Lt. Col. Jesse Attig is the Modeling &Simulation Officer for Marine Air-Ground Task Force Training Command (MAGTFTC) in Twentynine Palms, CA. At MAGTFTC, he is responsible for advanced individual and collective training support primarily at the regimental level and below across every element of the MAGTF. His current efforts are focused on fires integration and Live, Virtual, Constructive training architectures in support of Service Level Training. Prior to his current Modeling and Simulation Officer billet, he served as an AH-1 attack helicopter pilot with over 1,700 hours and held the qualifications of Weapons and Tactics Instructor, Forward Air Controller Airborne Instructor, and Tactical Simulator Instructor. He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Southern Polytechnic StateUniversity and a Master of Science in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) from the Naval Postgraduate School.
I was in a unique position coming to NPS, as the new Commandant’s Career Level Education Board left me being “voluntold” to attend. While I initially went kicking and screaming, I quickly found myself dusting off college math I had thought I’d never see again as a Marine Cobra pilot. As I became immersed in my studies, I also became very grateful for the time I had to spend with my wife and two young boys. Reflecting back, I truly think my time at NPS was one of the most pivotal times for me personally and professionally. While I didn’t appreciate every class then, I have come to realize the importance of the entire MOVES curriculum and have a great sense of gratitude to the professors and staff who compassionately help students build the Modeling and Simulation knowledge base within the military services. Many of the concepts I learned at NPS, I use daily in my job as an M&S Officer at Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command (MAGTFTC). I know that the education I received from NPS has directly and positively improved the way we train Marines here at Twentynine Palms and across the fleet.
As a young Cobra pilot, learning Close Air Support (CAS) was considered the bread butter of our community. While initially learning CAS though, I found that outside of actually getting to do it in the aircraft with real people on the ground, it was fairly difficult to build proficiency in the simulator alone or reading it in a publication. I took some of the concepts from “chair flying” and “chalk talks” that some of the best instructors had introduced us to and tried to put them into a more repeatable and scalable tool with a higher level of fidelity in which virtual environments can provide. I am still passionate about the importance of effective CAS and efficiently training pilots to conduct that mission set.
A particular area the I thought was interesting and sort of reinforced my effort came in the form of the questionnaire from junior pilots, squadron instructor pilots, and Marine Aviation Weapons & Tactics Squadron (MAWTS) instructors. The overwhelming majority said that communication and procedures were the two main reasons for using chalk talks. To me, this highlighted the importance of being able to show junior pilots what “right” looked like. Virtual environments seemed like a much better fit than walking around a terrain model or just pointing to a map. Another aspect that I found of particular importance was the concept of using the same tool to additionally show someone doing it wrong and having the student identify the error or issue. This concept could also be used to recreate a situation that maybe demonstrated non-standard procedures, contingencies or other situations that may be hard to otherwise describe.
Since completing my research, I have continued to support other similar efforts led by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) which have focused more on the ground side of this problem set. JTAC Virtual Trainer (JVT) and Adaptive Training for Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (ATTAC) are two programs specifically that have made significant advancements in training capabilities that support the MAGTF. At MAGTFTC we have continued to evolve our training capabilities and LVC architecture to enhance the training value of both the controller on the ground, as well as the pilots supporting them. Recently, we used both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) combined with a 5G cellular network extended out in the range complex in order to provide more realistic rehearsals for the training audience prior to conducting the live execution portion of the event.
Virtual training environments will continue to demonstrate increased value for pilot training. If you look at how much VR has been incorporated into basic pilot training already, I think the natural progression will follow with preparing pilots for tactical training evolutions within a distributed, collective training environment. As our networking capability dedicated specifically to Marine training becomes more robust, our training architecture will allow for on demand, collective training for air and ground participants on laptops much like we currently see with “cross platform” gaming. I often talk about the way we use some of our simulated marksmanship training capabilities in more advanced ways to go from teaching Marines “how” to shoot to more dynamic situations of “when” to shoot. We will leverage virtual training environments for pilots to go from teaching pilots “how to fly” the aircraft to teaching them “how to fight” their aircraft more as a weapon system. A critical component that we must ensure we don’t lose sight of though when we look at value, is how we measure transfer of training and assess training effectiveness within our systems. This will help us make sure our requirements leverage the most important aspects or performance parameters of future virtual training systems.
