounded warriors with diagnosed psychological health, TBI and PTSD conditions. The new system is based on Greenleaf’s Simulated Environment for Counseling, Training, Evaluation and Rehabilitation (SECTRE) system.

The SECTRE system employs the virtual world technology of Forterra Systems On-line Interactive Virtual Environment (OLIVE), which features the use of avatars that interact in a 3D environment.

SECTRE has already been successfully used for treatment in civilian residential care facilities for disturbed teenagers, and is currently being employed for psychological care in a clinical trial at McGuire Air Force Base, NJ. Although virtual reality has been shown in clinical research to be effective for PTSD and TBI, the SECTRE-based system will initially be used more for counseling and drug and alcohol refusal training and conflict resolution, said company president Walter Greenleaf. He is also the CEO of Virtually Better, Inc. Once trained, therapists will be able use the system to build a relationship with

patients through the interaction of their avatars, he explained. The system will also be useful to reach patients who have a stigma about coming into a clinic for post-traumatic stress treatment, Greenleaf added.

“The power of the virtual world for any cognitive rehabilitation is that it engages not only the imaginative part of the brain,” Greenleaf explained. “In virtual worlds, it’s a lot more immediate, a lot more involving for all parts of the brain. So what we are trying to do is apply that basic principle for a lot of post-traumatic issues such as the transition back to civilian life, grief, guilt or TBI. In the same way that virtual environments provide better mental scaffolding for post-traumatic stress, they also do so for TBI. And the SECTRE system is also designed to be deployable in a telemedicine manner with a server base to reach outlying areas and connect clinicians with patients they might otherwise not be able to treat.”

According to US Navy Commander Russ Shilling, Scientific Advisor for the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, virtual reality applications can be effective

for both psychological disorders and TBI. The Center has recently issued small business innovation research (SBIR) solicitations for the development of game console-based video games to be used for cognitive motor rehabilitation for TBI patients. Several PC-based games have been developed recently by a number of research institutions for their use in TBI therapy.

Another current Psychological Health Center initiative is to help put together the new National Intrepid Center of Excellence in Bethesda, MD that is being established for the treatment of TBI and psychological issues. This new Center will also have a CAREN system, and Shilling is considering fostering some CAREN applications for both TBI and psychological disorders.

“The Intrepid Center should have two virtual reality rooms, one for the high-end systems such as the CAREN and another for more low-end console and computer applications,” Shilling said. “Going forward, the vision that I see is to develop both the high-end and also take a look at PC-based systems that can be used for therapy at the Center and then can be sent home with the patient.” ms&t

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Image credit: Bundeswehr

Training Application

Assignment: War Zone Journalists need to thrive and survive in the midst of conflict.

Walter F. Ullrich describes the German pre-assignment training that prepares journalists for just that.

R

eporting from campaigns and theatres of war has been around for as long as journalism - from correspondents in the entourage of the General on the commander’s hill to the daredevil press photographers in the trenches of the two World Wars.

Their reporting had one thing in common, however: It reflected the system, because they were part of the system.

They were all, in the truest sense of the word, ‘embedded journalists’.

During the 2003 Gulf War, more than 500 journalists from all the mainstream media were given pre-war training which entailed courses in chemical and biological warfare and other military instruction and then embedded in deployed units.

According to Tom Englehart, writing for the History News Network, ‘embedded’ became something of a term of pride for reporters in the Gulf, despite the giant hint of collusion embedded in it, and despite the weight of Pentagon propaganda that it suggested. After the war, however, the practice came under criticism. And the criticism continues.

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“We purposely do not do any ‘embedded journalist training’ in Germany,” says Claudia Nussbauer from the German Ministry of Defence in Berlin. Nussbauer is Head of the Media Division of the Press and Information Office within the MoD, and she is responsible for the training courses that prepare professional journalists for their mission in conflict and war zones. “The term ‘embedded’ is ideologically charged, and we deliberately distance ourselves from such methods,” she explains. The Bundeswehr provides training, which is first and foremost intended to attune the participants to the range of emotions and experiences they will encounter in the operational area, and not to familiarise them with the armed forces.

The training course is very practical and almost exclusively takes place outdoors on the training grounds of the Army Infantry School in Hammelburg, Bavaria.

The course is the result of an extraordinary cooperation between the German armed forces and the professional association of journalists, the BGDP, the institution for statutory accident insurance

and prevention in the printing and paper processing industry. The main idea that led to this partnership is prevention, triggered by the deaths in Kosovo in 1999 of two reporters from a German magazine.

True to the adage that prevention is better than cure, this journalist body decided to invest in preparatory training rather than having to bear the consequential costs of disablement or a death grant; all the more since it became apparent that the increasing number of German overseas deployments would take a larger number of journalists into conflict and war zones - probably the most dangerous form of reporting.

Sensitizing to Danger The one-week ‘Training Course for Journalists: Protection and Appropriate Action in Crisis Areas’ is held at the German Armed Forces United Nations Training Centre (UN Trg Centre), where soldiers and civilian personnel are prepared for deployment within the framework of international conflict prevention and crisis management operations. The UN Trg Centre is certified by the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to conduct UN Military Observer Courses and is also a Training Centre for Partnership for Peace (PfP). The training for journalists is directed and run by the Centre’s “International and Civilian Operational Training” section. The instructors are experienced, mission-proved professional soldiers who are supported by a tutor who has completed the course before and preferably has crisis-mission experience. With this experience, the tutor can provide credible advice to newcomers; advice such as it is better not to wear camouflage so that they are not mistaken for military personnel; or that it is not advisable to be armed.

Moreover, a psychologist from the armed forces takes part in the event, addressing stress management and the importance of psychological aftercare once the journalists are back home.

The course content is based on current developments and risks, and on experience the Bundeswehr is constantly gaining during operations. This guarantees comprehensive training, as the situation demands. About 70% of the seminar is dedicated to practical training. Participants are not passive spectators, but are actively involved.

More specifically, they are given first aid training, trained in action under EO

(Explosive Ordinance) threats, familiarised with battlefield impressions, action under fire (protection and cover), navigation using a map and compass, and taught what action to take in specific situations. They also learn about cooperation between the armed forces and the media in a specific area of operations. They are given contacts and useful telephone numbers, and also familiarised with insurance issues.

The schedule during the one-week seminar is tight, and continuously exposes the participants to new situations, all while they are simultaneously executing their journalistic mission. In role-play exercises they practise critical situations at road blocks, coming under fire from snipers, or avoiding minefields.

Sensitizing the participants to dangers that are not obvious at first glance is what the instructors want: booby traps that look like household supplies, or covers that do not really shield a person from rifle fire. And participants learn what it sounds like under live fire, hearing the bullets fly past – evidently at a safe distance. All that is extremely important knowledge and experience, which makes it absolutely clear to journalists that reporting from conflict areas is a dangerous life. The highlight, however, is a simulated hostage taking, which, although participants are psyched up for the incident, takes them to their emotional limits. This experience is so intense that some participants have afterwards abandoned their idea of becoming a war correspondent.

Totally Accepted The training course has an excellent reputation and is very popular, both amongst seasoned media people and novices. The 10 training courses per year, with about 15 participants each, are regularly fully booked. Most national mainstream media only send correspondents to conflict areas after they have attended the course. The German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF have even set up their own courses that are organized by the broadcasters’ media academy, but run in Hammelburg under the supervision of the UN Trg Centre. “I have never had any negative feedback from someone who attended,” says Nussbauer. “Instead we have been asked for advanced training or refresher training courses. But for the time being we can’t accept any ‘repeaters’; first we have to work through the waiting list,” she adds.

And that’s saying something - given that journalists are regarded as born sceptics!

The ‘Protection and Appropriate Action in Crisis Areas’ course is currently only run in German, addressing the German-speaking media. According to the German MoD, the course was offered to foreign journalists working in Germany, but the response was rather slow. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise: Who needs such training for a job in Germany? It would be better to appeal to that ever-growing potential target group of international reporters and correspondents who, for professional reasons, have to operate in crisis and conflict areas by offering this rather unique service: training at a UN-certified Training Centre.

