At this well-known Army base, which is both “The Home of Armor,” where vintage tanks are displayed, and the site of the U.S. Depository, where the bulk of the nation’s gold bullion is stored, a lot more is happening today than is apparent in a cursory drive along the main thoroughfares.
Indeed, on this otherwise tranquil morning, a fierce and lethal battle is raging.
Soviet T-72 tanks are clashing with the Bradley armored fighting vehicles of an American mechanized infantry company. A Bradley has just been destroyed, its crew killed.
You can hear the distant crump-crump-crump of exploding shells from the large guns of these massive metal killing machines and see the fireball of a direct hit and the billowing plume of black smoke that follows.
But only if you are inside the gymnasium-like building that is the Combined Arms and Tactical Training Center. Here, the conflict is private and pristine. The screeching engines, clanking steel and pounding bombardments are digitally recorded sounds; the vegetation and weaponry are likewise artificial.
There is no acrid aroma of gunpowder, no smoke or dust to sting the eyes and clog the throat, no mud, no dirt at all, in fact, and no blood either, thank goodness.
This battle between Soviet and U.S. armor is an approximation of the real McCoy, a practice session.
And it is more. This indoor field exercise is a glimpse of the way the U.S. military is using computer-generated combat as a training tool and is a hint of the magical possibilities that lie ahead.
Because of the “virtual reality” computer technology employed here and at other military installations, some American warriors now have the capability of fighting an enemy every day, easily and economically, honing skills and confidence through constant repetition and in concert with supporting units that may be hundreds of miles away.
“There’s nothing more complicated than going to war,” says Jack Thorpe, a retired Air Force colonel who was instrumental in developing this technology. “As a matter of principle, the people who fight wars should have to practice more than anyone, more than a team of brain surgeons, more than a symphony orchestra.”
In the past, this meant going to the field for mock battles, an expensive and time-consuming procedure, requiring considerable fuel, ammunition and maintenance.
The capability for the kind of linked electronic simulation advocated by Thorpe is limited to a few bases, but there are plans for an ambitious expansion and well-grounded hope that it will eventually encompass everyone in the armed services.
If seeing is comprehending, let’s look at the Ft. Knox operation.
We begin inside the building’s huge central bay, where two types of molded-plastic pods resembling outsized portable toilets are aligned in precise, military rows.
One model copies the interior of the Abrams M1A1 tank, where four crew members are fitted into a space so restrictive that it would give Superman problems in shedding his Clark Kent clothes.
The other mirrors the equally cramped interior of the Bradley, which has a three-person crew and can be used as a scout vehicle or a personnel carrier, transporting a six-soldier dismount team.
There are 56 models of these two basic armored vehicles: 42 tanks and 14 Bradleys. The simulators cost $250,000 each, a fraction of the $1.5 million cost of an Abrams M1A1 and the $1.4 million cost of Bradley.
On this day, Delta Company of the 15th Infantry, 194th Armored Brigade, stationed at Ft. Knox, is practicing a tactical road march and hasty defense with its Bradleys.
What makes it work is a computer-generated system known as Simnet, for simulated networking. It was developed by the Pentagon’s Advanced Weapons Research Agency.
Simnet can place weapons and vehicles of opposing forces on a three-dimensional, electronic battlefield, using a database of either the rolling, forested terrain of Ft. Knox or the flat, desolate desert of the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin in Southern California. Today, it’s Ft. Knox.
What unfolds is a contest between Delta Company’s Bradley crews and an enemy in Soviet armor, directed by an officer using a computer at a “Threat Station” in another part of the building.
In this instance, he is Lt. Timothy Blair, Delta’s executive officer, who’s seated at a personal computer, moving the enemy with a Macintosh mouse and keyboard.
The Bradley crews view the digital scenery and military material in their plastic simulators through three narrow, horizontal “vision blocks,” shaped like rear-view mirrors.
We observe from the “Stealth Station,” which monitors the exercise from a field tent in the main bay.
Seated before a Macintosh, Sgt. William Goforth, the Stealth operator, shows us the two-dimensional map of the Ft. Knox field-training area on the computer screen, using computer controls to shift and select viewing locations.
In the battle, U.S. vehicles appear as blue rectangles and the enemy’s as red. The map symbols are tranformed into a colorful, 3-D tableau on a series of three adjacent TV screens above the computer; now our vehicles are brown and the enemy’s green.
“The graphics computer gives us what we call an `out-the-window’ view,” Goforth explains.
He can take us anywhere on the battlefield. We can watch at ground level or soar in the air as if we were in a helicopter. We can enter any vehicle, friend’s or foe’s, and peer through their vision blocks.
“Let’s take a look in those trees,” Goforth says. Now we’re on foot inside a dense forest. Overhead, there is a canopy of green.
The good guys score a hit
We emerge. “Let’s try this Bradley,” Goforth suggests. Suddenly we’re inside. Good timing. Our Bradley scores a hit on a T-72 racing toward the treeline to our right. We see five Soviet tanks burning. Our guys are doing well.
We’re curious about the T-72, and in a flash we’re inside. The screens go dark. “Oops, we’re hit,” Goforth says. “He stayed in the open too long.”
Time out. Let’s plug into Jack Thorpe through the mundane miracle of the long-distance telephone call to McLean, Va.
“The exciting thing is, you don’t have to be in one huge building to participate this kind of exercise,” Thorpe says. “You can be in a ship, a plane, in your office.”
Thorpe, a former special assistant for simulation at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now corporate vice president of SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.), a private research and development company.
