The Army should invest as much in virtual training for frontline soldiers as the Air Force spends on pilots for its most advanced fighter jets, said Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

“Tens of millions of dollars are spent and invested in training and simulation for an F-35 pilot before they are ever allowed to come near a fifth-generation fighter,” Milley said Oct. 10 during a keynote address to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual expo in Washington, D.C. “Well, we have fifth-generation fighters in our squads and platoons and they are actually fighting every day. So we must do the same thing for them.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley addresses the 2017 Association of the U.S. Army expo in Washington, D.C. (photo by Dan Parsons)
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley addresses the 2017 Association of the U.S. Army expo in Washington, D.C. (photo by Dan Parsons)

Milley wants to rapidly improve and expand the Army’s synthetic and virtual training capabilities so soldiers can repeatedly practice combat skills at a fraction of the cost of live-fire exercises.

Helicopter pilots and tank crews regularly train in virtual environments. Some individual soldiers and squads practice riflery and other small-unit tactics in simulation, but the technology has not been employed to the point where it has yielded significant advantages, Milley said.

“Any soldier that engages in close-quarters combat deserves the same investment as anyone who is flying at 30,000 feet,” he added. “There is no reason we don’t do that. The technology already exists.”

Every front-line company in the Army should have access to multiple technologies simulating various combat conditions, he said.

“The technology exists now in order to conduct realistic training in any terrain, in all of the urban areas of the world, in any scenario against any enemy – anything the commander deems necessary,” Milley said. “That is possible today.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Lundy, commander of the Combined Arms Center and Fort. Leavenworth, Kans., said the Army has “pretty good simulators,” but the technology is becoming obsolete. They also only exist at about 30 locations that soldiers must travel to. Lundy said new training systems are needed at the battalion and company level at each unit’s home station.

“The other piece is we haven’t been able to bring an immersive trainer for dismounted soldiers,” Lundy said. “We’ve made several attempts at it and we’ve got to be able to close that gap to bring a fully immersive dismounted trainer in.”

Lundy said virtual training is well suited to aviation because it allows pilots to perform maneuvers that are appropriate for combat but too risky for live training. Not only is an immersive trainer for dismounted soldiers elusive, but the ultimate solution must scale from squad-level to up to corps-level.

The goal is to achieve a level of fidelity in virtual training that soldiers can perform repetitive tasks in tailorable scenarios in less time at lower cost. It still will not replace live training, which will become a sort of proving ground for high-level skills developed in virtual reality, Lundy said.

Synthetic training environments allow trainers to change conditions instantaneously from night to day or sunshine to rain, Lundy said. Soldiers can be made to complete tasks in an uncontested environment and then immediately repeat the same take under fire.

“You can change all the variables you train in very quickly,” Lundy said. “You can start out with one task or one set of collective tasks and you can do it in a fairly permissive environment then you can ratchet up all the threats to a higher level.”

“You can do that in live training, but it takes a long time to reset that,” he added.

Expanding virtual training is key to improving individual soldier lethality, which underpins the Army’s six-pronged campaign to modernize for future wars. Other efforts to make soldiers more lethal include stronger, lighter body armor, advanced small arms and tactical cyber, among other technologies. But equipment alone won’t ensure that soldiers can cope with intense, highly lethal future combat against a near-peer enemy, Milley said.

“New equipment is only one component, insufficient for a future battlefield,” Milley said. “Training is the key – hard, rigorous, realistic, repetitive training.”

“The only way to do that is repetition in combat-like conditions,” he added.

The Army must replicate those conditions without parading all of its units through costly rotations at combat training centers, Milley said. Those centers have been upgraded in recent years to better simulate the stress of actual combat, but are costly to run.

Another large-scale training center focusing on preparing soldiers to fight in the dense, urban terrain expected in future large-scale war is in the works, he said.

“Live fire and live force-on-force training, that’s expensive and it doesn’t provide nearly enough repetition to develop the high level of soldier and leadership skill needed in future battle,” Milley said.