VizWorld.com

The U.S. Military was one of the big consumers of the Second Life Enterprise Beta project, the “Virtual World On A Blade” project from Linden Labs that allowed people to run their own Virtual Worlds within their own networks.  It was particularly attractive to the Military because they could then lock it down to their own DoD security restrictions, unlike other “public” virtual worlds.  With it existing no more, the U.S. Army has released a parallel project named ‘MOSES’ (Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy) for all the orphaned developers.

Priority will be given to technology and / or military testing. “It doesn’t have to be a military project,” explains Maxwell. “If you’re developing or evolving some cool new kind of technology, like bots, for example, that would be clearly relevant to the MOSES mission.”

So far, Maxwell has assigned 18 sims for Air Force use and 4 sims for Navy use. Another 4 sims have gone to private research firms and several to individual qualified researchers. “I will keep assigning MOSES resources until they run out,” says Maxwell.

via U.S. Army Offers MOSES 3D Web System for Non-Army Researchers « Sitearm.

Graphics linden labs, military, virtual worlds

A new product from Cubic Corporation introduces the concept of “Data Containers”, popular in the datacenter industry, to the mobile training industry with their new mobile virtual small arms trainer.  It’s 40-foot long trailer that folds down into a self-powered and environmentally controlled 5-lane EST 2000.

Manufactured by Cubic’s Simulation Systems Division in Orlando, Florida, EST 2000 is a laser-based system that uses digital video projectors, high-definition screens, game-based computer graphics and ballistically accurate simulated weapons to create highly realistic virtual combat scenarios. It replicates the performance of individual small arms and crew-served weapons. Its geo-specific virtual scenarios can be varied from urban to jungle and mountain terrains to Middle Eastern desert environments.

These units are already scheduled to hit the ground in Fort Knox, the US Army WAr College, and a National Guard Armory.

via U.S. Army Evaluating Cubic’s Mobile Small Arms Trainer.

Hardware army, cubic, military, training

The Air Force has long been looking at Second Life for training and education, and a new article over on the Defense.Gov website chronicles some of the more successful efforts and what they hope to gain.

“What really drew us out to [the virtual world] was this wonderful opportunity to interact and connect with people on a global scale and with high levels of creativity,” Andrew Stricker of the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base’s Gunter Annex in Montgomery, Ala., told American Forces Press Service.

“We thought Second Life was perfect for doing innovation work in the Department of Defense,” said Stricker, whose team is part of Air University’s innovations and integration division

via Defense.gov News Article: Air Force Eyes New Learning Systems in ‘Second Life’.

Science government, military, second life, virtual worlds

Currently, the US Military runs divisions called “Route Clearance Crews” using large retrofitted bulldozers called “HMDS” (Husky Mounted Detection Systems, from Niitek) that travel important routes through unfriendly territory looking for mines and IED’s.  As you can imagine, these machines are expensive and delicate.  A recent analysis from the military found that 50% of all damages to the ground penetrating radar panels came from simple operator error from users unfamiliar with the equipment.  To fix this, the Army partnered up with the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) to create a video-game based training package to train users on proper use of the equipment.

“The joint forces have received the HMDS training package with such high marks that we anticipate its use will far exceed its original intent and capability over the coming years,” said Vigus. The HMDS training package’s success exists in its ability to incorporate holistic interactive multimedia instruction with virtual and live training. The result of this approach to training is a lowcost, agile trainer that builds individual knowledge and skills while promoting collective rehearsals of route clearance operations.

It uses an interesting 3-step “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach to training.  Users “Crawl” through multimedia training materials like videos and manuals, before moving through “Crawl” “Walk” portions where they use video game simulators for virtual test drives of the equipment.  Finally, they use “Run” portions of real equipment fitted not with IED sensors, but instead IED simulators showing artificial results to test the operator’s ability to negotiate hazards.

You can get the full details in the JIEDDO press release here (Download PDF, View Online).

Update 3/7/2011 – Fixed the “Walk” portion, as pointed out in the comments.

Hardware military, training

You trembled in front of the Afgan Counterinsurgency Strategy.. Then you cried for mercy from the US Government Acquisitions Process. Now, they’re back with the scariest one of all: The 193 step Pentagon IT Chart!

Believe it or not, the chart was actually drawn up to help the Pentagon’s cyber security team make some sense of the massive set of rules they’re expected to wade through, an attempt to “capture the tremendous breadth of applicable policies, some of which many [IT] practitioners may not even be aware, in a helpful organizational scheme.” Yes, looking at that graphical mushroom cloud of a chart, the word “helpful” certainly comes to mind. Bonus mind-boggling factoid: the chart was created by the DASD CIIA (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber, Identity & Information Assurance). Good general rule of thumb: never expect useful assistance from an entity with an acronym that long.

Saw has nothing on this.

Your Job Coud Be Worse: Pentagon IT Follows This Insane 193 Rule Chart.

