company that had to delay its roll-out of the “latest game technology” for several years would fail.

The second challenge is to work in teams with a clear understanding of our end goals. As Sun Tsu stated, “a strategy without tactics is a very difficult way to proceed, but tactics without strategy is a flurry of activity awaiting disaster.” When we focus too closely on any problem, it seems as though we know the end that we have in mind. However, a very good question to continually ask is “why are we doing this”–how is it supposed to result in a payoff to our warfighting business output. To that end, we need clear metrics that get to something well beyond the next step in the process. We need a systems engineering approach between the commonly accepted M&S domains, to leverage shared capabilities and knowledge. Networked training devices are no longer used just to train individuals on platforms, but also support large-scale training exercises used to prepare deploying units. The connectivity between the M&S market and the command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence market is already seen in the emerging cross-cutting standards and architectures. These standards will cause applications to merge, so that we will have operational data routinely used in various M&S tools and training devices, and M&S routinely used for course of action analysis, mission rehearsal and preparation, and even in adaptive planning during operations execution. This requires an approach that avoids the older developments of specific niche applications for testing, training, or analysis, and forces us to start a team with the true end user in mind—the tactical unit.

What is our way ahead from here? In the US Army, we’ve stood up a new M&S Directorate with a clear charge from the Vice Chief of Staff to create unity of effort and purpose among all the US Army M&S activities. We are treating M&S representations of Battle Command systems and networks, irregular warfare, counter-insurgency operations, human dynamics, and non-lethal technologies as critical enablers of warfighting. We’re working to move routine use of M&S tools and capabilities to the tactical combat edge, in the brigade and battalion tactical operations centers and in some cases to platoon leaders’ handheld devices. We have recognized the value of formal qualification of modeling and simulation officers in the same way we qualify aviation officers or artillery officers, and allow officers to become M&S professionals after company command and battalion staff experience. Eighty percent of our M&S officers come from the combat arms branches of infantry, armor, artillery and aviation. To date, we have over 300 of these specially trained officers, supported by over 1500 qualified civilians in the M&S career field. We have changed our unit tables of organization to recognize a formal position for two M&S officers in every division and corps headquarters, and we have one in every brigade headquarters, and a required online familiarization

course for battalion operations officers who are not recognized as M&S professionals. This is in parallel to a similar initiative to place officers formally trained in operations research and systems analysis into every division and higher headquarters. We have tasked our general staff leads at the Department of the Army level to take formal responsibility for the representations of their special activities in M&S; G2 for threat representation and battlefield intelligence activities, G4 for battlefield logistics, G1 for battlefield medical response, and so forth. We can’t afford the coding effort to fix everything at once, so we have stood up a formal process to identify the high payoff gaps in our M&S capabilities and fill them for current as well as future operations. We expect to embed tactical M&S training and mission planning/rehearsal tools in our FCS technology, but the rest of the Army will be similarly empowered within the same time frame—it’s an expectation from our soldiers. To support the development and implementation of these tools, we are also creating an overall strategy to capture and use the enormous amount of operational data being gathered in current operations around the world that reflects data we’ve never really bothered with before from an M&S tools perspective, such as the human dimension, the Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information (or PMESII) environment, and stability operations requirements. We plan to leverage the enormous investment and brilliance of our commercial and Joint M&S activities, and not try to compete with them but be able to accept new ideas, rapidly collaborate, and have a plan to take advantage of the continuing evolution of the marketplace. We’ve stood up an entire organization to review current commercial gaming and continually bring the best ideas into our training community. We will continually push the development, training, and refreshment and cross-training of our M&S workforce to understand the pace of and response to change. This includes our vital Army civilian component as well as our uniform component.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of the defense modeling and simulation community, because of the number of opportunities available for big contributions to our discipline. There are already radical changes to the way the M&S community conducted business just five years ago, and we’re picking up speed. Defense is recognized today as the cutting edge of the use of M&S, and we’re going to continue to blaze the path ahead. Looking at your agenda for the conference, it is full of things that need to be said, and the right people to say them are already scheduled to do so. I appreciated your time and attention, and I know you’ll appreciate it if I let the really qualified people in this audience get on with the business of sharing with you the things they know. Thank you and have a great conference.

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