The adoption of improved laser-based tactical engagement simulation for military collective training continues to grow. Alongside this growth, technology is enabling new capabilities to be added to aid training realism. A case in point is the use of geometric pairing to provide simulation of indirect fire weapons such as artillery and mortars.
The cornerstone of any land force live training activity is a laser-based Tactical Engagement Simulation System (TESS). As the name suggests, laser-based TESS features laser emitters fixed to weapon systems, and laser receptors fitted to personnel and vehicles. This is supported by an overarching instrumentation system to monitor and record player activity as well as a range of pyrotechnic and non-pyrotechnic battlefield effects to aid realism.
Compared to virtual training, where only the people are real and the weapon platforms, ordnance and environment are simulated, live training offers significant advantages. Chief amongst these are the psychological and physiological stresses that the participants are subjected to. The physical stress of an infantry soldier carrying a full load of equipment over difficult terrain in extremes of temperature whilst hungry and tired and then having to overcome the mental challenges of having to map read, issue orders and maintain battlefield situational awareness cannot be simulated in the virtual world.
This is not to say that virtual training is worthless. Far from it. Virtual training prepares the individual soldier and teams to operate personal and crew-served weapons; to call for and correct indirect fire; and to operate sensors and communications systems. Once completed, these individual and crew training processes provide the basis for operating in the live environment to conduct meaningful collective training.
Like any military training system, developments continue to occur to reflect real-world challenges although such changes can only take place if technology is available to allow them to be implemented. For example, when TESS systems were first fielded in the late 1970s with products such as the first generation US Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), training was limited to direct fire force-on-force engagements involving infantry and armour participants.
“Times have changed and military forces are facing new threats and the experience from ongoing conflicts that create demands for new training capabilities,” Saab Training & Simulation’s Head of Business Development Hans Lindgren tells ESD. “These threats include UAVs and indirect fire and the key here is to use interoperability and realism to create effective training.”
Over recent years more capabilities have been added to TESS to aid realism and to integrate indirect fire weapons including field artillery and mortars, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN), medical simulation, counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) procedures and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but there are still gaps; most notably in simulating fast-jet Close Air Support (CAS) and air defence. Significantly though, as TESS-based live training develops still further, there is an increasing trend for the system’s instrumentation system to provide a conduit to add new capabilities.
An example of this is Cubic Defense’s Light Gun Simulation System (LGSS) that, according to the company’s President, Paul Shew, provides the British Army’s Royal School of Artillery, “with a fully immersive training system [that] when integrated into collective training allows formations to train in the orthodoxy of coordinating artillery fires and manoeuvre.”
Although welcome additions, perhaps the only downside to such capabilities are the unrealistic terminal effects. Looking at a tablet and seeing that 105 mm artillery rounds are landing 100m away is different to experiencing it for real and so there is the potential for negative training to occur. This issue is being addressed by the US Army at Fort Johnson in Louisiana in a number of trials known as the Live Training System Operational Demonstration.
“It’s much more challenging to replicate the training environment in the terrain that is found in Fort Johnson,” said BG William Glaser, director of the Synthetic Training Environment Cross-Functional Team (STE CFT). “We went to the hardest place first,” he said. “If it works there, it will work anywhere.”
Glaser’s comments on terrain refer to the undulating and wooded topography found at Fort Johnson. The complex terrain and vegetation “posed a unique challenge, making it an ideal testing ground,” he said. These trials, referred to by the US Army as ‘touchpoints’, have taken place at a number of locations, including Fort Hood in Texas. Here, Cubic Defense highlighted its mortar simulator that has been developed in conjunction with General Dynamics Mission Systems.
At Fort Johnson meanwhile, the trial concentrated on four main weapon systems: hand grenades, Claymore mines, mortars and the FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-launched air defence missile. Although companies such as Saab, Cubic, Ravenswood, Lockheed Martin and Thales have long been able to offer TESS products for grenades and Claymores, and more recently mortars, Stinger simulation in the live domain has been largely absent. The notable exception in the provision of TESS air defence products being US specialists, Inter-Coastal Electronics (ICE).
In mid-2024, ICE was awarded a USD 94 million, five-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract from the Orlando-based Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) to provide Combat Training Centers Home Station Aviation Force on Force (CHAFF) training support. The US Army says that the contract will enable it to provide, “a more realistic Air Defense Threat to support Force on Force training exercises utilizing rotary aircraft and ground forces at Army CTCs and home stations.”
Indirect fire
There are currently two approaches to simulating indirect fire during a TESS exercise. The first is through a hand-held device that, “provides real-time trajectory visualisation and GPS coordinate-based fire resolution, with the aim of enhancing the effectiveness of mortar and artillery units,” explains Björn Linderö, director for live training at Saab.
Users can either opt for a simple solution that sees the mortar officer simply inserting firing data into the tablet that is then sent to Exercise Control (EXCON) via the combat training centre’s (CTC’s) instrumentation system. Terminal effects are transmitted to individual soldiers within range of the exploding mortar bomb and heard via the speaker on the soldiers TESS harness or vehicles speaker system. These effects can also be seen on a tablet and may be enhanced by Observer Controllers (umpires) throwing Thunderflashes.
