It's a new world of simulation. Thisprototype links the individual nodes sothe entire team can train together.

Planet Simnet

WELCOME to the planet Simnet.But stay alert, because this

has to be one of the more dangerousplaces known to man.

War rages interminably. The ter-rain is covered with tanks and ar-mored personnel carriers, many ofthem engulfed in flames. Close airsupport (CAS) aircraft, both rotaryand fixed-wing, pop up from behindtrees and scream down to engage inmissile duels with ground forces.

The frenzied chatter of troops un-der stress fills the radio waves. Theincessant booming of artillery rever-berates throughout this nightmareworld. Danger of death is ever-pres-ent.

This is not a real world, though itis frighteningly realistic to Armyand Air Force personnel who gothere to learn the art of war. PlanetSimnet exists in a prototype simula-tor network-whence its name-put together by the Defense Ad-vanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA). The purpose of Simnet isto apply state-of-the-art electronicstechnology to the demanding task oftraining forces in combined-armswarfare.

Maintaining force-readiness lev-

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BY JOHN RHEA

els is a constant challenge, one notlikely to get any easier in an era ofstagnant defense budgets andqualitative upgrading of hostileforces. Traditional training meth-ods, principally field exercises andinstruction on individual weaponsimulators, cannot keep pace fortwo reasons. First, these tech-niques cannot duplicate the totalityof tactical warfare. Second, they aretoo expensive to be used frequently.

Air Force Col. Jack Thorpe, theSimnet program manager at DAR-PA, is convinced he has a betteridea. He has been pursuing it relent-lessly for ten years. He proposes touse new technologies of micro-processors, high-speed data links(including fiber optics), and com-puter-generated imagery to create anew type of total warfare simulator.

In Washington, D. C.,DARPA Program

Director Col. JackThorpe (left) and Lt. Col.

James Schifflet (right)use their "Flying

Carpet"-the BBN"Stealth" vehicle-to

gather information on asimulated battle in

progress on the Simnetsystem. Simnet allows a

simulated battle to beevaluated by stealthyobservers in several

locations.

Many Workstations, One BattleNot a replica of a single weapon

system built around a central com-puter, these new simulators aremodular workstations linked in anetwork based on distributed archi-tecture. Workstations can easily beadded or removed without forcing atotal reconfiguration of the system.

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

For the purpose of training, themain advantage of this approach issimple and compelling: All of theparticipants in an exercise-andthere could be thousands of them inadvanced versions of Simnet-arefighting the same battle.

Furthermore, these troops fightas teams, and they fight other teamsof humans, not computers. ColonelThorpe compares Simnet worksta-tions to Alice's looking glass. Theyare entry points into an electronical-ly created world of strife. The battlecontinues without interruption astrainees enter and exit this world.

Simple to OperateIn a military environment of high

tech, "mil-spec'd" equipment, Sim-net workstations are built aroundApple Macintosh computers avail-able at any computer store. Onemain reason is that these processorsare inexpensive and simple to oper-ate. Another is that Simnet's modu-lar architecture doesn't care whatkind of computer is used. Even sim-pler and cheaper personal comput-ers can be substituted.

"We can pick and choose and mixand match," Colonel Thorpe says,thus avoiding the situation of beinglocked into a single system con-tractor.

Planet Simnet is rent-free, devoidof political or ecological con-straints, can be made identical toanyplace on planet Earth (from FortKnox to the Fulda Gap or even RedSquare), and is nonlethal to its tem-porary inhabitants, who can blazeaway at each other with the weaponsof their choice.

Today, Simnet is a test-bed net-work of workstations located on twocontinents, all simulating groundand air vehicles. In the continentalUS, there is one star configurationhaving a central node at Fort Knox,Ky., and six outlying nodes. Theyare found at Fort Leavenworth,Kan.; Fort Hood, Tex.; Fort Ruck-er, Ala.; Fort Benning, Ga.; Missis-sippi National Guard headquartersat Camp McCain; DARPA head-quarters in Arlington, Va.; and theCambridge, Mass., offices of asso-ciate prime contractor Bolt Beranekand Newman (BBN). In Europe,three West German sites at Schwein-furt, Friedberg, and Fulda are tiedinto a central node at Grafenwoehr.

All the nodes can "talk" to each

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other over standard AT&T 56,000-bits-per-second long-haul commu-nications lines. Internal communi-cations at each location use Ether-net or other local area networkswith data rates of 10,000,000 bits persecond.

Each workstation for an MlAbrams tank or an M2i3 BradleyFighting Vehicle costs $250,000.The tab is $500,000 for one that sim-ulates a generic CAS aircraft (itcould represent an A-lO or an A-l6,so Colonel Thorpe calls it an"A-13"). Prices represent only asmall fraction of the cost of genuinearticles.

Comparable savings are found inoperations. Simnet's phone andelectric bills are far lower than costsof gasoline and jet fuel. ColonelThorpe estimates the total cost ofthe Simnet test-bed at about $60million, of which DARPA put up $20million. The Army will pay the re-mainder.