For more information see: http:// www.vnausbzbw.de/Englische_Seite/ Journalisten_en.htm ms&t

An Extraordinary Agreement “When the German Armed Forces began foreign deployments, cooperation between the Bundeswehr and the media gained in fundamental importance. German journalists reporting from crisis regions are thus increasingly exposed to specific threats while doing their job around the world. After the first German reporters were killed in the Bundeswehr’s area of operations in the 1990s, both media associations and the armed forces realized the need for preventive action. All too often journalists do not have enough understanding of the possibilities of and need for self-protection when on an assignment. Based on a decision taken by the Federal Minister of Defence in November 1999, training courses are now offered to journalists. The Bundeswehr and the BGDP, the institution for statutory accident insurance and prevention in the printing and paper processing industry, signed a cooperation agreement on training courses that prepare journalists for their tasks in areas of conflict and war zones.”

Claudia Nussbauer is Head of the Media Division of the Press and Information Office at the German Ministry of Defence.

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training Technology

3D CAD Finite Element Analysis can spot stresses and potential weak points in the simulator structure.

Image credit: Opinicus Corporation.

The CG Factors Two CGs – Center-of-Gravity motion forces and Computer-Generated visual and sensor imagery – are both critical to delivering realistic cues to pilots, ship commanders, and ground vehicle drivers. Rick Adams looks at a few recent developments that are enhancing training capabilities.

I

f you’re going to throw some weight around, especially the 30-40,000 pounds of an aircraft weapon systems trainer, you need a pretty precise understanding of how that mass in motion moves around the six degree of freedom envelope.

“The key isn’t just the weight. It’s more the center of gravity,” says Jim Takats, president of Opinicus. “You need to understand the inertia and the forces out at the extremes, such as a rejected takeoff scenario.”

Opinicus, which prides itself as “an engineering company which does manufacturing,” cut its teeth on motion control and control loading systems, represented today by their RealCue and RealFeel products. But they’ve quietly developed a reputation for performing major surgery on service-life extension platforms.

The Lutz, Florida-based firm is currently handling major WST motion and other upgrades on behalf of Lockheed 16

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Martin for a very demanding customer, the US Air Force Special Operations Forces. AFSOC’s two C-130H simulators, an AC-130U Gunship WST, and a MC-130P are all evolving to what Takats calls a “Level D-plus” standard, and will be evaluated on a recurring basis by government “SIMCert” specialists, primarily ex-FAA simulator inspectors.

Some simulator upgrades, whether military or civil, are motion-focused: replacing an analog cabinet and circuit boards with a new digital system, which runs from a touch-screen PC and can provide data recording, weight-and-balance testing, smoothness testing … “and you don’t have to drag around strip chart recorders and plug-in leads.”

But more common, as is the case with the AFSOC MC-130P for Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, a motion upgrade is coupled with a new visual system. The Kirtland program includes changes to the cockpit, instructor station, aural cue

system, motion system and control loading system, a FlightSafety International Vital 10 image generator and Rockwell Collins/SEOS LCoS projectors.

A switch from CRTs to much lighter liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) or digital light processor (DLP) projectors can represent a significant weight difference – lowering the simulator’s center of gravity, moving the CG forward or backward, and changing “the inertia of the moving mass,” according to Takats.

Opinicus conducts various analyses – structural, weight, finite element – and creates a 3D CAD model of the simulator structures to determine what will happen when the weights change. “We don’t believe ‘when in doubt, make it stout,’” Takats notes. “We believe in using design tools which are very accurate if you know how to use them.”

One thing they particularly look for are stresses and potential weak points as the simulator shifts and strains. After analyzing one device, they found a minor crack in the sim frame within inches of where the test identified the highest stress point. “Nothing serious, still within safety margins,” Takats commented. “But it validated our analysis.”

The motion system may also need to be tweaked to suit special training parameters. For example, a flat buffet effect may be too violent if the simulator weight has been radically reduced.

Losing Weight WSTs can literally drop upwards of a ton or more when changing to lightweight projectors. Each calligraphic CRT projector in a 5-channel system can weigh 500 pounds or more, or 2500 total. The LCoS projectors only tip the scales around 50 pounds each for proprietary systems with night vision goggle (NVG) capability or as little as 14 pounds per lamp for commercial off the shelf Sony or JVC models. Modifying the projector platform atop the simulator cab may shed more weight. “CRTs require a fairly rigid structure to support their heavy weights. We’ll actually remove a lot of this extra superstructure,” Takats explains.

an overall weight of 12,500 kg, including half of that for the projector system.

Fabricated from aluminum honeycomb panels with bonded aluminum sheets, ISM president Andrew Garvis says the aft cabin is capable of supporting the projector platform “with no other required support structure.”

You’ll hear terms like “payload” and “gross moving load” from motion specialists, but these aren’t well defined. “I prefer to use ‘load above the knuckle,’” says Takats. “That isolates the weight of the simulator from the motion hardware.” Some vendors, he indicates, use very heavy knuckles – the part where the motion actuators attach to the sim structure – whereas others use very light knuckles, “so it’s not apples to apples.”

Below the upper “knuckle” assembly, there are also weight and inertia elements to consider. Hydraulic actuators have fluid, which must be pushed by the motion system. And electric systems spin a motor, which creates considerable inertia. The latter can represent a possible safety issue when a problem is detected such as too-rapid acceleration: “The electric motor is spinning so fast, you have to take away the mechanical

energy. With a hydraulic system it’s easy to dump the pressure.”

Synchronized Latency The process for upgrading a motion platform is pretty straightforward. Remove the hydraulic legs, position the simulator on aircraft jacks (at the same height as before, so it could be used as a fixed base trainer during the interim), and refurbish the hydraulics. New legs, new motion control cabinet, effectively a new motion system.

But it’s often more cost effective to combine upgrades. During the motion system downtime, the projector ‘turret’ assembly can be changed, including mounting structure and light-tight enclosures. The projector frame may need to be adjusted if the lenses are a slightly different shape from the old hardware. “A lot of times a new image generator is driving the downtime, including the interfaces to the new LCoS projectors.”

Takats says the preference for motion testing is “to do it last, when everything is on the system,” including the new visual and any aerodynamic model updates.

“You want the final weight of the system.”

At that stage, engineers are carefully

Naval Training Technology

PROTEUS

However, on some programs, there may also be weight gains. (Sounds like some fad diets.) An old 3-channel visual system may be replaced with a 5-channel system and an 11-foot radius widescreen display with greater horizontal and vertical fields of view to accommodate aerial refueling training or other mission tasks. NVG capability also adds projector heft.

The overall weight of a typical WST is in the 25-35,000 pound range, and the most common upgrade recently has been replacing hydraulic fluid motion systems with electric motion. Electric systems from the two dominant suppliers to the training community, Moog FCS and Bosch Rexroth, can accommodate up to 28-32,000 pounds (12,700-14,500 kilograms). Some military simulators can approach 40,000 pounds, though, so remain on more robust hydraulic actuators. “Otherwise you’d have to do an overall weight reduction program,” which Takats says represents major modifications to the trainer.

Industrial Smoke and Mirrors, Orlando, produces an integrated upper platform and aft cabin (including instructor seats and electronics cabinets) with

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www.kongsberg.com MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

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training Technology

monitoring the critical latencies of the motion and visual systems. A significant difference between the two will not only cause negative training, the disconnect could induce pilot sickness.

Latencies, or more specifically, throughput delay – the time between a pilot’s control input and when it’s felt in the simulator movement or viewed on the out-the-window or sensor scene – were upwards of 150-250 milliseconds prior to the Air Force C-130 upgrades. Some studies show a simulation throughput delay of 150 msec is acceptable; other research recommends 100. Takats indicates they’d like to optimize those down to about 50-70 milliseconds. “The customer has seen tremendous improvement in the product. It’s very subtle, but the general reaction is that the sim feels better.”

Latency takes three separate paths – motion system, visual system, and instrument panel simulation or stimulation.

When the pilot moves the yoke or stick, as the case may be, the signal is sent to the simulator’s aerodynamic model for position, velocity, and acceleration changes. Every subsystem the signal passes through for processing adds to the latency. But the motion/visual synchronization gets the most attention.

“The motion system is pretty fast, very high frequency, about 5 to 10 milliseconds” (less than a single frame in a 60 Hz visual refresh), Takats says. “The visual is always the long pole in the tent,” The control inputs must be routed through the IG and its graphics processors, where one of the tradeoffs is how much content the user wants to see in the scene. “Do you want to see blades of grass moving in the wash from propellers? A lot of building detail? It takes more processing power.

