Jul 18 2011 David Pugliese’s Defence Watch
The American, British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Armies Program (ABCA) will test and evaluate a simultaneous virtual simulation battle environment, distributed in five countries over two continents, according to information from the Canadian Army.
ALLIED AURORAS is a test of a virtual, pre-deployment mission rehearsal exercise designed to support a multinational brigade level; with the specific focus of exposing the coalition command and staff to the interoperability issues that they would face in a real conflict, the army notes.
“This activity will focus on development efforts currently underway to maximize the potential impact of simulation tools in Mission Rehearsal and Battlefield Visualization,” the army stated in a release.
The simulation exercise will take place at CFB Kingston.
More background information from the Army:
General
ABCA Armies are increasingly turning to modelling and simulation (M&S) through the creation of Synthetic Environments (SE) to meet national strategic, operational and tactical objectives. M&S developments now permit the development of SEs that empower leaders to immerse in anticipated future environments, analyze decision alternatives, prepare for operations throughout the spectrum of conflict and develop common understanding and coalition knowledge database. It is considered that the development of an ABCA SE will assist in building coalitions; enhance combined training; allow sharing of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), lessons and doctrine; and, potentially, save time and resources.
ALLIED AURORAS was conceived to provide a focal point for enhancing ABCA simulation interoperability and is a step towards establishing an ABCA SE capability. The requirement stemmed from lessons and interoperability issues identified in the planning and conduct of previous ABCA exercises and activities, such as RAINBOW SERPENT 2006, AGILE ALLIANCE 2008 and COOPERATIVE SPIRIT 2008.
While the Canadian Army is acting as the lead for the activity, the activity has been put together and is being conducted by a Project Team made up of representatives from all of the ABCA Armies. The overall Project Team Lead has been with DLSE in Canada.
Concept
The concept for ALLIED AURORAS is to test and evaluate a proof-of-concept ABCA distributed SE. The SE, developed over the course of the planning of the activity, was designed to support an ABCA Bde, comprising combined arms battle groups (BGs) from participating ABCA Armies and the USMC, conducting a distributed pre-mission training event focused primarily on coalition command and staff training. A distributed pre-mission training scenario was chosen because the requirement featured repeatedly in recommendations from ABCA activities. Developing a distributed SE will force resolution of simulation interoperability issues and the resultant SE will have operational relevance.
Objectives
The objectives of this activity are:
• Conduct a technical test a simultaneous distributed SE;
• Evaluate the potential of a simultaneous distributed SE capability;
• Identify ABCA simulation interoperability gaps and solutions;
• Help inform national simulation and distributed SE (DSE) development;
• Inform the development of a guide or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the planning and conduct of ABCA activities utilizing a distributed SE; and
• Support the achievement of national objectives.
Output
The following benefits will result from the conduct of ALLIED AURORAS:
• An understanding of the technical requirements and feasibility of establishing an ABCA distributed SE.
• An understanding of the value and practical utility of a distributed SE in support of combined training.
• Provides a focal point for achieving a common ABCA constructive simulation (OneSAF).
• Identify ABCA simulation interoperability gaps and potential solutions.
• Identify areas where national simulation and DSE capability may be improved.
• The lessons learned in the planning and conduct of ALLIED AURORAS will inform the development of a guide or SOPs for the conduct of future distributed events, thus providing a basis for support to combined training, such as:
o Pre-mission training,
o ABCA exercises, and
o Bilateral and multinational exercises.
Scope/Conduct
The chosen environment for the activity is of a coalition pre-deployment preparation activity where the aim would be for the various levels in the coalition to be exposed to coalition interoperability issues prior to actual deployment.
A pre-deployment, mission rehearsal scenario is well suited to demonstrate the challenges and benefits of a distributed synthetic environment capability. The activity will start in Kingston with a training period of 4 days. It will be followed by a mini-Ex to confirm the SE readiness and the training given. The scenario replicates an operation executed through three vignettes over five days, in increasing order of complexity.
For more information please visit the following websites:
LFDTS website: http://armyapp.forces.gc.ca/lfdts-sdift/default.asp
ABCA website: http://www.abca-armies.org