The Army has awarded two developments contracts for its program to build new war gaming tools, as the service looks to take greater advantage of commercially available software for battlefield simulations.

Matrix Games and a team from the Atlantic Council and Big Parser have been selected for the Prototype Athena program and are tasked with developing gaming systems and adapting select commercially available war games for Army training.iStock Cyber Lock

The contracts were awarded as Other Transaction Authorities through the Army’s Training and Readiness Accelerator consortium.

“Matrix Games specializes in all aspects of commercial off-the-shelf military war-gaming and simulations, and we are currently working with various departments of the Air Force and Navy. This is our first nomination on a predominately land warfare project and we could not be more motivated,” JD McNeil, CEO of Matrix Games, said in a statement.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recently emphasized a need for the services to take greater advantage of war games and exercises in an effort to inform modernization budgeting priorities (Defense Daily, Oct. 29).

The vendors are also tasked with adapting voice-control systems, such as Amazon’s [AMZN] Alexa, for Army training exercises.

“The Atlantic Council is honored to support the Army’s Project Athena prototype,” John Watts, a senior fellow at the council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said in a statement. “[Our organization] strives to work with America’s allies to secure the future and welcomes this opportunity to work with the Army Futures Command to help achieve that goal.”