Add scene content, increase latency.”

From the IG, the signal travels through the projector. “We can’t control the latency in the projector. It depends on what you buy.” Takats says says some commercial projectors can be around 40-50 msec, while some that are tailored for simulation or other custom solutions offer as low as 4-8 msec.

The visual path typically lags 20-30 msec behind the motion path. Human factors specialists suggest a throughput delay difference of 30 msec (about 2 visual frames and a 60 Hz system) is not a problem for pilots. If the visual cannot keep pace, Takats says the latency in the motion system can be increased.

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Mountain Village Realism Low density visual scenes may yield inadequate training environments for some missions, according to MetaVR president Garth Smith. They’ve recently produced a database of an urban area south of Kabul with about 500 buildings in a 2 square kilometer area so the Iowa Air National Guard can train combined forces involving high-speed aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, ground vehicles, and joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs).

“To do really effective training, you have to train together. And when you’re trying to cross-reference in urban settings, you have to be very precise.”

Smith says some urban databases in use “tend to be simplistic. It’s easy to find targets. A lot of databases make the terrain flat because it’s easier to simulate. But that’s not realistic for close air support.”

Training warfighters in an environment “that accurately represents mountainous regions with small population centers is critical.” MetaVR’s Afghan village is set within mountains and complex terrain of varying elevation and cave networks.

The new Afghan database also “matches the actual footprint of specific structures.” The urban area is part of geospecific terrain covering 9,600 square kilometers. The terrain is also delivered with correlated semi-automated forces (SAF) databases.

Databases for high-flying fighter aircraft “used to be less dense” because high detail was not required. But now with very high-resolution sensor pods, even fast movers need to be able to see the scene at the building level. “The high flyer needs to see what the ground vehicle driver sees,” Smith adds. “They all have to see the same database.”

Doing Hard Real Time The German Air Force plans to use a

MetaVR’s Afghan village.

Image credit: MetaVR.

new simulator in development by ESG (Elektroniksystem und Logistik GmbH, Munich) to screen helicopter pilot candidates. The FPS-H (Fliegerpsychologisches System – Hubschrauber) simulator will feature Concurrent’s Linux-based ImaGen visual hardware and Diamond Visonics’ GenesisIG “scenery on the fly” software. “The Luftwaffe wants to be sure they are getting the right candidates,” says Ken Jackson, VP development and special systems for Concurrent.

ImaGen’s largest order to date, 32 servers, is from Hyundai Rotem for the K-series Tank Platoon Simulators to be used by the South Korean Army. Hyundai Rotem developed the K1/K1A1 main battle tanks and family of ground combat vehicles. Each tank simulator includes 8 channels running Presagis’ Vega Prime visualization software.

Jackson claims ImaGen’s strength derives from Concurrent’s “hard real time” legacy as a simulator host computer developer. “Our IG is not spending time on operating system latency. In that magic moment when you hit the joystick, you want to see what’s happening on the screen. You don’t want the OS taking a ‘housecleaning’ break.”

Concurrent also offers tools for finetuning IG performance. “We work with Nvidia and ATI to make sure their drivers are working their best on our system with no cross-interrupts to slow things down,” Jackson explains.”And we can put trace points on the rendering software to know how much time it’s spending.” The tools will also highlight page faults, “and we can show the operator how to lock it down in memory so it never happens again.” ms&t

A

addressing the training needs of the middle east’s growing aviation and defence markets AerospAce & Defence TrAining show 03 – 04 March 2010

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Training Technology

A History of Simulation:

Part IV – Russia and the USSR In this fourth of a series featuring historic training simulation technology developments Walter F Ullrich reviews the rich legacy of flight simulation in Russia and the former USSR.

T

he exciting, and fascinating, story of flight simulation in Russia and the Soviet Union is little known and rarely told: the Russian engineers who were constructing the first training devices during Word War I; the multitude of resourceful apparatus Soviet engineers invented between the Wars that even Russian experts are not fully aware of; and the “Complex Simulators” which Soviet scientists and researchers developed during the Cold War that are only being disclosed bit by bit.

Pragmatic Approaches During World War I, Russian aircraft were needed for combat; barely enough could be made available to teach flying. “If aeroplanes are not available for training, or if they are just too valuable to be put at risk, do your training on the ground,” was the message. And that is what the first Russian “flight training providers” did.

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In 1916, the Russian engineer and flying ace Juri Vladimirovich Gilsher, who had lost his left leg in a plane crash, constructed a cockpit trainer that allowed him to determine his physical limitations - on the ground, where he was safe. Once he was convinced that he could control an aircraft, Gilsher began taking short flights over his own airfield and then resumed regular reconnaissance and fighter patrols until he was shot down in 1917. One could dismiss Gilsher’s training apparatus as a gadget of an eccentric aviator who was mad about flying, if he had not offered his device to his fellow pilots who were then able to train on the ground. They learned to aim and fire wing-mounted Lewis machine guns while simultaneously handling the replicated steering elements of their Nieuport 17 aeroplanes. Gilsher’s apparatus thus probably became the first ground-based cockpit gunnery trainer for single-seater aeroplanes in aviation history (see MS&T 6/2008).

Above The TKL-47 trainer from 1947 – reproducing the design of the Link trainer of the early 1940s.

In the early 1920s, after the end of the Civil War (dated in Soviet historiography by the fall of Vladivostok on 25 October 1922), the Soviet Union started systematically using trainers and simulators.

Unsophisticated yet effective devices helped, for example, to improve gunners’ aiming and firing skills in air combat. At the Leningrad pilot observer school, Boris M. Kartashow constructed a bombing trainer consisting of a wooden observation platform with a rudimentary downward-pointing appliance aimed at a painted landscape canvas on a conveyor belt. At the same educational institution, Konstantin Leonov introduced a pilot observer training device, replacing the wooden framework with the cabin of a

training in the Soviet Union in the years before World War II. During WWII, in a time of full-scale national and industrial mobilisation, all available resources were put into the actual combat forces. No noteworthy domestic assets were put into groundbased flight training. In the 1940s, the Soviet Union bought more than 100 Link ANT-18 trainers from the United States, which were used to qualify Soviet aviators for the war against Nazi Germany.

Some of these famous blue boxes were in operation until 1950.

French Voisin III (“Vuazen” in Russian) aeroplane, but retaining the rolling carpet which scrolled underneath the cockpit replica imitating the in-flight view of the terrain. It seems that this trainer was quite effective, because more were built in 1925.

Scientific Exploration The Soviet government founded the Central Institute of Labour in Moscow in 1920. Its first director, Alexey Gastev, a revolutionary and pioneer of scientific management in the USSR, brought together specialists from all scientific domains. When the “Aviation Department” was set up in the institute in 1925, pilots and other aviation experts joined the team. Whilst the equipment that had been introduced up until that point almost exclusively served to teach specific wartime tasks that came on top of flying, now simulators started to be used as a complementary didactic means for learning to fly the aircraft. Whilst the equipment had thus far been more or less the result of the ingenuity and initiative of a few tinkerers, simulation and simulators were now considered from the scientific point of view, which meant they had to meet demanding scientific and academic standards – something that is still true for Russian simulation technology today.

After 1925, the Central Institute of Labour developed various training devices. Most of them were built around the U-2 biplane. This aeroplane, later renamed Po-2 after its designer Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov, was the most frequently produced biplane in history, and served as a trainer for the Soviet air force beginning in the late 1920s. Building training devices on the basis of the original plane was a popular design method in Russia in those days, although some of the designs never got beyond the design phase. For example, in 1933 Alexander Arhangelsky suggested a sort of swing ride with two complete biplanes that turned synchronously around a pylon. Others were more convincing.

The 1935 Plahov Simulator, for instance, taught pilots how to steer a plane. The student sat at the rear of the set-up where he actuated the steering stick and pedals. In front of him he saw the pole-mounted, cable-controlled miniature model of the U-2 biplane,

Cold War Simulator Boost

Above Plahov U-2 trainer from 1935.

which exactly followed his steering movements. The Yakovlev Simulator, also dating from 1935, was the first Soviet simulator that was officially earmarked for pilot training. It changed the miniature model to a full-size, baseframe-grounded U-2. The biplane was mounted on a relatively small wooden tripod; assistants at the tail and wing ends manually moved the plane in pitch, yaw and roll, thus imparting movement sensations to the trainee. The Stoylov training device of 1936, an R-1 plane hanging and moving between two girder masts, taught student pilots in a safe way how to land.

