Dangerous convoy duties prompt expanded training for truck crews.

The Army is intensifying the training drills required for truck drivers and maintenance crews heading to Iraq.

Exercises that simulate Iraq's treacherous combat environment are intended to better prepare officers and soldiers assigned to logistics and supply duties, said Maj. Gen. Brian I. Geehan, commandant of the U.S. Army Transportation Center and School, at Fort Eustis, Va.

Live-fire convoy training became mandatory for transportation officers in 2003, and recently was extended to soldiers and non-commissioned officers who will be driving trucks in Iraq.

"Convoy experience is critical for drivers," Geehan said in a recent interview. "We are looking at increasing the variety of trucks we train drivers on."

Trainees have to learn much more than just operating a vehicle. They must qualify, to fire an M-16 rifle and a variety of crew-served weapons.

With the Army stretched thin by ongoing conflicts, the Transportation School no longer has the luxury of sending graduates back to their units to gain experience. They may leave the school and go off to Iraq a week later, where they will be expected to run convoys. That puts additional pressure on the trainers to ensure that soldiers acquire a broader base of skills.

"The mindset has changed," Geehan explained. "We are preparing officers, NCOs and soldiers to graduate and go straight to Iraq. That's a whole different paradigm."

Maintenance crews also will get additional instruction. They will see more emphasis on preventive maintenance of vehicles and "technical inspections," Geehan said.

Live-fire drills for drivers take place at Fort Bliss, Texas., and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Crane operators and other support personnel get their training at Fort Eustis.

Most recently, the Army launched a live-fire training program at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., that is designed for Transportation Corps officers and NCOs.

Fort A.P. Hill has a 3.8-mile, undulated convoy course with advanced instrumentation, Geehan said.

As part of the exercises, officers must be able to identify and engage targets, while simultaneously making command decisions, such as determining whether to bypass a barricade or stop and fight. They also must learn how to cope with roadside bomb attacks--what to do if a vehicle is damaged and how to secure the area and deal with casualties.

Groups of up to 25 officers spend two days on the live drills. "The leadership training is realistic," Geehan said.

Transportation School instructors also teach the Air Force drivers basic course. In addition, the Air Force has set up a separate program at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas., that is specifically designed for convoy training.

"It's worked well," Geehan said. "I saw the units on the ground. They have done a super job running gun trucks."

In coming years, Geehan anticipates that the demand for driver training will surge substantially as the Army reorganizes into self-deployable, "modular" brigades. The transportation platoons will be embedded in the brigade, rather than the division. The upshot will be a significant increase in the number of "motor transport operators," known in Army parlance as "88Ms."

"Truck assets that normally would be held back at the division level are now pushed down into the brigade," said Geehan.

Driver and convoy training demands also will fuel the need for simulators, so that soldiers can train at their home bases or while deployed.

The Army recently spent about $15 million on "virtual convoy" simulators.

"We are trying to get one at Fort Eustis," Geehan said. "That technology has huge applications."

The Army awarded two contracts in June--one to Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support for $9.6 million and the other to Raydon Corporation for $5.6 million.

Lockheed co-developed the simulator with Firearms Training Systems Inc. The devices were shipped to Fort Bragg, N.C., and Camp Shelby, Miss.

Raydon's simulators are at Fort Bliss and Camp Shelby.

Both contractors are leasing the equipment to the Army for one year, and are offering a buyout option, explained Lt. Col. Joseph Giunta, Army product manager for ground combat tactical trainers. Lockheed would charge the Army $2 million to buy the eight simulators once the lease expires in June 2005.

The Army, however, has not yet decided whether it will buy or extend the lease, said Giunta. "The requirements are not yet fully defined," he said.

Giunta's office came up with the idea of leasing the simulators as a near-term solution to help prepare troops for convoy duties.

Once Army convoys started coming under fire in Iraq, officials realized the service lacked proper training capabilities for truck operators, noted Michael Syfert, program manager of Raydon's military business.

"A lot of tankers and infantrymen have never really operated in a Humvee," he said. The Army focused too heavily on tank and Bradley gunnery training at the expense of supply vehicles, he added.

In the scenarios where tanks and Bradleys are employed, the targets usually are in the front. "That is not the environment we are in," he said. "We are more in the Vietnam-style guerrilla tactics." The insurgents in Iraq try to slow the convoys down and attack them from the sides and the rear, he said. "The enemy is not always in the front."

Both in the Lockheed and the Raydon simulators, soldiers are immersed in a 360-degree virtual battlefield. But each system has unique features.

