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By Mel Cape
The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) G-2 Models and Simulation Office (MSO) conducts delivery of models and simulations products and services to inform Soldier’s understanding of an operational environment (OE) within readiness training events.
“We will always be ready to fight today, and we will always prepare to fight tomorrow. Our most valued assets, indeed, the nation’s most valued assets, are our Soldiers and our solemn commitment must always be to never send them into harm’s way untrained, poorly led, undermanned, or with less than the best equipment we can provide.”
—GEN Mark A. Milley, 39th Chief of Staff of the Army
It fulfills the Army Regulation 5-11 responsibility of the TRADOC Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2 to “ensure requirements of the operational environment are presented across all [modeling and simulation—M&S] communities.”[14] Inherent in this mandate is the requirement to ensure that Soldiers are prepared to fight any adversary, anywhere, and in any OE. The key to ensuring successful execution of this mandate is Soldier readiness training—“enabling soldiers to shape the security environment, set the theater, and project national power.”[15]
To fulfill this requirement, the MSO performs a variety of tasks that include but are not limited to the following:
Additionally, the MSO provides operational support to various combatant commands in their search for a better understanding of the OE within their areas of operation. Within these communities and venues, the MSO ensures that Army M&S methods, models, and tools are OE-compliant and capable of supporting Army warfighting events with a complex, realistic, relevant, and robust OE as required by the Army Standards for Training Proficiency.
For example, as a valued member of the One Semi-Automated Forces (OneSAF) Co-development community since 2007, the MSO is responsible for conceptualization, integration, and testing of OE-based capabilities and behaviors within the OneSAF software baseline. This is accomplished through participation in the annual OneSAF Requirements Integration Board and Requirements Prioritization Board where recommendations, articulated through use cases, are submitted for development by the Product Management OneSAF Software Development Team. The MSO also participates in user assessment events and requirements definition workshops, and conducts OE-based capability assessments for the myriad of methods, models, and tools that comprise the Joint Land Component Constructive Training Capability.
In addition to representing forces involved in the lethal fight, the MSO also provides resources that afford operational units an opportunity to refine their staff and leadership skills for employing the military decision-making process and course of action analysis methodologies. This is done through the use of computational modeling provided by the Athena simulation—a sociocultural analysis and training capability. This simulation is focused on the nonlethal aspects of the OE and is designed to help decision makers to anticipate social, economic, and political dynamics by evaluating a potential course of action across the full range of the operational variables—political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time.
Athena is primarily used to support the execution of directed studies being conducted by the Joint Staff and combatant commands, as well as Army experimentation, leader development, training, and education. Athena is a scalable, laptop-based course of action development and analysis capability used to anticipate the consequences of force activities upon noncombatant groups. Athena can demonstrate the nuanced and often negative sociopolitical impacts of lethal actions, as well as the positive consequences that a whole-of-government approach may provide. Athena modeling provides a way to visualize and measure the benefits derived when plans holistically incorporate diplomatic, informational, and economic initiatives with military operations.
Finally, in addition to these legacy efforts, the MSO supports future M&S capabilities, specifically integration of OE requirements into the development efforts associated with the U.S. Army Futures Command’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE) Cross Functional Team (CFT). As part of the STE CFT development community, the MSO seeks to deliver OE-based requirements and functionality, and ensure the inclusion of those emerging capabilities needed to effectively portray a complex and ever-changing OE: multi-domain operations, megacity considerations, and threat tactics, among others. As such, the MSO regularly participates in working groups, teleconferences, design reviews, and technical and user assessments, as well as in the production of the capability development documents that describe the progress of the various lines of effort associated with the STE effort. For both legacy and future efforts, representation of the OE in M&S is framed around the aforementioned operational variables as defined and discussed in U.S. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0 and ADP 5-0, and as described in the Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) World.
For more information, or support from TRADOC G-2 MSO, please contact Mr. Mel Cape, melvin.r.cape.civ@mail.mil.
[14] Department of the Army, Management of Army Models and Simulations, AR 5-11 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2014), 2.
[15] Army Public Affairs Office, “Readiness,” STAND-TO, the Official Focus of the U.S. Army, https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2017-10-04/.