In August 1936, the aviation psychologist Konstantin Platonov became head of the newly founded medical aviation institute at the Kacha Military Pilot School. Platonov put together a complete training system for the U-2 military trainer aircraft. It consisted of a replicated control panel, which taught the basics, and, for more advanced training, a multi-directional movable cabin positioned above a landscape-imitating canvas conveyor belt. The Platonov trainer was the first Soviet ground-based flight training system that applied an integrated approach to foster student pilots’ skills. All told, there was a lot of experimentation with ground-based flight

During the first post-war years, the global situation changed dramatically.

Former allies had become if not adversaries, then at least rivals, competing for world supremacy. The arms race that started not only led to an increase in the Soviet air fleet, both in terms of numbers and types, but also to new technologies. Soviet simulator designers largely benefited from that boost, because officials recognised quite early on that simulation could reduce overall training costs.

In 1946, the Experimental Design Bureau 470 was founded in Leningrad.

The facility’s only purpose was to build flight simulators. The first product was the TKL-47 simulator in 1947, featuring the average characteristics of a propeller aircraft from the end of World War II. It consisted of a cockpit with a 3DOF base and an instructor bench; it reproduced the design of the Link trainer of the early 1940s. Evidently, during manufacturing of the first lot, the workload for the Leningrad facility turned out to be just too heavy. That was why, in 1948, the Central Administrative Board decided to transfer series production of the simulators to the Penza Development Bureau located in the town of Penza, in the Volga district. In the years that followed and under the leadership of Director and Chief Designer P. Efimov, the Leningrad Bureau continued to design/develop a number of simulators, among them the outstanding “Mushrud” simulators for the Tu-22M2, the Mig-29, the Yak-42 and the Topol SS Missiles, the “Zont-23” for Mig-27, and the “Pizhma-1” for Il-86.

The actual production, however, was done in the Penza Bureau, which had become the Penza Simulation Design Company (PSDC) in 1950.

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In 1963, the Leningrad Bureau built its last simulators, changed its name to “Leningrad Design Bureau Electroavtomatika” and acquired a different business objective, namely developing of aviation related electronics, including simulation devices. PSDC then became the quasi-monopolist for flight simulator manufacturing in the USSR. Around 40 different types of simulators, among them many socalled “Complex Simulators”, the Russian term for equipment similar to Full Flight Simulators, were conceived by PSDC. Together with the ERA Penza Research & Production Company, a large scientific research enterprise, a later spin-off of PSDC, the Penza companies produced almost all the simulators designated for flight training. Overall, 2,066 simulators, 1,559 of them military, for 77 different types of aircraft were manufactured for the Soviet air force or exported to socialist nations and developing countries.

Above Leonov pilot observer trainer based on a French Voisin III aircraft from the early 1920s.

Striving for Supremacy Russian simulator makers, as an element of the military-industrial complex, were in their prime during the Cold War. At no time before or since were more resources made available to the aerospace industry than during those years of political tension and military rivalry. This was also when experimentation was at its height, not only when it came to training but also in terms of analysing stability, controllability and automatic control of aerospace vehicles, hypersonic aircraft, automatic navigation, as well as regarding the investigation of the dynamics and control of unmanned vehicles. The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), founded in 1918 on the initiative and under the leadership of N.E. Zhukovsky, the father of Russian Aviation, has been building simulators since the 1960s. The institute’s innovative research simulators supported the design and flight testing of almost all Soviet and Russian aeroplanes. They were used to improve “Aeroplane Airworthiness Requirements” for civil aircraft and “Tactical and Technical Requirements” for military aircraft. They also served to study and master extreme flight regimes, such as spin, stall, carrier operations and high-incidence manoeuvres. The results helped experts to improve mathemati22

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Left PSPK-102 Buran Space Ship Simulator pragmatically used as testbed for Lada vehicles.

Image credit: TsAGI

cal models of aeroplanes to adequately describe real flights throughout the operational envelope.

The space race provided an additional impetus for creating cutting-edge simulation facilities for both training and experimental purposes. In the 1980s, the Russian simulation industry certainly hit its peak in the “Buran Energya” programme for the reusable Russian space shuttle that was very similar to the US space shuttle. Practically unlimited budgets were available for the flight simulator PSPK-102, which was designed to investigate the handling qualities of the aerospace plane Buran. It had a 6-DOF motion system, digital computer, optical collimation devices, and multipurpose electromechanical sensor system. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, world class. After only one flight in 1988, however, the Soviet Ministry of Defence stopped funding the Buran. It was just too expensive. When in 1991 the Soviet Union finally collapsed, the golden years

ended as much for the military-industrial complex in general as for the simulator industry in particular.

Tomorrow’s History Twenty years have passed since then.

The first post-Soviet decade was marked by a steep decline in the domestic aerospace industry. The Buran PSPK-102 simulator system, together with the other experimental systems, continued to be used by TsAGI, but it was hard to find an adequate workload – they were just too big for an everyday job. And the proud simulator fleet was virtually decomposing due to lack of funding. In 2000, when President Vladimir Putin took office, things started to change for the better, slowly but steadily - but that’s tomorrow’s history. ms&t

Acknowledgment The author wishes to thank Colonel Dr. Nikolai Olegowitsch Kobelkow, Gagarin Air Force Academy, Russia, who provided the historic photos and illustrations.

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IITSEC

NATIONAL TRAINING AND SIMULATION ASSOCIATION T H E W O R L D ’ S L A R G E S T M O D E L I N G & S I M U L AT I O N E V E N T

I/ITSEC

INTERSERVICE/INDUSTRY TRAINING, SIMULATION & EDUCATION CONFERENCE 30 NOVEMBER–3 DECEMBER, 2009

f Over 130 Technical Sessions and Tutorials f 450,000 sq ft exhibit hall showcasing all the latest training technologies f Network with over 16,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors f Meet with Key Government and Industry Leaders and DecisionMakers, including DoD, DHS & OSD Exhibit/Sponsorship Questions: Debbie Dyson ddyson@ndia.org 703-247-9480 Conference Questions: Barbara McDaniel bmcdaniel@ndia.org 703-247-2569

3 0 N O V E M B E R – 3 D E C E M B E R , 2 0 0 9 f W W W. I I T S E C . O R G f O R L A N D O , F L O R I D A IITSEC 09 full pg ad.indd 1

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show report

ITEC 2009 This 20th ITEC was not the milestone it might have been.

Walter F. Ullrich reports.

T

he foundations were laid: 60 years of NATO and 20 years since ITEC was established.

The venue, Brussels, the seat of so many European organisations and the political headquarters of NATO was deliberately chosen. The conference was well planned, focusing on the real issues and anticipating trends. Exhibition organisers supported novice companies showcasing novel products and services. And still, few participants’ rating went beyond “fair”. One would have expected more in this anniversary year. Whether it was the financial/ economic crisis in general that spoiled the mood in the hall or whether it was because such important continental European players as Thales, RUAG, Rheinmetall, or Barco did not participate - enthusiasm only arose during the networking events. Nonetheless, in their first rating, Clarion said they were satisfied with the ITEC business: there 24

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

Above ITEC moved to Brussels for its 20th anniversary.

Left ITEC 2009 was kicked off by Admiral Mark P. Fitzgerald, US Navy.

All images: Walter F. Ullrich.

were 2,396 people onsite, which means 8% fewer visitors, with delegates slightly ahead with 462 as opposed to 455 in Stockholm. “An encouraging result given the economic situation,” as one official noted to MS&T. Admiral Mark P. Fitzgerald, Commander, US Naval Forces Europe and

Commander Allied Joint Force Command, Naples kicked off ITEC 2009. In his speech he referred to the enormous importance of cultural expertise. “We find ourselves in places in which we have little experience,” he said. “We don’t really understand the people there.” “This is the point where simulation comes in,” he added. Admiral Luciano Zappata, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Italian Navy NATO, Italy picked up this thought when he stressed the problem of having to prepare people without exactly knowing the kind of operation they would be facing.

An emergent theme was cultural training, its deficits and the challenge to industry. “There’s lots of training simulators to teach a soldier how to operate and fix weaponry, but we need to focus more on ‘soft skills’ and the training equipment needed to do that is not yet there,” said one general officer.

