Future soldier
Left: Soldiers from the Duke of Lancaster Regiment’s mortar platoon train using 81mm mortars, with rounds landing in simulated environments.
Opposite: This soldier is training using the CATT simulator in Sennelager, Germany, practicing a range of mounted and dismounted tasks virtually.
the logistical challenges of deploying actual physical assets. With today’s militaries expected to fight everything from conventional pitched battles to low-intensity insurgencies, meanwhile, it’s easy to see why army training corps would be interested in simulations that can better prepare its officers and soldiers for combat.
The CATT is out of the bag Computer simulations may be a recent phenomenon, but using games and simulations goes back centuries. One of the more famous examples from the 19th century is Kriegsspiel, literally translated to ‘wargame’ from its native German. The Prussian army used Kriegsspiel as part of their curriculum to teach battlefield tactics and operations to their officer corps. Though the game involved a map and different coloured blocks – representing various military units with their own attributes, and an umpire governing the rules and managing hidden information – its effects were noticeably rooted in the real world. No wonder Prussia soon became renowned for producing officers with fine command instincts and calm decision-making in the heat of battle, attracting the attention of her rivals who sought to emulate her successes. As such, Kriegsspiel was adopted by other major European powers, especially after Prussia smashed France in 1870 and proclaimed the German Empire. We’ve certainly come a long way from paper maps and coloured blocks. Now, soldiers can immerse themselves in digitally recreated environments that simulate operating vehicles and commanding large formations of soldiers over great
expanses of land, complete with an enemy to fight and a battle to win. And while there are many platforms that exist around the world – as I experienced first-hand in Istanbul – perhaps nothing quite embodies the potential of simulations like the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) partnership with US defence contractor Lockheed Martin, and their Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CATT) facilities.
As armoured warfare has increased in lethality and intensity, it is ever more necessary for soldiers to be able to train and rehearse for varying threat scenarios. CATT, which is based at the Land Warfare Centre at Warminster in Wiltshire, and in Sennelager in Germany, can accommodate combined arms training for ground, air and logistics missions at the company, battle group and brigade levels. The system, which is critical to preparing the British Army for operations, was commissioned by the MoD’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) in 2002, and in the following two decades has trained over 125,000 soldiers. Altogether, CATT can offer more than 15,000 training days per year – an impressive figure when one considers the time and resource constraints militaries face to get their troops up to combat readiness standard.
Far from being static, meanwhile, CATT has been able to change with the times and even expand. “It’s hard to believe that CATT has been in service for 20 years and yet is just as important and relevant to army training today as it was on day one,” said Nick Taylor, head of soldier training and specialist projects at DE&S during CATT’s 20th anniversary celebrations. “When it went into service,
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
13million
The amount of gallons of fuel saved as a result of CATT training.
UK MoD 29
Adam Wakefield/UK MoD
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