Gaming for the Win: Merging Video Games, Synthetic Training Environments, and Combat Simulators
According to a victorious Ukrainian tank commander, video games helped him figure out “how” and “where” to strike a much better armed and armored Russian T-90M on the outskirts of Avdiivka, Ukraine. Video games, he stated, gave him the tactical insight necessary to blind the enemy tank by targeting its optics, while also damaging the mechanism that allowed the T-90M’s turret to swivel. Once the smoke cleared, not only were the Ukrainians unscathed, but drone footage shows that the Russian tank was smoking, disabled, and had blindly run itself into a tree—its crew bailing out, running for their lives.
It was an improbable yet telling victory. On that cold January afternoon, only a few short weeks ago, the Ukrainian tank crews were operating two lightly armored and armed troop transports, Bradleys, against Russia’s main battle tank, the T-90M—“The world’s best tank,” according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite their armor-piercing rounds failing, as well as objective assessments that a T-90M clearly outmatches the U.S.-made Bradley, the Ukrainian tank crews pulled off an unlikely victory.
This vignette illustrates that tactics learned from a video game, when combined with human bravery, can be incredibly effective on the modern battlefield. While potentially easy to neglect due to the small-scale nature of this engagement, U.S. policymakers would be wise to study it as another critical lesson learned from the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine, today’s real-time “battle lab.”
The Department of Defense (DoD) already knows that synthetic training environments (STE) are powerful tools that can, where successful, enhance “the efficiency and realism of live training, building terrain familiarity, providing mission repetition and simulating combat.” In essence, DoD seeks to create playable games that teach soldiers and systems operators (or onboard artificial intelligence systems) about the realities of war. Meanwhile, from Ukraine to the United States, today’s video games seem to be an inescapable way for soldiers to learn about war, regardless of their efficacy.
So why not combine these ideas? DoD should synthesize the proven effectiveness of a properly calibrated STE and the accessibility and “playability” of video games. Naturally, there are roadblocks—primarily the Pentagon’s troubled software acquisitions, its tendency to seek ownership over intellectual property, and issues surrounding multi-system integration. But, if DoD manages these challenges adeptly, the United States military could replicate combat in ways that improve DoD’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); advance design and development of new platforms; and maximize the combat lethality of our existing combat personnel and weapon systems.
Been There, Done That
Critics will contend that DoD has tried this before. For decades, the Pentagon has invested in video games, simulators, and, more recently, STEs. Despite the investment to bring lofty ideas of realistic combat simulators to life, examples of outdated and scuttled projects illustrate the mixed results of these efforts.
Beyond their laudable aspirations, most of these failed projects have something else in common: acquisitions-related stumbling blocks. Despite appreciable advancements in recent years, DoD’s traditional acquisitions pipelines are not suited to software, under which simulators, STEs, and video games fall. Given that software increasingly powers not only DoD’s computers but also their weapon systems, this is a pressing problem.
Leveraging the Market and Protecting the Product
While DoD should be ready to pay big-ticket prices for the software behind cutting-edge, ambitious projects, it may not have to. One notable benefit of working with big technology firms—like Electronic Arts (maker of the highly acclaimed “Battlefield” games), Activision (maker of the celebrated “Call of Duty” games), or Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft (maker of the “Tom Clancy” videogames, like “Rainbox Six”), to name only a few recognizable names/brands—is their market presence. Thus, it is possible that a truly immersive, combat-accurate “game” accounting for DoD’s complex combined arms concept may have a ready-made audience outside the military. In a monopsonistic defense-industrial landscape, DoD is accustomed to fully funding projects, but a heavily subsidized project with a major game manufacturer may be attractive to the current market leaders who already possess a robust customer base. Like other dual-use technologies, there may be market synergies.
Co-funding an effort with a major video producer introduces a risk, albeit a manageable one: who owns the game? Here, if DoD is willing to adopt a nuanced stance on intellectual property, it can accrue the maximum benefit: make two versions of the game, one for the troops and one for the fans. This process has precedent—video game publishers frequently create different versions of games for release in different countries. It is also not unheard of to release the ability to tune the granular details and physics of the world—allowing gamers to create a version of the game that suits their interests. Given this adaptability, DoD could “lock down” the parameters of their truly combat-accurate version, preserving the ability to “mod” the game later, and deliver it only to DoD-approved audiences. This could be done while concurrently allowing for the public, for-profit release of a “realistic” version to the public. Thus, if properly incentivized, DoD and a major video game publisher could work together to benefit each other’s priorities.
