MGen John Collin (centre), Commander of the 1st Canadian Division HQ, visits Exercise MAPLE FLAG during JOINTEX 13. (Photo IS2013-2001-013 by MCpl Marc-André Gaudreault)
A Canadian convoy has come into contact with enemy forces – a vehicle was hit with an IED (improvised explosive device) and troops have been ambushed. They are requesting fire support to fight off the enemy and air assets to carry out the wounded. Whether or not the ambush is repelled depends on if these assets can be deployed to assist them.
This is where Sergeant Jay Foulds and his team come in. As the primary point of incidence receipt and response, Sgt Foulds is responsible for monitoring a digitized radio communications system known as Transverse chat. After alerting his duty officer, he assigns an incident number, logs the incident and everyone starts actionning their stations.
Sgt Foulds was one of approximately 7,500 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members from across the country who took part in JOINTEX 13, a multi-stage joint training exercise designed to change the way the CAF fight and operate.
The final stage of JOINTEX consisted of a Computer Assisted Exercise, three large Field Training Exercises or “Live Exercises” and a Command Post Exercise – where live, virtual and constructive players all shared the same training environment.
Working out of Wainwright, Alberta, under the 1st Canadian Division Headquarters (HQ), Sgt Foulds said that most of the simulated events felt so real that he was never sure if the incidents he was logging were actually being played out on the ground or virtually within a synthetic environment.
The Canadian Army’s Directorate of Land Synthetic Warfare (DLSE) and the Canadian Forces Air Warfare Centre (CFAWC), supported by the Canadian Forces Warfare Centre (CFWC) were responsible for creating this shared synthetic training environment.
In order to make the virtual aspect as real as possible, DLSE and CFAWC used full-motion video generators to create video clips depicting tactically relevant information, i.e. terrain, population, bridges, or enemy forces. These clips were stored in a complex, searchable database that was accessible to all the different HQs so that they could be viewed and analyzed by military intelligence.
“It’s not about producing video for video’s sake,” stressed Lieutenant-Colonel David McKeever, who was responsible for overseeing the construction of the training system.
“If it doesn’t drive a decision it’s all for naught. We need to make it happen in a way that it’s searchable, it’s on time, and that the right information gets to the right decision maker at the right time, so that he can make a decision that can have an effect. And JOINTEX was remarkably good at pulling all of that together.”
During the exercise, CFWC was also home to two main HQs. While one represented a coalition level HQ, designed to provide operational level guidance to the exercise as a whole, the second was composed of the U.S. 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team – an entirely virtual construct for the purposes of this exercise.
Representing a U.S. brigade level unit, the combat team operated under the command of the 1st Canadian Division HQ, located in Wainwright. The twist: they manoeuvred in an entirely synthetic environment.
“This gave the Division HQ the depth of units under command to broaden their orders production to a span they could expect on operations, and to be responsive to the situations that develop.” explained LCol McKeever.
Combining these live and the simulated activities was one of the most challenging aspects of the exercise. If not well managed, the results can vary from unsatisfying and confusing to potentially dangerous.
While it was important to integrate the live activities into the virtual environment, in order to create a full operational picture, the builders were very careful not to push simulated activities into the live environment. For example, while it was beneficial for the simulated players to track different aircrafts in real time, the pilots flying those live assets were not aware of the position of simulated aircrafts for fear of creating an endangering situation.
To ensure the cohesion of the live and virtual training environments, as well as the credibility of the scenario, a team composed of both uniformed CAF personnel and DLSE contractors monitored the exercise.
Using a large database called Exercise Development Tool (EDT), they were able to manage the story from beginning to end by adding and modifying events as needed.
“The main challenge is to ensure that all the many parts of the scenario ‘world’ are cohering to create an environment that the training audience can believe is credible,” said DLSE Support Coordinator, David Banks. “If you lose credibility, if their ‘world’ stops making sense to them, then training value begins to drop off.”
While broad pieces of the story needed to go in a certain direction in order to meet training objectives, DLSE worked hard to provide as much flexibility as possible.
“If we can’t offer the training audience a degree of realistic flexibility to allow them to plan and execute as they see fit, we risk having a very frustrated training audience and thus a degraded training experience,” said Mr. Banks.
Using a team of dynamic inject writers, DLSE was able to respond to changes in the situation by modifying existing events or developing new ones, that were then introduced into the exercise through EDT. This allowed DLSE the capacity to make changes on the fly, while providing the commanders the same flexibility that would be available to them in theatre.
One of the great successes of JOINTEX was that it provided CAF members a realistic picture of what it takes to work as a joint interoperable coalition force, said Captain David Henry, who participated as a targeting cell member.
“You only understand your piece of the pie. If you’re an army officer that’s usually what you’re comfortable with; that’s usually what you’re exposed to. You’re not usually exposed to what the Air Force would do or what the Navy would do. So this was a great opportunity to see all those three different things happening all at once,” he said.