Necessary Advances in Army Training

Russia’s past perceived threats—and current demonstrations of capabilities in its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine—illustrate the seriousness in which the Army must pursue training advances. The service must improve electronic warfare and cyber effects training, simulated environments and battle education to every level of soldier, said Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais, USA, deputy commanding general and chief of staff, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), a keynote speaker today at AFCEA’s TechNet Augusta conference being held in Augusta, Georgia, August 16-18.

“The Army’s Russian New Generation Warfare study also showed us that there were some things that we had to get in place very quickly so that we could train and prepare our Army for what they would face on the future battlefield,” said Gen. Gervais.

The command’s leaders considered how to improve their combat training centers (CTCs) as well as professional military education to really drive change across the service. “For one thing, we spent a lot of time putting together an integrated air defense capability so that we could get back to training our aviation formations with the right threat.” TRADOC also examined how to replicate the cyber and the electronic warfare environment, bringing in “lots of new capabilities,” including opposing cyber force solutions and direct injection jammers, to ready soldiers for a lethal, contentious digital battlefield.

“Not only did we incorporate that into our CTCs, we also included that in our Mission Command Training Program, which are Corps and division warfighters,” the general explained. “What we're not good at right now in that environment is that our simulations do not replicate it in the right way to drive change. Quite frankly, we ‘white card’ it, which as you know, as soon as you take away the realism, you kind of get training value, but you don't get the same training value.”

Showing training units their electromagnetic signature still proves essential to show soldiers how vulnerable they are in a new-age environment. “We got so used to our comms [communications] being so big, our command post kind of being big, and we're putting out all of these signatures,” Gen. Gervais said. “We had to show them what happens when you do that, and we had to present that picture for our forces so that it could drive change.”

The same training applies to those soldiers in professional military education (PME), making sure that programs of instruction are focused on both the Russian and Chinese threats as well as appropriate electronic and cyber warfare knowledge.

In addition, the new version of the Army’s Field Manual 3-0, known as FM 3-0, which is expected to be released in about 60 days, will incorporate directions for the multidomain operating environment and move the Army toward large-scale ground combat operations needed for denied access theaters such as the Indo-Pacific.

“It will be focused on division operations, large-scale ground combat operations and it will address that because [Maj. Gen.] Paul Stanton [commanding general, U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and commanding general, Fort Gordon] and his great team made sure that it was incorporated appropriately into our doctrinal manuals,” she noted. “It is the big one that's going to come out, which will really be our operations manual for the Army going [forward]. We've already been working on it for about the past two years and we've done the final adjudication on the comments.”

Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais @USArmy @TradocDCG: @TRADOC focuses on building the foundation of how our Army trains and operates, and that includes how we communicate across echelons with our joint force and with our allies #AFCEATechNet pic.twitter.com/aDRw7m6w1V

— Kimberly Underwood (@Kunderwood_SGNL) August 16, 2022

In addition, TRADOC’s efforts in the synthetic training environment, are dispersing directly to the battlefield, at least in some cases. Gen. Gervais considers the One World Terrain, a 3D mapping platform that can also be used for targeting, a groundbreaking capability.

“One of the beauties of the cross-functional teams is that we were charged with identifying technology that we could quickly accelerate and streamline and get into the hands of soldiers much quicker,” she shared. “What I didn’t realize as the cross-functional team director was something that we were developing for training when we put it in the hands of the soldiers and they started using it at the National Training Center. They said, ‘This needs to be used operationally. This is not just a training capability.’ What we are seeing with One World 3D Terrain is that it was used in Afghanistan at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport], Ukraine, and a lot of places operationally."

TRADOC is working to have the platform approved by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). With its ability to collect terrain and process it quickly, targeting processes could be well-informed. “It is almost there right now, ready to be incorporated and sanctioned by NGA, and I really do think it is a game changer that we have,” Gen. Gervais emphasized.

In addition, in a visit shortly to Fort Hood, the general is examining the progress of the reconfigurable virtual collective trainers, which appear to be on schedule for fiscal year 2023/2024. The general emphasized that common standards architecture and having the same terrain mapping capabilities across the different simulator platforms was crucial.

“Something that was developed in Germany couldn't be used at Fort Riley—even though Fort Riley was getting ready to deploy—and unless you spend a lot of time, like six months, making it work with that simulator,” she emphasized. “Now, we've been able to take that information system, which is a training management tool, and also the common engine—it's a virtual gaming engine—and show that it can incorporate the terrain. It can do the battle physics and it can actually be used. All of that is coming together and on [target] for the FY23 timeframe.”

“I'm not saying that we have got it all figured out,” Gen. Gervais acknowledged. “We’ve got a lot more that we need to do because we have to watch everything that's coming out of all of these conflicts. We have to understand it and [know] how we incorporate it into our doctrine, into our PME and then into our training apparatus so that we can make sure we can drive that change.”