Above: The Warrior Skills TrainerAnother couple of pretty good days of training... Yesterday we visited the Warrior Skills Trainer, which is basically a big video game some guys in the Army came up with. It is made up of seven different computer systems and languages, and it is designed to train soldiers on mounted combat patrols. They threw the whole thing together on the cheap, but it works pretty good. Inside a big warehouse there are four plywood and computer screen mock-ups of Humvees, and they are outfitted with weapons that shoot laser beams at screens that take up each wall. Inside each mock up instead of there being a window, there is a computer monitor with a view of the virtual world from that perspective: If you drive straight, you will see the virtual reality truck in front of you. If you look in the rear view mirror, you will see a virtual reality representation of the dudes who are in the truck right behind you. the world passes by as you look out the window, and there are virtual reality arab-looking people all over the place. You navigate using a representation of the Army's Blue Force Tracker system which in reality uses GPS and satellite technology to enhance situational awareness (figure out where everyone is on the battlefield). It's a pretty good system and they can pretty much simulate everything there is on a mounted combat patrol. We used it as a chance to exercise our SOPs and work out some bugs.
In a nutshell, we got paid today to play a huge interlinked video game. Thanks for paying your taxes.
The Hillbilly Redneck Virtual Reality Warfare machine was a precursor to today's training of a mounted combat patrol live fire. It involved shooting, maneuvering and communicating with three gun trucks and 11 soldiers on a range with a bunch of targets to shoot at and a bunch of weapons systems and ammunition to shoot targets with. It went well, and the fellas were able to apply a lot of the lessons learned from previous training. We were able to work out a lot of kinks. I enjoyed it a lot for two reasons:
1. We got to shoot stuff. Advising intrigues me, but it's not the reason why I came in the Army.
2. It reminded me of being a tank platoon leader and our semi-annual (or semi whenever we got the resources to do it) Tank Table XII Platoon Qualification. I used to have a blast doing those, and this event brought me back to the days when life as an Army Leader was about grass roots muddy boots leadership, as opposed to office cubes, email, doing slides and nugging your way through staff work.
Friday is our Capstone Exercise, where we are supposed to apply all of the lessons we have learned here in our seven weeks of pre-deployment training. I'm looking forward to it, mostly because we are close to being able to get to go home for two weeks prior to our big airplane trip.
Tune in on Sunday to see how it went.
Hope all is well with you. Take care.
Ron
No comments:
Post a Comment