The Economist has a nice piece on the growth of military training simulators and how they’ve become commonplace in training. The article covers the growth of the defense simulation industry into a multi-million dollar industry, and going from huge training tools to rapid-development response tools, like the one below:
Another recent trend is the tighter integration of simulators with real combat. Chester Kennedy, vice-president of simulation engineering at Lockheed Martin, points to a 2007 battle in which insurgents took advantage of a tactical error by American soldiers to kill some of them. Within 24 hours Lockheed Martin had interviewed the survivors and then produced a simulator that placed other soldiers in the same situation so the mistake would not be repeated. The company now regularly simulates real battles.