Major General Guy Buchsenschmidt, Deputy ACOS Operations & Training for Support, Belgian Armed Forces, Senior Host of the event, made it clear that “not understanding people” must not be seen in the figurative sense alone, but as a real deficit in language knowledge; between NATO personnel and the indigenous population overseas, but also amongst NATO and Partner forces.

So close to NATO’s HQ, the conference committee picked out NATO related-issues as the central theme.

Col Mark Edgren, USA, Chief, Simulations, Modeling, C4 at the JWC, demonstrated the JWC’s way of preparing commanders for a broad range of kinetic and non-kinetic operations using high-fidelity models, simulations and training tools. The other peg for many contributions was the economic crisis: Training in a threatened, financially constrained world. Panel member Dale Bennett, President, Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support, United States called for open dialogue within the training community to be continued, particularly in times of economical pressure; for state-of-the-art technologies to be communicated; and deployed in ways that are based on measurable effectiveness.

In terms of technology, the implementations of Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) interactions that were demonstrated in the hall were an exciting glimpse into the future. The ITEC 2009 Joint Demo integrated all three domains into one complex asymmetric operation. Nine companies, AgustaWestland, Bohemia Interactive, BreakAway, Calytrix Technologies, Laser Shot, RGB Spectrum, SimCentric Technologies, TerraSim, and Virtual Integrated Simulations, supported the immersive collaborative training environment.

All in all, many had expected, and would have wished for, a more exciting 20th anniversary ITEC. The next ITEC will be held from 18 to 20 May 2010 in London. ms&t

The Chairperson’s Comment It was my distinct pleasure to serve as the ITEC 2009 Conference Chair. Despite the struggles our respective organizations face in today’s economic climate, the level of participation remained strong. Focus remained on our warfighters, our peacekeepers, our collaborative ability to provide the ultimate defence training systems, and educational applications – both present and future. The 2009 Opening Address and Senior Officers’ Panel quickly established the strength of the conference and our drive for success. Delegate feedback indicates that our panellists and speakers were again high-calibre subject matter experts and that our programme was on target. I take great pride, both personally and professionally, in having had the opportunity to serve in this capacity.

The ITEC 2010 leadership is well engaged and I wish them great success when we meet in London next year.

Debbie L. Berry, ITEC Conference Chair Emerita (2009)

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5/6/09 11:44:19

world news & analysis

Seen&Heard Edited by Lori Ponoroff & Fiona Greenyer.

For daily breaking S&T news - go to www.halldale.com.

Left Ground-based DSALT training.

Image credit: QinetiQ.

The DSALT facility is a key element of the Air Battlespace Training Centre, a partnership between RAF and industry to improve the training of UK frontline forces. The DSALT facility can also be linked to a variety of other simulated or live air, land or maritime assets to further enhance the training.

BATTLE SIMULATION TRAINING

SIDE-BY-SIDE RAF pilots will soon be able to train alongside British Army forward air controllers and artillery personnel before they are deployed to the front line thanks to a £26m contract the UK Ministry of Defence awarded to QinetiQ and Boeing to build, provision and run a custom training facility at RAF Waddington.

Under the Distributed Synthetic Air Land Training (DSALT) contract, QinetiQ, the project lead, and Boeing will provide about 44 weeks of access to specialist synthetic training facilities over the next four years.

The primary users will be HQ level fire planning cells and fire support teams, who act as the eyes and ears on the front line for artillery batteries plus the RAF pilots who will be operating alongside them in the region and engaged 26

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

in ground attack missions. By working together they will safely experience the complexities of controlling aircraft, artillery and other assets, all in fast-moving situations.

QinetiQ is responsible for ensuring the facility meets technical specification and delivering the ongoing customer requirements. Initially this involves ruggedising a capability demonstrator that has already successfully proven the concept to the MOD into a robust training system. Boeing will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the training systems used for planning and for delivery of the postexercise review, while the RAF supported

by Inzpire, (acting as consultants to the UK military), will provide personnel with recent in-theatre experience to take on various key roles within the exercises.

Cubic Applications, Inc., the mission support services business of Cubic Corporation, won a contract worth approximately $70 million to develop and conduct battle simulation training exercises for United States Forces Korea. Cubic’s work will help make possible the transformation of the U.S. force posture taking place in the Korea Area of Operations and strengthen the operational readiness of the USRepublic of Korea (ROK) alliance.

Cubic’s Information Operations Division, based in San Diego, began its new Korea Battle Simulations Center (KBSC) support contract in April. Under the KBSC contract, Cubic plans and conducts all facets of computer-based battle simulation exercises for U.S., ROK, and other allied forces from platoon through theater-levels. Support includes individual, collective, staff, and senior leader battle-staff training.

This contract marks the sixth consecutive time Cubic won the KBSC support contract for USFK since the program started in 1991.

NEXT GENERATION MEDIAWALL RGB Spectrum has introduced the MediaWall 4500, the next generation of its MediaWall® Duo™ system, for display walls of up to 24 screens. Two MediaWall 4500 processors work in tandem under the control of a unifying control application.

The MediaWall Duo offers full functionality for larger display wall arrays with up to 60 windows displayed simultaneously.

Graphic and video windows can be placed anywhere on the array.

Input windows can be configured to be global (anywhere on the wall) or regional (located on the left half or right half of the wall). The system employs the next generation MediaWall processor, a fully real time display wall system for arrays of projectors, cubes or flat panel displays. Unique among display wall processors, the MediaWall 4500 is based on a custom, high performance architecture rather than a PC, with faster updates, more display flexibility, robustness and security. Real time display of inputs is guaranteed under all conditions, without dropped frames.

The MediaWall Duo software application is an extension of RGB Spectrum’s Web Control Panel and runs remotely under Windows® 2000 or XP.

NEW HELICOPTER SIMULATOR Concurrent has announced that Germany’s ESG (Elektroniksystem and Logistik GmbH) has selected ImaGen™ image generators and iHawk™ real-time multiprocessors for the development of a new helicopter simulator for the German Air Force to evaluate pilot candidates. The simulator will contain a Concurrent iHawk host system and multiple ImaGen visual servers running Concurrent’s RedHawk Linux real-time operating system. Concurrent will also provide Diamond Visionics’ GenesisIG image generation software to create scenery on the fly without having to maintain a large visual database.

L-3 WINS B-2 TRAINING SYSTEM PROGRAM L-3 Communications’ Link Simulation & Training division celebrated its 80th anniversary with the win of a $22.8 million contract to continue as prime contractor on the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Training System program and eight one-year contract options that could increase the total program value to more than $400 million.

The contract with the Air Force’s Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base calls for L-3 Link to provide contractor logistics support, long-term software support and operate the program’s training system support center. L-3 Link will support the B-2 aircrew and maintenance training devices and maintain system software, hardware and courseware and will be responsible for follow-on concurrency between the B-2 Training System and B-2 platform through 2017.

L-3 Link marked its 80th anniversary at the opening of the International Training Equipment Conference in Brussels, Belgium, in May. Ed Link, a simulation industry pioneer, filed for a patent to protect his invention of the first pilot trainer in 1929.

In the months that preceded his patent filing, Link concluded that a ground-based trainer would teach people how to fly and, in the process, make aviation safer. He sold six of the first Link Model “A” trainers to the Army Air Corps in June 1934, laying the foundation for today’s multi-billion dollar simulation and training industry.

the new standard for «realism» Combat Training does not end at the city limits!

Armed Forces can be prepared even more efficiently for deployment in urban terrain with RUAG’s Combat Training Systems for Urban Operations Training.

It ensures the interaction of all weapons and buildings used in an urban environment. The integrated positional tracking system is independent of GPS which allows combat inside buildings to be monitored and recorded.

RUAG Electronics Ltd. Simulation & Training · P.O. Box · 3000 Berne 22 · Switzerland Tel. +41 31 376 66 00 · marketing.electronics@ruag.com · www.ruag.com

ExcEllEncE in qualit y for your safEt y and sEcurit y

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

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world news & analysis

HELICOPTER TACTICS TRAINING AgustaWestland launched its new Helicopter Tactics Training Program for military helicopter crews. The program is designed to help the crews prepare for deployed multi-national operations, especially in conflict zones where risks can be significantly reduced by predeployment tactics training. With this program, military helicopter crews learn how to deal with threats present in operational theatres and conflict zones, and improve the ability of crews to achieve their missions while reducing risk to aircraft and personnel.