Red Flag in a Laboratory"Simnet is like the National

Training Center [the Army's majorfield exercise site at Fort Irwin, Cal-if.] or Red Flag [the Air Force exer-cises at Nellis AFB, Nev.] in a labo-ratory," Colonel Thorpe says. But

there is a difference: In this elec-tronic world, participants can dothings they'd never dare to do in thereal world.

The infantry can call in artillerysupport close to their positions. AtFort Irwin this distance is limited toone kilometer; in combat conditionsit is 100meters. The CAS pilots canlearn how to dodge surface-to-airmissiles (SAMs). Perhaps best ofall, tanks don't cause traffic jams ortear up farmers' fields. This hasbeen a problem in past Reforger ex-ercises in West Germany, and thegrowing mood of pacifism therecould seriously impair future read-iness exercises.

Colonel Thorpe, holder of aPh.D. in industrial psychology fromBowling Green State University,Ohio, first tackled the simulationproblem in 1978, when he was a cap-tain assigned to the Air Force Officeof Scientific Research. At first, theidea was to examine what simula-tors could do that couldn't be donein aircraft. USAF was understand-ably cool to the idea because itthreatened to reduce flying hours."No wonder people hated us," re-calls Colonel Thorpe.

But he persisted and expandedthe scope of his studies to include

A networked warrior's view of the planet Simnet: An anonymous low-level NOE(nap-of-the-earth) scene is displayed in the early stage of a battle. The GE Compu-Scene®IV Visual Simulation System can depict terrain identical to anyplace on planet Earth,from Fort Knox to Red Square.

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

the Army after he was assigned toDARPA in 1981. Although todayColonel Thorpe customarily wearshis Air Force fatigues and mirror-bright combat boots in a buildingwhere the civilians wear suits andofficers wear dress uniforms, heconfesses that at first he wasn't surewhat an Army battalion was. (Ittyp-ically comprises a headquarterscompany and four infantry com-panies or four artillery batteries, to-taling about 700 soldiers.)

By January 1985, DARPA hadbuilt a plywood mockUp tank simu-lator, but it was based on a canned,seven-minute videotape scenarioand was by no means an interactivesystem. By October 1985, ColonelThorpe's group was able to display afull simulator with crude interactivegraphics at the annual Associationof the US Army convention, and theprogram took off. The first two pre-production units were installed atFort Knox in May 1986, and thetankers began serious training intactics.

Sweeping the CompetitionWhat put Simnet on the map was

its success in preparing US teamsfor the Canadian Army Trophycompetition in June of 1987. This isthe top contest among NATO ar-mored units, and the United Stateshad suffered a string of embar-rassingly poor finishes. That spring,US entrants used Simnet to recreatethe Grafenwoehr range, going on tosweep the competition. One Ml pla-toon from the 8th Armored Cavalryachieved a record score amongtwenty-four participating platoons,and another finished third. "Thatgot everybody's attention," ColonelThorpe notes.

An early application of Simnetcame in the Army's source selectionfrom among two competitors for theForward Area Air Defense System!Line of Sight-Heavy (FAADS/LOS-H) system. Trials were held atthe artillery school at Fort Sill,Okla. "They needed somebody toshoot at," Colonel Thorpe says, soSimnet was expanded to include ge-neric fixed- and rotary-wing CASaircraft. Almost by default, this putSimnet in the thick of the Army'sAirLand Battle concept of com-bined arms.

Today the system has been ex-panded throughout Army sites in

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

Simnet uses BBN's real-time computer image generation system to simulate the viewfrom many types of vehicles. Using depth buffers, the computer stores data relating tofactors such as perspective and speed and adjusts them to produce appropriatevisual images. Here, a helicopter simulation is being developed.

CONUS and West Germany, but theprincipal installation is at the ar-mored school at Fort Knox. It cantrain an entire battalion at a time.Expecting that Simnet will soonmove from development to opera-tional use, the Army's programmanager for training devices (PM-TRADE) is circulating a draft re-quest for proposals aimed at an ini-tial procurement next year.

Colonel Thorpe estimates that theArmy itself might want to procureas many as 5,000 of the $250,000-per-copy workstations, making it apotential billion-dollar program.

Colonel Thorpe concedes that hisown service has shown scant inter-est in Simnet, though he contendsthat Simnet-type systems would bevaluable in training pilots for high-flying reconnaissance aircraft andspecial missions such as those of theE-3 Airborne Warning and ControlSystem (AWACS). Tactical airunits, he adds, could also benefit."They may find," he says, "that ar-tillery is their best wing man be-cause it takes out air defense."

The Navy, meanwhile, plans· tojoin the Army injoint exercises thisfall, says Colonel Thorpe. The ideais to use Simnet to "build an ocean"useful in training those conducting

shore bombardment from ships orflying carrier aircraft on attack mis-sions.