Graphics bad, infographic, military

Kitware, the company behind such visualization classics as VTK, ITK, and ParaView, have just received $11 Million from DARPA to take their ‘VIRAT’ project to Phase 2.  In Phase 1 (completed), Kitware developed several algorithms and systems to take the aerial surveillance data from Predators and other drones and track small low-moving objects over time, and capture various events and information for analyst feedback.  It was a huge undertaking, and now Kitware will get the chance to actually build and deploy an end-user system.

In Phase II, the Kitware team will deploy a VIRAT prototype at an end-user facility, and train analysts in its operation. Their evaluation and feedback will provide researchers with critical data to incorporate into upgrades and enhancements.

The team will also continue to develop and apply cutting-edge research into the hard problems in descriptors, indexing, iterative query refinement, and descriptor fusion. One of the many research thrusts in Phase II will be to incorporate more computed and supplied scene knowledge directly into the descriptors, and to more effectively leverage available metadata such as view point and sun angle. Augmenting system capabilities to allow for additional video sources, both from UAV’s and ground cameras, will also be a top priority.

Of course, some of this is a bit beyond Kitware’s reach.  To hit some of the hardware and systems integrations objectives, they’ve partners up with some big boys in the Military industry: Honeywel, Raytheon, Mayachitra, BAE, Lockheed Martin,, and General Dynamics.  There are university partners as well, consisting of a veritable who’s who of visualization science.

The phase-2 project is expected to take 18 months, led by Kitware’s Drs. Anthony Hoogs and Amitha Perera.

via DARPA Awards Kitware $11 Million for Phase II of VIRAT Program.

Science darpa, kitware, military

A few months ago we spilled the beans about the damage PowerPoint has caused in the Afghanistan operations abroad, but now the Pentagon has let loose the true dogs of war: The Government Acquisitions Process.

But that slide was child’s play compared to the three-foot wall chart the military uses to explain its gajillion-step process for developing, buying, and maintaining gear. The “Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management” diagram is kind of a precis to the whole interminable progression, from “decompose concept functional definition into component concepts & assessment objective” to “execute support program that meets materiel readiness and operational support performance requirements and sustains system in most cost-effective manner.” Stare long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why marines are still reading web pages with Internet Explorer 6.

Even printed 3 feet wide that would be tough to read. Having dealt with this process myself, however, I can attest to it shedding absolutely no light on the mysteries within.

I think this may be a 2-kitten slide.

via Revealed! Pentagon’s Craziest PowerPoint Slide EVER | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Graphics bad, flowchart, military

Visualisation of Activity in Afghanistan using the Wikileaks data from Mike Dewar on Vimeo.

The New York Times points us to an interesting visualization of the Wikileaks War Logs made with R by Mike Deward at the August bit.ly hackathon in NYC.

The intensity of the heatmap represents the number of events logged. The color range is from 0 to 60+ events over a one-month window. We cap the color range at 60 events so that low intensity activity involving just a handful of events can be seen — in lots of cases there are many more than 60 events in one particular region. The heatmap is constructed for every day in the period from 2004-2009, and the movie runs at 10 days per second.

The orange lines represent the major roads in Afghanistan, and the black outlines are the individual administrative regions.

The source for the visualization is available online, and the visualization itself does a good job at showing the “hotspots” in the region and how they’ve spread from the eastern edges further inland, presumably as US forces penetrated further into the region.

via Visualizing the Wikileaks War Logs – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

Science military, nytimes, visualization, war

Looks like the U.S. Army is buying into Virtual Worlds in a big way, with a request for information regarding a new virtual world to be used for Training.

The world is meant to be similar to a massively multiplayer online gaming environment like Second Life, supporting thousands of avatars and connections at once. The avatars will be equipped with artificial intelligence and will move and interact in a terrain similar to Earth, according to the ROI. It should allow for the administration of various training scenarios that users can react to in real time.

The world should simulate weather as it happens on Earth and allow people playing to have multiple views of their actions in it, including one that allows them to look at the terrain as they would through the scope of a weapon.

You can read the actual Request for Information at this site, but this is particularly interesting:

A 50 x 50 km terrain footprint with non-kinetic and kinetic operations within a complex and highly dynamic environment and complex data layering and data processing capabilities including: data collection, data analysis, robust data transmission and storage. The terrain should be generated by the ingestion of existing Department of Defense owned terrain databases such as Digital Terrain Elevation Data and will be rendered under various levels of detail based on realistic participant field of view and view distance.

50km square is larger than Second Life by a hefty 33%, and added to the required AI & crowd control simulations they want, would have to be powered by some pretty hefty supercomputing power.

Read the raw RFP via Google Docs.

via Army To Develop Virtual World For Training — Military Training — InformationWeek.

Science military, virtual worlds

Why, no, I am not one bit afraid of these swarming, flying robotic drones – Boing Boing.

infographics military