The training uses low-cost, networked simulation devices that allow all crew members to train as a team and as a single or multi-ship formation in a collective environment. The training also develops the crew’s skills to maximize interoperability with other aviation assets or ground units in a multi-national task force environment.

ALION WINS MILITARY CONTRACTS Alion Science and Technology was awarded two U.S. military contracts this spring worth $10 million. The first is an $8.5 million follow-on contract with the Air Force to design and maintain a Webbased system that reports, assesses, and predicts Air Force readiness levels. The other is a two-year, $1.5 million deal for Alion to provide modeling and simulation support for the military’s new Mark XIIA Mode 5 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system.

The first contract calls for Alion to continue creating the Predictive Readiness Assessment System (PRAS) for the Air Force Readiness Office that gives the Air Force leadership an integrated view of present and future readiness and information to help with allocating resources and refurbishing force structures based on various funding scenarios. The contract is for one base year with four option years.

The Air Force District of Washington, located at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, DC, is the contracting authority.

A strategic readiness system, PRAS assesses current and past readiness levels and the impact of budgetary funding on readiness. This information will enable leaders to forecast the impact and risks of various operational plans and scenarios and adjust policies, force structures and 28

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AgustaWestland has launched its new Helicopter Tactics Training Program.

Image credit: AgustaWestland.

concepts of operations to mitigate projected readiness shortfalls.

Under the second contract, the Alion-operated Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center will work to ensure the new IFF provides timely and accurate ID and situational awareness to the warfighter to prevent casualties from friendly fire. Using a radio-based ID system, IFF lets the warfighter differentiate friendly aircraft, vehicles and forces from enemy ones. The Mark XIIA Mode 5 IFF incorporates radio waveforms, so Alion will also work to ensure the waveforms are compatible with Air Traffic Control (ATC) standards.

NEW 3D BOSS FOR U.S. AIR NATIONAL GUARD Christie will design and power the military’s first 3D stereo Boom Operator Simulation System (BOSS) for the Air National Guard and the Air Education Training Command. The device recreates the immersive environment of a KC-135 aircraft, where refuelling boom operators perform complex aerial maneuvers.

Christie’s solution adds the realism of 3D stereo to provide an exceptional depthof-field experience. QuantaDyn Corporation is providing integration and testing.

The 3D BOSS is the first to use Christie’s active stereoscopic technology that addresses a veteran boom operator’s critical need for precision, mobility, and hi-fidelity depth of field. Ron

Kornreich, trainer development program manager for the Air National Guard said they needed a more compact version of the Boom Operator Weapons Systems Trainer (BOWST) Christie and QuantaDyn developed for Altus Air Force Base.

“The moment we experienced first-hand Christie’s stereoscopic 3D technology, we were absolutely convinced it represented the breakthrough we were looking for,” he said.

Kornreich believes the 3D BOSS is ideal for use with the ANG’s Distributive Mission Operations (DMO) network, in which multiple trainers from remote locations can be “synched” to a unified mission that could include live, virtual and constructive opponents. The concept allows military personnel who are stationed in different locations to practice together on a virtual battlefield, including training beyond their core mission, without leaving their bases. Christie’s 3D stereo solution could spur an expansion in the program, permitting the exercising of large, massive joint forces at the theater-war level.

BRINGING TRAINING TO THE TROOPS The logistics of transporting soldiers and their equipment to one of the combat training centers can add weeks to the time soldiers are away from home for a training exercise that also lasts weeks. Raytheon helped the U.S. Army get around those logistics this spring by bringing full-scale combat training technologies to soldiers who would normally have to travel to one of the U.S. Army’s three combat training centers for the same high-quality experience.

Raytheon modified a training system used at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) in Hohenfels, Germany, making it mobile for shipment to Fort Bragg, N.C. Raytheon mobilized portions of the instrumentation system; the player tracking and engagement systems; a trunked radio system; a wireless video surveillance system; and a complete hardware and software suite for exercise control, monitoring and feedback.

The mobilized JMRC Instrumentation System shipped to North Carolina gives the Army the multimedia captures and detailed data it needs for analysis and after-action reviews that improve soldier and unit readiness before they deploy to a real-world conflict.

18-20 May 2010 ExCeL London, UK www.itec.co.uk

ITEC RETURNS TO LONDON FOR 2010 Europe’s premier event dedicated to defence training, education and simulation •

The UK is Europe’s leading centre for synthetic training

•

London is one of ITEC’s most popular venues, drawing some of our largest attendance figures.

•

London ExCeL is a world class conference and exhibition centre

Don’t miss this opportunity to network and exchange ideas in a world class business environment.

Remember to put these dates in your diary 18 – 20 May 2010 To contact the ITEC team: T: Int +44 (0) 20 7370 8528 / US +1 203 275 8014

Supported by

E: team@itec.co.uk

W: www.itec.co.uk

Organised by

National Training & Simulation Association, USA

world news & analysis

FIRST DAUPHIN N3 SIM Eurocopter signed a contract with HeliUnion to supply the first simulator for the Dauphin AS365 N3. Developed and built in partnership with Thales, the simulator will be at Héli-Union’s training center in Angoulême, in the Charente region of France in 2011.

This project follows up on the one launched a few years ago with the help of the CCI (chambre de commerce et d’industrie) in Angoulême, which led to the development of the Flight Navigation Procedure Trainer (FNPT) developed

by Thales.

The new flight simulator is designed to meet the training needs of Heli-Union, and other civil and military customers.

It will have a dual qualification: Level 3 Flight Training Device (FTD) and Level B Full Flight Simulator (FFS) with a target of 3000 hours of training per year – or an average of more than eight hours per day.

The simulator will allow operators to perform several types of training, ranging from ab initio and recurrent training to specific programs covering failure procedures, instrument flight rules (IFR), offshore and search & rescue (SAR) operations, night flight (night vision goggles), flights over mountainous regions and low altitude navigation.

NEW FFS FOR ITALIAN AIR FORCE Alenia Aeronautica is developing a C-27J Spartan Full Flight Simulator for the Italian Air Force using Concurrent’s multiprocessing system as the simulation host system. For use at Pisa Air Base in 2010, the simulator includes an Alenia Sapphire IG image generator powered

by Concurrent ImaGen™ platforms with high-performance graphics. Concurrent iHawk and ImaGen systems both run Concurrent’s real-time RedHawk™ Linux operating system.

The new simulator features electrical motion and control loading systems, a night vision compatible display system, an Alenia Sapphire IG that supports the Italian geographical database, tactical and environmental scenario generation facilities, and High Level Architecture (HLA) networking. Concurrent provides the host computers that run the aircraft simulation models and the graphics engines where the Sapphire image generation software and geographical database are executed.

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Dauphin AS365 N3.

Image credit: Eurocopter.

AIR COMBAT TRAINING SYSTEM Cubic Defense Applications, the defense systems business of Cubic Corporation, made its second foreign sale of Cubic’s latest-generation air combat training system to the Singapore air force. Under a contract awarded by the 675th Armament Systems Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Cubic will deliver P5 Combat Training System (P5CTS) airborne subsystem pods and ground stations to Singapore for use at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, one of several U.S. Air Force bases Singapore uses to take advantage of the good training airspace.

Singapore’s P5CTS will have capabilities similar to the U.S. P5 system, including the P5 instrumentation pods for use on the aircraft and the colorful, user-friendly three-dimensional Individual Combat Aircrew Display System (ICADS™), a ground-based system that allows pilots to monitor, control and debrief training missions.

AFGHANISTAN 3D TERRAIN To meet the needs of training NATO soldiers for warfare in Afghanistan, MetaVR has built 3D geospecific terrain covering 9,600 square kilometers in the Afghan province of Kabul. It features a high-resolution virtual village with more than 500 buildings and is available in MetaVR’s round-earth and flat-earth formats.

MetaVR’s Afghan village is set within mountains, complex terrain of varying elevation, and cave complexes that offer

realistic training scenarios for operations in mountainous villages. The modeled village is based on the village of Khairabad in the southern part of the Kabul province. This virtual village and its surrounding mountainous terrain give users the ability to conduct ground combat simulations, such as sniper and forward air controller (JTAC) exercises, with a high degree of realism.

MetaVR’s Afghanistan 3D terrain, built in collaboration with Simthetiq and VR Group, is available free of charge in MetaVR’s terrain formats and SAF formats to all US Government and NATO agency and contractor customers (for official use only) on active software maintenance (VRSG version 5.5 is required).