Linderö said that customers who want a more elaborate solution than that provided by the simple tablet version can add a simulated mortar tube to their real sight, bipod and baseplate. Sensors in this modified mortar tube feed data such as bearing, elevation, ammunition type and charge, directly to EXCON. Saab has developed the simulator in conjunction with the Royal Netherlands Army as part of an upgrade provided for the latter’s MCTC in Marnehuizen.
Another adopter of mortar simulation is the British Army, where as part of a Post Design Service contract for the Tactical Engagement System In Kenya (TESIK) programme, Ravenswood Solutions has added an 81 mm mortar training capability. The new capability has been developed in partnership with fellow US company, Cole Engineering Systems.
The new system is based on a training barrel that fires simulated rounds over a short distance to provide added training value to the mortar crew. The sensor components in the training barrel then communicate with the TESIK instrumentation system and ‘kill’ instrumented entities in the simulated impact area.
According to Ravenswood, “soldiers gain valuable experience in executing mortar drills, adjusting fire, and coordinating with infantry units—all within a controlled and data-rich environment that maximizes learning and preparation for combat scenarios.”
This approach of bringing different technologies together to improve live training was echoed by Saab’s Hans Lindgren at last December’s Interservice/International Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando. “Interoperability and realism are the keys to create effective training,” he said. “Technology should be agnostic with the focus on training value and delivering effective and measurable training outcomes.”
TESS adoption continues
One of the largest TESS programmes underway at the present time is the US Marine Corps Training Instrumentation Systems (MCTIS), an offshoot of the US Marine Corps’ Force-on-Force Training Systems – Next (FoFTS – Next) initiative. This new Saab training system is designed to replace the older MILES TESS equipment used by the US Marine Corps. The contract will provide MCTIS equipment for 10 battalion training sets, and the establishment of support operations at five Marine Corps locations: Twentynine Palms (4), Camp Pendleton (2), Camp Lejeune (2), Hawaii (1) and Quantico (1). So far, four kits have been deployed to Twentynine Palms in California, two to Camp Pendleton and one each to Hawaii and Quantico. Depending on usage, acceptance and funding availability, additional MCTIS kits may be procured for Okinawa and Guam.
In 2024, the US Marine Corps used MCTIS in a major Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Warfighting Exercise (MWX) at Twentynine Palms that saw the deployment of three USMC regiments. Initially, 19 buildings were instrumented for military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) training, but this was later increased to 28. In addition, 300 vehicle kits were fitted, along with the instrumentation of 2,900 Marines. The aim of the exercise was to obtain user feedback and make modifications if appropriate.
Reflecting on the improvements offered by MCTIS compared to the earlier MILES equipment, Lt Col Rory Herman, product manager for Range Training Systems (RTS) at the US Marine procurement authority, Program Manager for Training Systems (PMTRASYS) said, “I can tell if a Marine is standing up, lying down, running, walking or being carried by an aircraft…This gives us the ability to look at not just how Marines fight in a tactical engagement but how they move logistically in a tactical environment from point-to-point.”
One of the major benefits of TESS-based live collective training is that it can be conducted with allies. This approach cements relationships, aids interoperability and provides a potential deterrent effect to possible adversaries.
A vital component of coalition warfare collective training using TESS is interoperability. Saab established its Interoperability User Community (IUC) a number of years ago and today the group has 16 members from an overall customer list of more than 50 countries. An example of such coalition collective training was witnessed during Exercise Nordic Response 2024. The exercise had its focal point in northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Over 20,000 service personnel from 13 allied nations took part in the exercise. Of these, approximately 10,000 soldiers undertook exercises on land with the US, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Germany using TESS equipment from Saab.
As with the German deployment to Lithuania, NATO efforts to show its resolve against Russian bellicosity in northern Europe and the Nordic region saw troops from Estonia, France, UK and the US conduct joint exercises during Exercise Winter Camp. This exercise again featured Saab’s TESS equipment and the company’s Hans Lindgren believes such cooperative exercises, along with the growing adoption of live training systems will continue to grow. “Live training provides a realistic, scalable, affordable and reliable training medium that promotes partnership, multinational training and interoperability,” he told ESD. “Taken together, this creates armed forces that provide a coordinated and rapid response to any level of threat.”
Historically, TESS systems could not interact with each other due to the use of different communication and coding protocols. Through the excellent work of NATO’s Urban Combat Advanced Training Technologies (UCATT) task group and its development of Live Simulation Standards (LSS), a set of international standards have been identified, “to allow live simulation systems to interoperate in a multinational training environment…”
Conclusion
The capabilities of collective live training systems have advanced considerably over recent decades. With conventional TESS capabilities of older systems having been greatly improved through the work of companies such as Saab, Rheinmetall, Ravenswood, Cubic and Thales. Many of these additional capabilities have occurred through new digital instrumentation technologies and the GPS-based geometric pairing system that is now being increasingly adopted to simulate indirect fire.
Although these additions should be welcomed, less progress has been made with simulating the terminal effects of weapons. Although a difficult challenge that must also take safety into account, this is an area that is currently lacking realism and is a challenge for the future. One thing is certain and that is that the live collective training market continues to grow and this is good news for the many defence companies that support it.
Dr Trevor Nash
