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Not-So-Basic Training

In an effort to improve its readiness for urban battle, the U.S. military uses video to help train its troops.

A soldier equipped with a Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) is captured on video during force-on-force training exercises at the Shughart-Gordon site within the Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT) complex.

For nearly a century, the United States has flexed its military muscle through large-scale, high-intensity mechanized operations. This approach worked in 1917 when more than 1 million U.S. troops descended upon Europe, bringing about an end to World War I; and it worked in 1991 when American forces used precision-guided aerial weapons to drive Iraq's occupying forces out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War. In fact, it worked so well in the Gulf War that the world — particularly America's adversaries — took notice.

“People have gone to school on how well we do open warfare,” says Brigadier General Stephen Seay, commander general of the U.S. Army's Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), the unit charged with integrating new technology into the Army's various training sites. “Desert Storm is a classic example. Iraq didn't survive very well in the open desert.”

Now, America's enemies have learned to take refuge in urban and restrictive areas, Seay says, where the U.S. military's effectiveness is degraded because of its fear of casualties and collateral damage, and its inability to leverage the full force of its technological weaponry. In every military operation since Desert Storm, American forces have fought in dense, urban areas like the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, or in restrictive terrain like the mountains of Afghanistan.

“Right after Desert Storm you had Mogadishu. Look at Black Hawk Down,” says Seay, referring to the film that chronicled the 1993 ground battle between U.S. special forces and Somalis after two UH-30 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu. “Where did the combatants go? They hid in the city, where they had more control of the environment.”

Seay says similar scenarios played out in Bosnia and Kosovo. And now, with the U.S. government considering another military strike on Iraq, it looks like Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could employ a similar strategy. According to a recent report by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency published in USA Today, in the event of an attack on Iraq there is a strong probability that U.S. troops would be forced to fight an urban battle with Hussein's most fanatical backers. “There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other key leaders will attempt to bury themselves in secure facilities surrounded by innocent civilians to avoid being liquidated at long range by U.S. PGMs (precision weapons) or readily snatched by U.S. SOFs (special operations forces),” the report concludes.

Simulated mortar and artillery hit a Power Station during a training exercise that will be videotaped at the MOUT complex. Harmless debris is made from fuller’s earth and cork. The effects were built by Orlando Special Effects.

The U.S. military has always trained its soldiers for combat in urban and restrictive terrain, but because of the events in the last decade, that training has become more sophisticated in recent years.

In May 1996, the Army opened the Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT) complex at Fort Polk, La. With various mechanized battlefield effects such as smoke generators, missile launchers, and mortar explosions, the MOUT complex is designed to re-create the sights, sounds, and smells of an urban-warfare scenario. In addition to the battlefield effects, the MOUT complex has a very sophisticated video system that includes more than 1,200 cameras that provide the trainees with an invaluable visual report card of their MOUT experience. At a cost of more than $45 million, the MOUT complex is one of the U.S. military's most sophisticated training grounds.

MOUT is situated within the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), a 100,000-plus-acre training ground the Army opened at Fort Polk in August 1993. Ten times a year, between 4,000 and 7,000 soldiers travel to the JRTC to participate in mock-warfare exercises that last a little more than two weeks. These exercises, called rotations, are based on a fictional scenario in which a U.S. task force is sent to a mythical small-island nation to help protect it from an invading force. Units from each of the military's four branches work together to accomplish the rotation's objectives.

During the JRTC rotation, a contingent of up to 240 light infantry and special operations troops invade the MOUT complex to carry out the urban portion of the mission. There are three sites within the MOUT complex: Shughart-Gordon, a 26-building mock city — named after two Medal of Honor recipients who died during Operation Restore Hope in Somalia — that covers a 7km² area (2.7 sq. miles); Self Airfield, a six-building airfield that includes a 4,300ft. active runway; and Word Military Compound, a four-building site that includes a drill field, barracks, stockade, and guard towers.

MOUT training includes press relations. A mock news network prepares soldiers for field interviews.

As the troops perform their military exercises, nearly every move they make is recorded by one of the complex's 1,200-plus video cameras, most of which are located in Shughart-Gordon. Throughout the city, 20 Sony DC-30 and DC-50 analog cameras affixed with Pelco zoom lenses are mounted to telephone poles to capture daylight exercises. Mounted right next to the Sony cameras, 20 Agema thermal-imaging cameras monitor nighttime action. From a command center back at Fort Polk, operators control the cameras remotely, and also cue various battlefield effects.

Inside Shughart-Gordon's cinder-block buildings, more than 800 Ikegami ICD-47 monochrome cameras with wide-angle Computar 3.8 lenses capture indoor combat action. Two cameras are fixed inconspicuously in opposite corners of each room, providing 100% indoor coverage. “If you try to step out of the field of view of one camera, literally all you do is step into the field of another,” says Tom Wilson, chief of maintenance at the MOUT facility.

For nighttime training, most rooms are equipped with infrared lights that illuminate the rooms so the cameras can pick up the action. Although the infrared lights are invisible to the naked eye, they can be picked up by the Army's night-vision goggles — particularly when they're used from a helicopter flying above the city. Because of this, Wilson says the infrareds are being phased out in favor of Class 4 lasers, which are considered safe, but on the threshold of being dangerous to the naked eye.

