Its credits read like a Hollywood hit, but the actors will soon be replaced with Soldiers and its stage will be the battlefields of tomorrow. The Joint Fires and Effects Training System debuted at Fort Sill Sept. 8, with visiting dignitaries and post officials attending the premier of the new, high-tech training system that incorporates real-time, photo-realistic graphics, surround sound and artificial intelligence. Because the technology is still being developed, actors portraying Soldiers demonstrated the eventual JFETS capabilities.
Looking more like a Burbank studio than an Army training lab, JFETS is designed to take its students out of the classroom and onto the battlefield.
Machine gun fire sounds from in front of a humvee rolling through a desert. Its crew reacts and takes cover, a call for fire is issued, and a fight engages. The bushes, sand, even the rocky ride of the humvee, are all in the details.
A 15-foot-high, 30-foot-wide projection screen plays out the battle, as the soldiers react to the changing scenarios and "virtual humans" use artificial intelligence to counteract. From their perspective, the crew is fighting for their lives - only here they will get the opportunity to live and learn from their mistakes.
"They've got to be immersed," said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Maples, Fort Sill commanding general and chief of the field artillery. "In this kind of environment where you use a combination of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, you can give ... all of those sounds, those sights, those feelings of being in combat, so they sense the same things."
JFETS will be the newest training ground for the "universal observer" - any Objective Force soldier, sailor, and airman on the battlefield calling for "joint fires."
“Fires" can be either lethal or non-lethal munitions, and "joint fires" are those deployed by Army or Marine artillery, mortars or aviation, Naval gunfire or Air Force aircraft.
Variety and flexibility is key to JFETS, and its trainees step through soundproofed doors and onto desert sands, the ruins of a bombed-out building or into a steamy jungle. With the flip of a switch, training scenarios can be changed and its trainees are instantly "deployed" to the other side of the globe.
"I can have them in open, rolling terrain one minute. I can put them in a desert the next minute, and I can put them in a jungle the next," said Maples. "So my ability to train soldiers as part of a mission rehearsal for anywhere in the world ... is going to be a reality, without ever deploying them out of this virtual-reality training system."
JFETS is still under development by the Institute of Creative Technologies, a four-year-old southern California company contracted by the Army to produce technology that will become the next generation of simulations for training and evaluation. This is the first time all of the JFETS technologies have been brought together into one training facility, said Randy Hill, ICT deputy director of technology.
ICT's location allows collaborative efforts with nearby Hollywood and the computer-gaming industry. Randal Kleiser, director of "Grease" and David Ayer, who wrote the scripts for "Training Day" and the newer "S.W.A.T.", both contributed to JFETS creative development, Hill said.