SEE THROUGH A BROWNOUT CAE and Neptec Design Group successfully demonstrated the integration of Neptec’s Obscurant Penetrating Autosynchronous LIDAR (OPAL) sensor with CAE’s Augmented Visionics System (AVS) during testing at the United States Department of Defense Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona. CAE’s AVS solution is being developed to allow helicopter pilots to operate safely in the most extreme conditions, including landing in brownouts when dust recirculation caused by rotor downwash obscures the pilot’s view during critical maneuvering operations at low altitudes.

Neptec’s OPAL successfully penetrated dust clouds generated by the UH-1 test helicopter and OPAL could “see through” brownout conditions opaque to the human eye to easily differentiate between rocks, bushes, sloping terrain, utility poles, ground vehicles, and wires

at distances greater than 200 meters.

The high-resolution detail provides situational awareness critical to helicopter pilots when attempting to land in nearzero visibility conditions.

CAE’s AVS solution combines OPAL and other sensors with the CAEdeveloped common database originally developed for the U.S. Special Operations Command to support rapid, correlated database production. The concept for CAE’s AVS solution is to update its common database with OPAL’s 3D sensor data for real-time processing of images, showing the area surrounding the helicopter, including terrain and potential obstacles.

SURFACE WARFARE TRAINING Fidelity Technologies Corp. (Fidelity) won a $10.5 million, five-year contract with the U.S. Navy to provide maintenance and operational support for six surface warfare training locations across the country.

Under the contract, Fidelity will provide all labor and materials needed to maintain the surface warfare training systems at Little Creek, Dam Neck and

Norfolk naval stations in Virginia and Coronado, Point Loma and San Diego in California. The training equipment in the contract includes trainers for amphibious landing craft, hovercraft, small arms fire, forward observers and other naval surface warfare needs.

Correction: Christie USAF A-10 Projector In MS&T 1/2009, in the article “Night Scenes,” this statement is in error: “The RGB-only version [of the MatrixStIM projector] helped Christie win an upgrade of the US Air Force A-10 simulators, to which they plan to add the IR LED.” Christie Digital advises there is no direct connection between the A-10 program and the new LED-based Matrix StIM system.

Rather, Christie’s Matrix HD2 projector was selected for the upgrade of the US Air Force’s A-10 simulators to support both visible display and NVG training.

“While the NVG training capability of the Matrix HD2 was one determining factor in its selection for use on the A-10 program, the Matrix StIM utilizes completely new technologies and further advances NVG training capabilities to new levels not available on any other COTS projection system,” according to Dave Kanahele, Christie director of simulation solutions.

MYMODELS TOOLKIT Antycip Simulation Ltd, a subsidiary of ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) Pte Ltd, introduced MyModels to its product line. MyModels is modeling toolkit (MTK) designed for the rapid generation of high fidelity models in simulation applications.

MyModels is designed to allow users to generate many models for their simulation applications with one MTK, increase simulation fidelity and decrease development costs. MyModels comes integrated out-of-the-box with VT MÄK VR-Forces and can be integrated with other Computer Generated Forces software. The first MTK of the line is MyModels Fixed Winged Fighter, which can be configured to generate high fidelity models such as Lockheed Martin F-16, Boeing F/A-18, Cesna, Dassault Mirage 2000, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Mikoyan MiG-29.

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world news & analysis

KING AIR FOR RAF CONTRACT Frasca International, Inc. was selected to provide Serco Group plc a new King Air B200GT FTD as part of the RAF Cranwell Multi-Activity Contract (MAC). The King Air B200GT FTD will feature the Collins Pro Line 21™ fully integrated avionics system, an enclosed instructors station, and Frasca’s Graphical Instructor Station (GISt™). Other features include Frasca’s TruVision™ Global visual system with a 220 degree display system and a custom RAF Cranwell visual database.

TWO FOR TWO DT Media won two contracts in Saudi Arabia within two weeks. The first is a training and simulation deal with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defence. In alliance with Saudi Arabian partner Rahaden Trading, DT Media will supply the electronic warfare training solution (DEWET) to the Royal Saudi Air Force using 3D threat environment simulation.

The second contract, also in partnership with Rahaden Trading , calls for DT Media to provide its Fleetman Naval Simulator, a 3D visualisation product, to the Royal Saudi Navy’s Technical Institute for Naval Studies (TINS) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

DT Media completed installation of its Communications Team Trainer at TINS in April, 2008. The Communications Trainer, developed from the Fleetman communications system and in use with the UK Royal Navy since 2006 adds a new level of realism in voice and data communications training. Fleetman enables the running of simulation exercises using a mix of ships, submarines, helicopters and aircraft and has been used by the UK Royal Navy Maritime Warfare Schools and waterfront learning centres since 2004.

CERTIFIED BY U.S. AIR FORCE FlightSafety’s new TH-1H Weapon System Trainer was recently certified by the United States Air Force, making it the second WST delivered to Warrior Hall in Ft. Rucker, Alabama by FlightSafety and certified by the USAF in the last year.

These new WSTs meet and exceed requirements of civil trainers developed to FAA Level D standards in aerodynamic, power plant, and systems fidelity. The simulators feature FlightSafety’s electric motion and control loading sys32

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tems and the latest Vital X visual systems with a 200 degree by 60 degree display.

The TH-1H flight training devices join 20 TH-67 simulators, provided and maintained by FlightSafety, and eight UH-60 simulators provided by FlightSafety to Link Simulation and Training and in turn to the Flight School XXI operation at Ft. Rucker.

VISUAL SYSTEMS FOR SAVT Video Display Corporation won a multi-year contract to supply six visual systems for the US Marine Corps Supporting Arms Virtual Training (SAVT) program. The display systems are being provided under the Prime contract issued to TJ Drafting and Design, by the Marine Corps System Command in Orlando, Florida.

Each of the systems will include three ultra high resolution SONY SXRD® SRXT105 4K projectors, a high performance screen with a horizontal field of view of 260 degrees and a vertical field of view of 60 degrees, plus an advanced auto calibration system for image warping, color and edge blend. The Display Systems will be installed at multiple Marine Corp bases worldwide with initial installations beginning this year and should be complete by the end of August, 2011.

Each display system will provide correct perspective, color, resolution, and luminance relative to the trainee’s design eye-point for display of the day, dusk,

Above The new WSTs at Ft. Rucker, Alabama.

Image credit: FlightSafety International.

night, and simulated night-vision-device (NVD) visual scene provided by the SAVT Image Generators. The training scenarios will require the placement of tactical ordnance on selected targets using Joint Close Air Support (JCAS) procedures and observed fire procedures for Naval Surface Fire Support (NSFS), artillery and mortar fire to perform destruction, neutralization, suppression, illumination/ coordinated illumination, interdiction, and harassment fire missions.

MEDICAL SIM CONTRACT The US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Expeditionary Medicine Division, through a U.S. Army RDECOM Simulation & Training Technology Center (STTC) contract, has selected Engineering and Computer Simulations (ECS) to make enhancements to the ECS Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TC3) Simulation.

Under this new contract, ECS will enhance the TC3 simulation while providing unique Marine Corps applications.

The addition of a TC3 Mission Editor will allow Army and Marine Corps training developers to rapidly develop and deploy simulated scenarios that can be quickly adapted to evolving battlefield requirements. This mission editor also provides

instructors the capability to incorporate additional casualty types, apply multiple wounds to a single casualty, and simulate opposing forces.

The new TC3 Sim will also provide a Marine Corps-specific variant. ECS will work with the Marine Corps to identify and record relevant Marine Corps scenarios, equipment, capabilities, tactics, techniques and procedures. Lastly, ECS will incorporate Casualty Evacuation into the TC3 Simulation, adding models, behaviors, and events that are associated with performing a Combat Evacuation (CASEVAC) of casualties in a tactical combat environment.

STAGE™ Scenario Presagis’ STAGE™ Scenario software is being used as the foundation for the simulation platform CS Communication & Systèmes (CS) developed for the Ballistics and Aerodynamic Research Laboratory of the French Department of Defence’s Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (DGA). The DGA is responsible for the design, acquisition and evaluation of systems used to equip the French armed forces.