Consistent with the benefits of creating two versions of this “game”—one that protects DoD’s mission while enabling innovation and another that advances the financial interests of the video game publisher—there is another potential benefit: crowdsourcing TTPs. The U.S. military employs many thousands of warfighters, and their expert experience and feedback playing such a game would be invaluable to tactical and doctrinal innovation. Moreover, creating a watered-down version of the game for public consumption could enable DoD to crowdsource TTP refinement from non-military customers, thereby turning the experiences of many millions of willing users into a kind of “combat lab” from which it can learn. What any gamer will immediately attest is that winning strategies in games sometimes seem counterintuitive—much like a Bradley standing triumphant over a Russian T-90M on the snowy battlefields of Ukraine.
Additionally, DoD should not underestimate another reality: that the global legions of video game fans prize realism and authenticity. Accordingly, video game market leaders will carefully calculate the marketing benefit of being the firm to officially develop DoD’s first realistic combat simulator that also functions as an STE while resembling a true A-list video game. Not since the U.S. Army’s successful collaboration with Bohemia Interactive and their Virtual Battlefield Simulation 3 (VBS3) has the Pentagon taken the development of a training aide that has a public component (i.e., the video game ARMA3) so seriously.
Collaboration over Dictation
DoD has a long history of seeking out experts to supplement its own expertise. However, designing the kind of game described herein will require the Pentagon to bring its rich and irreplaceable expertise in warfare and merge it with experts who design playable games. It will be attractive for DoD to come to the table with a laundry list of both highly specific and vague requirements for this game and take an overly active role in its development. In its relatively long history, the DoD has stubbed its proverbial toes multiple times by both “overprescribing” what a product must do or failing to give vendors enough guidance to create a viable product rather than engaging in a robust requirements development conversation with systems integrators and vendors.
To achieve the desired outcome, relevant program executive officers must clearly state what DoD needs. For example: A modern, exciting (e.g., ‘playable’), and modifiable video game inside which a true STE can be run, which soldiers genuinely want to play and whose play data can be used to train autonomous systems and military personnel while evolving existing TTPs across-the-board. Then, defense acquisition professionals must trust the industry experts on how to refine those requirements and achieve those outcomes. They must resist the urge to prescribe, as the world’s preeminent experts on combat and war, how a game that is maximally realistic and extensible (and, later, modifiable) must be designed, developed, and fielded down to the most elemental detail.
Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardians must want to play this game, and their gameplay must be useful in advancing DoD’s interests in better understanding modern warfare. This will inform and drive the creation of novel tactics and capabilities—while concurrently disabusing those same servicemembers and their commanders of the efficacy of older, defunct TTPs. If done correctly, the STE will enable autonomous systems to interact with dynamic, unfolding, and player-driven events—giving their onboard artificial intelligence models or remote operators (or both) quite the “realistic” challenge. The best way to achieve these objectives is for the Department to draft clear requirements and inject its military expertise, while trusting a video game manufacturer to actually design the game.
Ride the Wave
The proverbial “wave” has arrived, and defense policymakers and planners must ride it or risk falling behind. DoD already accepts that the digital world will take a larger and more central role in tomorrow’s battlefields, though it sees the future as dotted with STEs, while ignoring the most prevalent “synthetic” training its soldiers engage in: video games. Fundamentally, the Pentagon must accept a reality with which it has previously flirted: our troops, allied troops, and enemy troops are using video games, formally and informally, to improve their combat effectiveness. And, it seems, some of it is decidedly effective.
That said, those games are still not DoD-ready STEs—they are not ready for integration, nor are they likely realistic in key ways. Or, to use a well-worn government term, current video games are “stovepiped.” But DoD has the expertise, the budget, and the influence to merge these concepts. Therefore, this article has sought to capitalize on these advantages by articulating a path forward. The Pentagon should: (1) engage leading video game industry publishers to leverage their proven talents; (2) invest in a video game that functions as a multi-platform, modifiable STE; (3) divest from full ownership and allow the market to offset the full cost of this “game”; (4) learn from realistic gameplay/crowdsourced TTPs; and (5) create an STE where our troops can take real risks and fail early and often in training. Because, after all, “failing fast” is at the heart of modern defense innovation, so DoD must have the courage to take the lead and fail first.
Still, some may make a compelling case to “stay out of it” and allow the market to evolve as it evolves—thereby shrugging off as anecdotal the experiences of Ukrainian tankers who, despite being technologically outmatched, defeat their Russian adversaries. And there may be a hesitancy for DoD to pour yet more money into the uncertain world of software development.
Yet, DoD (and its allies) benefit from a powerful capability our adversaries do not—we recognize that we cannot live in a world without risk and, what’s more, we are willing to take great risks to ensure our military dominance. We also recognize the benefit of training, real or virtual. And we know that wars like the one unfolding in Ukraine can teach us many valuable lessons if only we will listen.
So we must embrace risks smartly, set our expectations appropriately, and stand alongside market leaders who wish to see the “good guys” win. We must position ourselves to win tomorrow’s conflicts by fighting as many of them virtually as possible. And, while wars of the future will certainly not be games, some games will help us win them.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: Picryl