"The biggest difference between the Raydon system and the one by Lockheed Martin is that we focus more, believe, on convoy operations," Syfert said. "We were looking more at the situational awareness, trying to get that 360-degree battlefield both horizontally and vertically." Lockheed's system, for its part, offers better marksmanship training, he said.

The Air Force also is considering leasing or purchasing the Lockheed simulators, said John Sullivan, the company's business development director.

At least 2,000 airmen will undergo training, in addition to support crews, which generally amount to two or three per vehicle, Sullivan said. "The total training requirement could be for up to 10,000 people."

This marks the first time the Air Force has embarked on training truck convoy operators since it became an independent service following World War II.

Service officials are in negotiations with Lockheed, said Sullivan.

The Air Force, additionally, approached the developers of the hit videogame, "America's Army," in an effort to adapt this technology for convoy training.

The end product was a portable PC-based simulator. "The whole thing can be packed in a suitcase. It's immersive," said Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis. He is one of the creators of the videogame.

Wardynski advocates the use of gaming technology to help lower the cost of military simulators.

"The games industry has growing revenues from entertainment sales. When you look at what they can spend to get immersive worlds versus what the government can spend, the gap is very large," he told National Defense.

Because the Army already paid for the development of the game, the Air Force was able to get a low-cost simulator, he said. "It may cost $100,000 to create a model, instead of millions of dollars for proprietary systems, where the government does not own the code."

Lockheed's Sullivan dismissed the laptop-PC simulator as a less-than-acceptable technology for military training.

"It's better than nothing," he said. "If you are drowning, you'll reach out for almost anything."

Giunta, the Army's project manager, said that under no circumstances would a laptop-size trainer meet the service's needs. A PC-based portable simulator could be useful for route reconnaissance mission rehearsal, he said, but it's not immersive enough for weapons training.

RELATED ARTICLE: DARPA simulates convoy ambushes.

U.S. troops in Iraq are receiving a convoy ambush simulator for their personal computers.

Put together in about six months by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, "DARWARS Ambush!" is based on Operation Flashpoint, a best selling commercial first-person-shooter game. The project began in March, and was field-tested in September by an Army combat unit deploying to Iraq.

The Army already has elaborate convoy trainers, such as Humvee mock-ups. However, big hunks of machinery at Fort Hood, Texas, don't help an infantry battalion in Iraq practice its skills in the field. A modified computer game may not be fancy, but at least a truck driver with a laptop can use it in his tent.

The goal is to mentally prepare soldiers for ambushes, rather than teaching them specific driving or shooting skills, said Ralph Chatham, director of DARPA's training superiority program.

"The idea is to build a voice in the back of the head of a soldier who pulls into a parking space, and sees somebody walk away and use their cell phone," Chatham said. The soldier would have to make an assessment based on that person's behavior.

Scenarios typically involve four vehicles, which can include trucks, Humvees or Strykers. Each vehicle has a driver and gunner's slot. Players have to get across Iraq-like terrain, including desert, villages, bridges and a large city.

But first, they'll have to battle their way through insurgents. The guerrillas can be controlled by the computer, but Chatham believes training is infinitely more effective when other players impersonate the enemies. "Just imagine the competition when they say, 'I can build a better ambush that you can't out of,' or 'I can get out of any ambush that you can build.'"

As with many commercial games, "DARWARS Ambush!" can be customized. "Players can choose what weapons to use, where to put themselves in an ambush, and we even have a selection of dead camels and dead cats to put improvised explosive devices into," Chatham said.

To expedite the process, DARPA chose to base the trainer on an existing commercial game. "Operation Flashpoint" was modified to include more realistic vehicles, terrain, objects and artificial intelligence. The upgrades were based on a huge database that DARPA compiled on ambushes, which was then augmented by observing ambush training at Army combat training centers. A game demo was given to an Army unit that DARPA filmed. Studying the film allowed DARPA to glean feedback, such as the fact that soldiers found it easier to control the game with a mouse than a video game steering wheel.

Though Chatham prefers military simulations to commercial games, he deliberately chose to base "DARWARS Ambush!" on a fast-paced computer game, rather than conventional military training software. "I wanted something compelling so tired people would want to participate," he added. "Operation Flashpoint" could be modified quickly and relatively cheaply. The price tag was between $1 million and $2 million.

Chatham sees the ambush simulator as the first step in DARWARS, an ambitious concept that would enable disparate simulations from all services to be linked into a virtual training megalopolis. "DARWARS Ambush!" may evolve into a generic tactical trainer, and a "not-too-massive multiplayer training device," which would be a smaller version of popular multiplayer universes that fans play over the Internet.--Michael Peck