Building a “Train Like We Fight” Expeditionary Range

As a former Air Force officer and B-52 aviator, I have been around ranges and live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) training for years. I saw close-up the shortfalls in range training when I commanded the Polygone LVC Test and Training Range in Europe.

There and in other international locations, warfighters have used suboptimal training environments for decades due to organizations’ lack of infrastructure, funding, time, and personnel.

Many exercise locations outside the U.S. do not conduct training frequently enough to justify the cost of full-scale infrastructure, limiting ally and partner participation. I saw a failure to really integrate the right LVC capabilities to produce quality high-repetition training.

However, defense organizations now have the opportunity to take advantage of a new approach that provides a “train like we fight” environment suitable for multinational exercises or mission rehearsals.

Essentially, this is an expeditionary range system—using new or existing software and hardware—that provides an adaptable and scalable framework to support mission rehearsal events for U.S. and multinational audiences while optimizing operations and sustainment costs.

Although there are many effective live and synthetic training environments, this approach focuses on an integration framework, with a gaming-like interface to provide all-domain mission rehearsal and quality training.

Defense organizations, industry, and partner nations can tailor their training environments with “best of breed” capabilities that can integrate with existing programs of record to meet their needs (e.g., Live Mission Operations Capability, Navy Continuous Training Environment). Examples could be a long-range kill chain exercise rehearsal that includes high-fidelity weapons employment, a Joint Terminal Attack Controller/close air support environment, or space/cyber/electronic warfare training.

One of the many challenges associated with multinational readiness training is the extensive approval process required to connect multinational systems, especially at the highest security levels. This approach simplifies that process with a standards-based scalable system of systems and integrates existing programs already approved to be used in the coalition environment. It provides an open architecture, protects sensitive data through multiple levels of security services, and brings synthetic data to the edge.

LVC capabilities today must also be expeditionary to meet the complex mission rehearsal requirements of a broad all-domain conflict against a peer competitor. LVC systems must offer a high degree of reconfigurability, yet remain light enough for easy transport and provide network connectivity in austere locations. This approach does that; it is adaptable enough to deploy quickly using commercial air travel.

This framework for integration greatly reduces the reliance on live infrastructure, and thereby reduces costs. It also reduces costs by connecting or integrating existing industry capabilities and Department of Defense programs. It also allows the procurement of tailored systems that account for the budgetary constraints of defense organizations.