Thorpe prefers the term “synthetic environment” to virtual reality, which he describes as a subset that more often than not these days involves “attaching something to your head so (computer graphics) are pumped to your eyeballs through a peeping tube or vision port.”
If you think Simnet’s synthetic environment is impressive, he says, you’re in for a surprise. Think of today’s technology as a horse and buggy; well, a Ferrari is just around the corner.
A rapid advance
“Using satellite photographs, we can re-create any spot on the planet, enter it, observe it, explore it, interact with it. This is `Scotty, beam me up’ stuff,” Thorpe says. “We have been doing this for years, but not as effectively and efficiently as we will in a few years. Our computers are becoming more powerful, more sophisticated, cheaper.”
On the military training level, Thorpe says, the value is obvious.
“As a military commander, you must order troops to do something that is very dangerous. This technology enables you to practice and practice. If it were a real field exercise, you couldn’t practice very much. Now you can do this so many times that your chances of success are greater and greater.”
Coordination is also increased. “When you go to any combat operation or to a war, there is a mix of air, sea and land units. But when there are no hostilities, you can’t have this mix. These units aren’t stationed that close to each other.” When the simulation networks are fully developed, they don’t have to be, which permits enhanced teamwork.
Perhaps the most stunning application of the military’s computer-graphics technology is the reconstruction of the Battle of 73 Easting, the name for an incredibly rapid destruction of a superior Iraqi force by an American armored unit in the Persian Gulf war. (73 Easting is a north-south grid line on military maps; the mass of the Iraqi forces were in this location.)
Writer Bruce Sterling calls it “the single most accurately recorded combat engagement in human history.”
Given the green light by Gen. Gordon Sullivan, now Army chief of staff, and his superior at the research agency, Thorpe headed a team that began gathering data a few weeks after the completion of Operation Desert Storm.
“We had five team members walking the battlefield in Iraq, measuring distances, interviewing our American soldiers and the Iraqi prisoners who fought in the battle,” Thorpe says. “The burned-out Iraqi vehicles were still there, which was an advantage. A great find was a tape recording made of the radio traffic by the young officers in a command vehicle.”
Although the most intense and decisive portion of the battle took only about 20 minutes, “The Battle of 73 Easting” computerized video covers the five hours of the entire operation, which began about 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 26, 1991, in southern Iraq.
During a sandstorm and a torrential rain, and under skies further darkened by the oil fires in Kuwait, the Ghost, Eagle and Iron troops of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment-about 250 men-encountered the crack Tawakalna Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard, armed with Soviet equipment and supported by an Iraqi armored unit.
“Our young soldiers were greatly outnumbered,” Thorpe says. “The Iraqis were dug in. Our soldiers saw through their thermal sights that they were undetected. They had caught the Iraqis (who did not have night-vision sights) by surprise.”
According to the Army, more than 600 Iraqis were wounded or killed and more than 2,000 captured; one American died. The Iraqis lost 50 tanks, more than 35 other armored vehicles and 45 trucks; the Americans lost two Bradleys.
“Our gunnery was extraordinary,” Thorpe says. “We had first-round hits of 98.5 percent and above.” Most tank commanders would be pleased with 60 percent first-round hits.
“Instead of being forced to read about it, you can go there through the video,” Thorpe says. “You can ride in each U.S. tank or see the engagement from an Iraqi tank or from one of the Iraqi bunkers. It’s a minute-by-minute record.”
Retired Army Gen. Paul Gorman talked about the 73 Easting video and the importance of simulated networking in training during testimony last year before the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
“The tougher the battle, the more sparse the record,” Gorman said. “Facts that might help those of us concerned with training for the future usually get lost in the mists of personal conceit, obscured by the fog of war.”
Better yet, Thorpe says, you can change elements in “The Battle of 73 Easting,” which enhances its worth. “You can say, `I wonder what would have happened if we had gone off in that direction or if the Iraqis had done this or if they had our weapons and we had theirs.’ “
It’s not Nintendo
A large majority of the U.S. soldiers who fought at 73 Easting had been trained on Simnet, many at Ft. Knox, Thorpe says. Gorman also cites studies showing that simulation training improves and maintains peformance.
There must be a downside. “The criticism you hear most is that nobody dies in simulation, that the absence of the kind of fear that you get in combat is absent here, which reduces its relevance,” Thorpe says. “But I think there’s as much emotional content as in field exercises, and we’re also beginning to create simulations that are more and more realistic and gut-wrenching.”
He emphasizes that simulated battles are not Nintendo on a grand scale. “In a video game, you’re playing against a computer instead of a person, but in our simulation, you’re competing with another human being. Your ego is involved. It’s a contest.”
Back at Ft. Knox, Delta Company’s exercise has ended; 25 soldiers, in brown-and-green forest-camouflage fatigues and black combat boots, are listening to Lt. Blair lead the After Action Review.
The platoon sergeant who lost his Bradley says: “I got zapped. I was in the wrong position.” He says he has learned something.
Another sergeant tells a reporter: “It’s fun, but it’s also challenging. I figure it won’t be the same in a real battle, but it’s pretty realistic and it helps us stay sharp.”
To Jack Thorpe, the men of Delta Company are in the front ranks of a new approach to training: “Soon after a young soldier leaves boot camp and is assigned to a unit, he will go into combat with his teammates. And 20 or 30 years later when he retires, he’ll look back and find there rarely was a day he did not go to war. The lion’s share of his daily regimen was fighting, all the time, quietly.”
