Joint Training & Evaluation Program

Imagine creating a virtual reality that duplicates the tactical, logistical, and the emotional pressures that troops and leaders would experience if they were responding to a situation in Iraq or to a state emergency.

This experience would save countless lives and millions of dollars, not to mention shortening deployments, when a unit responds to a "real life" mission similar to one that they have previously experienced. The military has traditionally developed training that would replicate real emergencies, but the cost of integrating numerous computer-driven training programs, field maneuvers, and simulated training devices is very expensive and limits the number of such exercises that battalions and brigades can conduct. The Joint Training Experimentation Program (JTEP), however, is on the verge of merging both high-tech and low tech training into a single program.

"We must push this experiment to the limits so that we can experience failure," said Brigadier General Louis Antonetti, Deputy Adjutant General Joint Forces Headquarters. "We have to test it first before we can trash it out and move on to a new experiment."

The California National Guard, tasked with managing the National Guard Bureau test, demonstrated JTEP's technical breakthroughs and state-of-the-art digital imaging at Camp San Luis Obispo and Camp Roberts on December 11, 2003. The JTEP integrates existing computer-driven programs, digital applications, and traditional field maneuvers into a single, simultaneous exercise. Many of these programs operated independently for years, training soldiers and leaders at the squad and company levels, but JTEP links all of them and focuses training at all levels into a single scenario that is not only includes battalion level commands, but will eventually include multi-service participation from the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

The integrated systems allow computers at all levels, and from multiple locations, to view and review training in two- and three-dimensional images. It allows commands to synchronize radio communications, to apply Global Positioning Systems to real time events, and to observe real-time images generated by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as they simulate flights over battlefields or emergencies. The JTEP uses databases that enable its creators, SRI International, to digitally stitch multi-dimensional maps and terrain from various parts of the world into California's Camp Roberts' maps.

"We can digitally match Camp Roberts' terrain that's most similar to Grafenbob, Germany," one SRI contractor explained. "This creates the capability to match what's happening on the ground at Camp Roberts to a scenario in Germany--maintaining a virtual reality."

The California National Guard is currently proposing a Joint Training Center that links Camp Roberts, Camp San Luis Obispo and Ft. Hunter-Liggett where Camp San Luis Obispo is the training nerve center and Camp Roberts and Ft. Hunter-Liggitt are the training area. The California National Guard proposal complies with the National Guard's Transformation process. During the JTEP demonstration this week at Camp Roberts and Camp San Luis Obispo, representatives from the Marines and the Air Force observed the demonstration.

"This is exactly what transformation is trying to accomplish," said John Shockley, JTEP Project Leader, SRI International.

The California National Guard's Grizzly Magazine will publish a more in-depth article on JTEP in its March 2004 issue.