Some technical issues remain tobe resolved. Simnet graphics arestill crude, Colonel Thorpe con-cedes, much like looking through adirty window or encountering badweather. Another question con-cerns long-haul communications tolink participants on a global basis. Itwould be cheaper and more effi-cient to train the CONUS-basedand forward-deployed units to-gether electronically rather than tomove them to a single site. Thequestion is whether performancewill be degraded by the delays inher-ent in satellite communications. Analternative may be to use transatlan-tic fiber optic cables currently beinginstalled. That, however, raises se-curity questions.

Virtually UnbeatableAggressors

As in all training of this type,there is the problem of the "red"aggressor forces. They do theirwork so often and thereby build uptheir warfighting expertise to such ahigh level that they become vir-tually unbeatable. It is generallyagreed that training US forces in the

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-Photo © BBN Systems and Technologies Corp.

The "tank" simulated here may be the quarry of the "helicopter" shown in theprevious photo, even though the users may be at Simnet terminals hundreds ofmiles apart. Besides the actions of networked "enemy" forces, users must contendwith random vehicle failures and other realistic hazards.

tactics of the enemy is desirable, butwhat if those tactics suddenlychange?

These are some of the issues thatwere addressed during a proof-of-principle exercise conducted lastMarch. Fort Knox provided a bat-talion-sized mechanized infantrytask force, and Fort Rucker fur-nished helicopters as the blue team.USAF joined the competition forthe first time with four A-lO pilots:Maj. Frank Countryman and Capt.Mark Lampe from the 45th TacticalFighter Squadron, Grissom AFB,Ind.; Capt. James Cobb from the355th TFS, Myrtle Beach, S. C.;and Capt. Jeff Miller from the 23dTactical Fighter Wing, EnglandAFB, La. BBN personnel in Cam-bridge were the red team. Addition-al support was provided by theother Simnet associate prime con-tractor, Perceptronics of California.

The battlefield was a fifty-by-seventy-five-kilometer piece of ter-rain at Fort Knox, complete withforests, streams, hills, buildings,and roads (an "Autobahn"). Thearea normally is used for real train-ing exercises. The participants satin mockups of crew stations thatprovide realistic sound (but no mo-tion) and have all controls neces-

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sary for maneuvering and fighting.They communicated with eachother via standard forty-channelFM radios.

As everybody fought the samebattles, the intensity level esca-lated-and little wonder. Becausethere is no "reset" button on Sim-net, a tank that gets hit is a tank thatgoes out of the competition. If anairfield is pocked, an A-lO pilot hasto find another place to land. If atank tries to cross an unfordablestream, it stays there until a simulat-ed tow vehicle can pull it out. If itruns out of ammunition, it stops fir-ing until another simulated vehicleresupplies it.

Random failures are built into thesystem to occur at the rate normallyencountered in combat. A vehicle'stransmission failure can put it out ofoperation for an hour, for example;a faulty battery or alternator can bereplaced in thirty minutes.

Though active participants cansee only that part of the battle ob-servable from the windows of theirvehicles (three and a half kilometers

for the ground vehicles and sevenkilometers for the CAS aircraft), theDARPA monitors can unobtrusive-ly move anywhere on the battlefieldto see how everybody is doing.Colonel Thorpe calls this his elec-tronic "magic carpet," and he canhitch it to any vehicle or even to anincoming missile. Despite the crudegraphics, the observer is quicklyswept into the emotion of combat.Colonel Thorpe jokes that he hasincreased his vocabulary of pro-fanity in this way.

Refining Combat SkillsEach exercise is videotaped as

the fighting proceeds so it can beplayed back later for instruction intactics. However, this system is notintended to teach anybody how todrive a tank or fly an airplane. Allthe participants are expected toknow the basics already; they aresupposed to use Simnet to refinetheir combat skills. Nor is Simnetintended to replace Reforgers orRed Flags, but rather to help per-sonnel prepare for them.

"In order to fight, we have to beable to do the things we know wewill have to do on the first day of awar," Colonel Thorpe says. "Butnobody, anywhere, is able to prac-tice them." On the electronic planetof Simnet, however, warriors canpractice those skills every day.

The payoff could be great. All mil-itary training, whether in the field orin DARPA's glamorous new videoarcade, is aimed at countering whatmany view as the single greatestchallenge of warfare: overcominguncertainty. As the German mili-tary philosopher Karl von Clause-witz put it in his landmark work, OnWar: "War is the province of uncer-tainty: Three-fourths of thosethings upon which action in warmust be calculated are hidden moreor less in the clouds of great uncer-tainty. "

The purpose of Simnet is to helpwarriors prepare to cope with thatuncertainty-with a bonus for thetrainees: The "dead" soldiers can gohome at night, have dinner withtheir families, and ponder ways tosurvive the next time. -

John Rhea is a free-lance writer, living in Woodstock, Va., who specializes inmilitary technology issues and is a frequent contributor to this magazine. Hismost recent article for AIR FORCE Magazine, "Beyond Electronics," appearedin the June '89 issue.

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989