SPECIAL FEATURE
Training and Simulation:
Transportable Performance Advances Access at the Point of Need By John Burie, Product Manager, Training and Simulation, Dedicated Computing
Compact tech and distributed systems enable interoperable, mobile options for immersive LVC training
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COTS Journal | October 2020
The shift to transportable systems has the potential to reshape the training and simulation landscape for the modern military. These flexible, durable systems bring high performance to the point-of-need, making a difference in convenience, cost, accessibility, and results. Increased flexibility is an essential driver in the spectrum of training and simulation initiatives across the armed forces – including the U.S. Army’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE), or programs from Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division, a division of NAVAIR tasked with ‘the full range of research and development in support of Naval training systems for all warfare areas and platforms.’
These comprehensive programs build on the government’s Cloud First initiative established nearly a decade ago, treating training as a service and charged with more effectively bringing it to the point-of-need. Such initiatives shift the focus away from hardware and its associated maintenance, reducing costs and hardware footprint, and achieving highly flexible and scalable training capabilities. For military leaders, these are the advances helping to increase mission readiness for soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine, no matter the environment or geographic location. For the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of training systems, it means focusing on