Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

21st-Century "Duck Hunt"

Escaped inmates are holed up in an abandoned warehouse. Two cops armed with M-16s slip in on the ground floor and work their way up a stairwell. Around a corner a perp appears. Blam blam! A cop puts two rounds in the perp's chest. He falls down ... then disappears and magically pops up again around another corner.

This is the Virtual Interactive Combat Environment, basically a scaled-up first-person shooter video game designed by Dynamic Animation Systems, Inc. An operator stands at a multi-screen control station dropping bad guys onto a virtual playing field. Trainees at wrap-around stations fire mock M-16s at their screens like a 21st-century adaptation of the classic Nintendo game "Duck Hunt."

DAS has delivered trainers like VICE to Special Operations Command and the Marine Corps. Check out my video from the Mock Riot to see more:

--David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring

Captive Test, Part Seven

A surveillance plane buzzes overhead. An assault team from the Wheeling, West Virginia, police department hides behind an abandoned school bus with a K-9 team. A communications truck idles nearby, its crew monitoring and managing communications between the cops, their headquarters and the airplane. Without warning, the team swarms towards an old chapel reportedly occupied by crack dealers, in the best example I've ever seen of a law enforcement operation that looks like a military action. Accompany the assault team in my video from the 2007 Mock Riot:

--David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring

Captive Test, Part Six

Of all the police and corrections teams practicing their skills at the 2007 Mock Riot in Moundsville, West Virginia, the Kansas-based 705th Military Police Battalion was perhaps the most impressive.

In their first scenario they were faced with hostage-takers in a crowded, multi-floor split cell block that forced the cops' traditional phalanx to divide. But like water they streamed around the obstacles and quickly reformed while a sniper kept watch from the second floor and soldiers on the edges of the formation peeled off to tackle bad guys popping out of darkened cells. It was brutal, but I suppose that was the point. You can't give the rioters an inch.

In their second scenario, the MPs used a Long-Range Acoustic Device to disorient rioting inmates in a dining hall then stormed in firing nonlethal bullets. See for yourself:

--David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring

Captive Test, Part Five

Watch riot cops from Clark County, Indiana, take down some unruly "inmates" in this exercise from the annual Mock Riot in Moundsville, West Virginia, where police and soldiers tested out the latest nonlethal weapons and tactics. Background here.

--David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring

Captive Test, Part Three

This continues my series on the annual Mock Riot in Moundsville, West Virginia, where police forces, the military and arms makers get together to test out nonlethal weapons and tactics. Part one here. Two here.

Ten inmates have barricaded themselves in an outdoor basketball court surrounded by a chain-link fence. They're complaining about the quality of the meatloaf in the chow hall. It must be some pretty bad 'loaf, because these guys are mad. Real mad. And when the riot cops from the Clark County, Indiana, sheriff's department respond, they have to reach through the links to take apart the barricade before they can shove through the one door into the court.

Captive Test, Part Two

Outside at the annual Mock Riot at an old state pen in Moundsville, West Virginia, police squads are fighting mock battles with college kids portraying rebellious inmates. Inside, vendors are showing off the latest in weapons – both lethal and nonlethal – body armor and robots.

One of the most impressive pieces of kit is also the most nondescript. It looks like a thick, tan-colored stop sign mounted to a metal stand. The Long-Range Acoustic Device built by American Technology Corporation focuses and broadcasts sound over ranges of up to hundreds of yards.

Captive Test, Part One

Prisoners at a West Virginia state penitentiary have rioted and taken several guards hostage. Local, state and federal police forces mobilize, with military reinforcement, to retake the prison. A squad swoops in aboard an Army Huey helicopter. Battalions of cops advance behind bulletproof shields, scouting ahead with robots, firing pepper spray and sticky foam to subdue the rioters. The recaptured inmates are cuffed and led off … and in the heady aftermath of the assault, the police squads sit among scores of spectators in bleachers, swapping tips on tactics.

In the Hot Seat

Attention all video gamers: why not follow the lead of Britain's Royal Air Force and consider swapping your Ikea office chair for a CyberSeat? The motion base flight or driving simulator was unveiled at last week's ITEC training and simulation show in Cologne, Germany.

Warthogs' Secret Haunt

The Air Force’s A-10 Warthog squadrons attend a secret training exercise in rural Florida to prepare for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exercise involves jets, pilots and maintainers deploying to an “austere” airfield and practicing round-the-clock bombing and strafing in difficult conditions. Predeployment training in this vein is nothing new: many units do it annually; but rarely is it shrouded in such secrecy.

ONR Embraces Ambiguity

A couple of weeks ago I wrote here about an Office of Naval Research plan to combine 10 years worth of research into two Infantry Immersive Trainers at the Marine Corps installations in Camp Pendleton, California and Quantico, Va. It wasn't clear until now what an Infantry Immersive Trainer is. I guessed some sort of super simulation designed to create unstoppable Marines, but I was only partly right.

According to Cdr. Dylan Schmorrow, the ONR guy behind it all, immersive training is about preparing Marines for the sights and sounds of warfare before they get there. Sound likes something you've heard of already? That's what I thought too, but this is way better than the sort of gaming you see at defense conferences where you point a fake gun at projector screen and play hero.

Schmorrow told DTI in an interview that people who create simulations are benefiting from advances in a lot of different technologies (we'll get to those later), but mostly they've benefited from an understanding that training for warfare isn't like training to be a great baseball player or the next Tiger Woods. It's not just about muscle memory. Rather, it's about complex cognitive processes that are now better understood than they used to be. Taking that fact into consideration, what's the best way to prepare a soldier or Marine for battle?