CS chose the STAGE Scenario because its flexibility, openness and extensibility allowed CS to integrate a number of customized simulation modules and interfaces that met its specific needs and helped it adhere to tight timelines. The solution, which is used to simulate intercontinental missile terrain and ballistic missiles models, has STAGE Scenario at its core and incorporates the various modules and solutions developed by CS including VirtualGeo 3D GIS for large database preparation, VisualSim for 3D visualisation of simulation and 3D visual extensions built to represent specific phenomena, broader environmental models, and real meteorological behavior.

Presagis also took the stage at ITEC by introducing new capabilities across its entire product portfolio of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) modeling, simulation and embedded display graphics software to help customers stay ahead of industry demand, eliminate integration barriers and integrate more information into high-fidelity scenarios.

COLLABORATION CONTRACT InterSense and Case Western Reserve University won a collaboration con-

tract from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a prototype micro-navigation system based on state-of-the-art dead reckoning technology to further DARPA’s Micro Inertial Navigation Technology (MINT). The tracking system for military and commercial applications will be designed to provide highly accurate positioning information even when GPS navigation is not available. MINT project standards specify the use of micro- and nano-scale, low-power navigation sensors that are small enough to be placed on a boot where zero velocity measurements can be detected with high accuracy. InterSense’s NavShoe™ technology will be combined with a high-resolution, error-correction ground reaction sensor cluster being developed by Case Western Reserve to meet DARPA’s requirements and will be applicable to field operations and training systems.

100 PERCENT AVAILABILITY Quantum3D’s Independence 2000TI technology insertion plan has delivered 100 percent availability for the F-15E Mission Training Center in Suffolk, United Kingdom since it began operations in April, 2008.

The training center, a project of the U.S. Air Force and The Boeing Company, provides two high fidelity, dual-cockpit F-15E simulators, each with a 360-degree visual system and synthetic environment. Designed to allow pilots to “train as they fight,” the simulators require threedimensional imagery at a sustained rate of 60Hz. The Independence image generator successfully achieved this high bar for quality—an important requirement for a system designed to improve pilot readiness without exposure to actual combat.

OFFSHORE PATROL VESSEL SIMULATOR Transas has developed a new Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) engine room simulator and installed it at the Royal New Zealand Navy Engineering School as a part of the Marine Engineering Synthetic Training Environment (MESTE) complex.

Electronic Navigation Ltd supported the project locally.

The OPV engine room simulator is designed for the training and assessment of Officers and Technicians in the principles of operation and fault diagnosis of

the OPV engineering/electrical systems A distinctive feature of MESTE is the overall simulation of the OPV’s Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS). The simulator faithfully replicates the OPV IPMS screens, electrical plant controls, and the local operation of ships systems. Realistic system control consoles provide a high level of simulator fidelity. The main switchboards are simulated by 40” LCD Touch screen panels. Manually operated systems are controlled from workstations in a separate Machinery Control Room (MCR). 3D virtual models are used to operate the system controls and valves at the Local Operating Panels (LOP). The trainee can move within the virtual engine room, choose an LOP and operate systems using pop up control panels. The connection of an integrated bridge simulator allows “whole ship” evolution training to be conducted, exercising communications between the bridge and engineering departments.

For individual or group training a 12 workstation generic classroom trainer has been included. Each workstation has the OPV simulator installed as well as other simulators for basic engineering training. Onboard training, assessment and distance learning is facilitated by the use of laptop computers.

INNOVATIVE TRAINING SOLUTIONS Finmeccanica Company, SELEX Systems Integration, intends to expand innovative training solutions using the Forterra Systems OLIVE™ virtual world platform, supported by Ambient Performance, Europe’s Forterra Systems provider. SELEX plans to explore the many potential applications of emerging distributed virtual world technologies to help transform training for armed forces being rapidly deployed across multiple theatres of operation. Some of the various development possibilities focus on experiential learning solutions integrating existing simulations of multiple user interaction in an immersive situation, or reusing own models and terrain to rapidly update a specific training setting to represent the contemporary operating environment. The OLIVE™ platform is also used as a collaboration environment to work across SELEX sites, providing secure virtual meetings across the network.

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

33

world news & analysis

SAAB WINS MARINE CORPS CONTRACT

LED PROJECTOR FOR SIMULATION APPLICATIONS

Saab Training USA has been contracted by the US Marine Corps to produce and field I-TESS, the company’s Instrumented – Tactical Simulation Engagement System. The placed order in the amount of US$22 million is part of a total contract frame of an estimated US$29 million.

I-TESS is a modular and mobile integrated range instrumentation system with modern laser simulators providing improved training capabilities over currently fielded devices used in urban warfare training exercises. It secures exercise control, battle tracking, data collection and allows rapid After-Action Reviews (AARs) for live training events.

The system will be fielded at various Marine Corps bases and installations for the USMC Pre-deployment Training Program and other type of individual and company level training. Expected completion date is April 2011.

Norway’s projectiondesign® launched its brand new FL32 LED projector, designed for simulation and visualization specific applications, at ITEC 2009. The FL32 is the company’s first solid-state LED-based projection system that uses the company’s new RealLED™ technology resulting in greatly enhanced image performance and ultra-low maintenance requirements.

RealLED technology is projectiondesign’s unique implementation of high performance solid state LED illumination technology, paired with the patented optical system of the F32 platform projectors.

The FL32 projector reduces visible image artefacts over competing technologies and products by taking away any motion smear and blur, colour separation artefacts, and image processing related flaws. Image and projector performance is independent of orientation and position allowing it to be installed in any configuration. ms&t

Arrivals & Departures

Index of Ads

Dr. Lukas Braunschweiler took over operational management of RUAG Holding AG on 1 June 2009. He succeeds Toni J. Wicki, who retired as CEO, but maintains his position on RUAG’s Board of Directors.

The General Assembly of DWT, the German Association for Defence Technology, has elected General (Ret.) Rainer Schuwirth as its new chairman. Schuwirth succeeds Vice Admiral (Ret.) Hans Frank, who chaired the Board for five years. The retired fourstar general, who is regarded as an expert in national security and defence strategy, served as the first Director General of the EU Military Staff and, until 2007, as SHAPE Chief of Staff.

MYMIC LLC has appointed Andreas Gruendel as a Military Analyst to investigate, assess and document the use and effectiveness of the UrbanSim Learning Package, a game-based instructional software suite, to train both Commanders and Staffs, from different units and with different roles and missions during Counter-Insurgency (COIN) operations.

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MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 3/2009

ADTS 2010 www.adts.aero AgustaWestland www.agustawestland.com CAE www.cae.com

19 IFC OBC

ETC www.etcTacticalFlight.com

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ITEC 2010 www.itec.co.uk

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Nextel Engineering www.nexteleng.es

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SAIC www.saic.com SELEX Systems Integration www.selex-si-uk.com VBS2 www.vbs2.com

IBC 25 4

Calendar 8-9 September 2009 APATS 2009 @ Asian Aerospace AsiaWorld-Expo Hong Kong www.halldale.com/APATSAA 10-11 November 2009 EATS 2009 - European Airline Training Symposium Clarion Congress Hotel Prague, Czech Republic www.halldale.com/EATS 3-4 March 2010 ADTS 2010 – Aerospace & Defence Training Show Dubai, United Arab Emirates www.adts.aero 27-29 April 2010 WATS 2010 – World Aviation Training Conference & Tradeshow Rosen Shingle Creek Resort Orlando, Florida, USA www.halldale.com/WATS 18-23 August 2009 MAKS 2009 Moscow, Russia www.airshow.ru 8-11 September 2009 DSEi – Defence Systems & Equipment International 2009 London, UK www.dsei.co.uk 15-16 October 2009 MSG-069 Symposium on “NMSG Annual Conference 2009” Brussels, Belgium www.rta.nato.int/Detail.asp?ID=3510

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CAE is at the forefront of rapid, correlated database development initiatives. One of these initiatives is the Synthetic Environment Core program for the U.S. Army. We are proud to be partnering with the Army’s PEO STRI to develop and support integrated virtual training environments. The SE Core program facilitates increased speed and efficiency in database generation, thus providing more effective training and mission rehearsal capabilities for Warfighters. CAE’s innovation and technology leadership as evidenced through the SE Core program is all aimed at helping our customers achieve mission readiness and always stay one step ahead.

Images generated by the CAE Medallion-6000 from the SE Core Ft. Stewart database enhanced with imagery by CAE.

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