"Low Overhead" Sims for Army Training?

It's nice that FOGN Michael Peck thinks that the Army is migrating toward lower-cost alternatives, but the truth is that it'll never happen. The Army will insist on ever-more-complex tools, which require more back-end contractors to run them. However, when the expense gets out of hand, rather than find lower-cost options to run the same number of exercises, they'll instead run fewer at the same highly-inflated cost. They did this for years w/ NTC, choosing to cancel rotations rather than scale back what happened on them.

ALOTT is designed to be used by non-geeks. But computer experts will still be needed to run the large-scale simulations at the regional simulation centers, and there will still be a need for “pucksters” to control computer-generated forces because the simulation’s artificial intelligence isn’t smart enough to send a column of tanks across a bridge without a traffic jam.

“No sim provider wants to stand in front of a commanding general and say, ‘Sir, your attack failed because automated unit X decided to turn left rather than right,’’’ Black said.

This statement from Black really pisses me off. The truth is that shit-fits-the-fan like that ALL. THE. TIME. Hmmmm... anyone heard of the 507th Maintenance Company? A scenario like that never happens in a JANUS exercise, but it happens every single time we go to war. We know it's going to happen in theater, so why not prepare for it at home-station training?

You know why: No commander wants to admit that his unit is the one dumb enough to do it.

By: Brant