Throughout the Shughart-Gordon site, Sony DC-30 and DC-50 analog cameras and Agema thermal-imaging cameras are mounted to telephone poles to capture daylight and nighttime exercises. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

In keeping with the Army's motto, We own the night, most of the action in Shughart-Gordon takes place after sunset. Despite this, Wilson says the cameras perform well both inside and out. “We get excellent video at night inside the buildings,” he says. “There is absolutely no problem identifying individuals on the video. Outside you're imaging heat, and our thermal cameras can pick up troops several hundred yards outside the city in a wooded area. The only time we have a problem with those cameras is in a driving rain because the rain masks the heat.”

Back in the MOUT command center, as many as four operators monitor the 1,200-plus video signals originating from the maneuver area. The signals are routed through an enormous 1200×128 Grass Valley switcher that has been expanded from its original 128×128 configuration to accommodate cameras that are continually being added to the MOUT training area.

One of the 800 Ikegami ICD-47 monochrome cameras is mounted inside a protective cases to prevent damage during live-fire exercises within one of the site’s 26 buildings. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

The switcher splits each video signal into a high-res version and a low-res version. The 25Mbps high-res version is recorded in three-hour loops on a bank of Tektronix DVCPRO RAID drives (with a storage capacity of over four Terabytes), where it can be retrieved later and added to an After Action Review (AAR) — a video evaluation for the participants of each exercise. The low-res version is routed to the four workstations where each operator monitors up to 16 video sources as the training takes place. Specialized touchscreen software allows the operators to mark in and out points on video segments to be included in an AAR. Those segments are then recorded to a central database where they can be pulled up on an Avid NewsCutter and compiled in an AAR.

Kevin Douty is one of two MOUT editors who work on the Avid system. As soon as the first video segment is tagged during an exercise, he begins editing his first AAR. On average, he creates three 15-minute AARs for each three- to five-hour MOUT exercise. Because of time constraints on the battlefield, Douty says his edits are very basic. “I usually get the first AAR out less than an hour after the end of the exercise, the second one out about an hour after that, and all three of them done right around three hours after the exercise,” he says.

Once the AARs are done, they are output to tape on a Panasonic DS555 S-VHS deck and immediately viewed by the companies and platoons that participated in the exercise. The AARs, which go home with the troops for further review, are invaluable learning tools for the soldiers.

Outdoor video cameras capture battle training for review after the action has ended. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

“The thing about this type of training is that you'll always catch yourself making mistakes,” Douty says. “And the video tells a thousand words. Sometimes you'll have a guy say ‘I didn't do that,’ and then we show him the tape and his attitude changes real fast. If you could see their reactions [as they watch the AARs], you'd know how seriously they take it. They learn a lot from watching the video.”

At a separate facility about six miles from the MOUT command center, another video staff uses a similar process to produce AARs of the combat exercises within the larger JRTC maneuver area. However, instead of using numerous surveillance cameras for blanket video coverage, as many as 16 camera operators go out into the battlezone and capture footage with JVC KY-29 handheld cameras. Over the two-plus weeks of training, the camera operators combine to capture up to 2,000 hours of footage for 60 JRTC AARs. To do this, the camera operators work on a 24-hour rotating schedule, sometimes working up to 16 hours at a time while facing many of the same conditions that the soldiers face. “About the only difference between the soldiers and my operators is that they carry weapons and we carry cameras,” says John Wood, the JRTC video team leader.

Cameras and battlefield effects within the Shughart-Gordon site are cued from the MOUT command center. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

For nighttime shooting, the cameras are outfitted with Electrophysics AstroScopes, which fit between the lens and camera head and amplify ambient light. Currently most of the cameras capture on S-VHS stock, but Wood says there are plans to complete an ongoing transition to JVC D9 acquisition within the next year.

In addition to Wood's 16 roving camera operators, there is one other camera crew that roams the JRTC training area during rotations. Calling themselves World News Network, the crew consists of a camera operator and a news reporter. Their sole purpose is to conduct mock field interviews and help military personnel get more comfortable dealing with the press.

“Going all the way back to the Vietnam War, the press was your enemy,” says John Beckwith, who operates a Sony PD-250 MiniDV camera for the fictitious network. “What we're trying to do now is get them to come out and talk about their jobs. There are times when bad things take place, but we're telling them ‘Don't sit on the information. Don't hide from the press. Be straightforward because bad news gets worse with age.’”

Operators monitor the 1,200-plus video signals originating from the rotational force-on-force exercises. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

After conducting each field interview, the World News Network crew provides the interviewee with immediate verbal feedback. Later, Beckwith puts together a short videotape for each interviewee using a MacroSystems Kron turnkey editor.

Because of the cost of the MOUT and JRTC complexes, Brig. Gen. Seay says it's not financially feasible to build similar training facilities with cameras and editing equipment in the future. Instead, he says the Army is experimenting with virtual-reality techniques that will allow soldiers to train in any environment at any time. And he dismisses the notion that tomorrow's soldiers will be desensitized to real combat if they train using virtual reality and combat games like those at Fort Polk.

“It doesn't desensitize them to their real responsibilities,” he says. “They know when it's the real deal and they know when it's training. But they also know that the moves they make in training help to develop their instincts. And their instincts keep them alive.”

Editors at the MOUT complex are faced with tight deadlines. On average, three 15-minute AARs are created for each three- to five-hour exercise. The AARs are then output to tape on a Panasonic DS555 S-VHS deck and reviewed by the companies and platoons. Photo: Raymond Barnard, U.S. Army, Fort Polk.

From exploding battlefield effects to roving reporters, the U.S. military has made every effort to create a realistic simulation of a modern war scenario at the JRTC. Seay says the training that America's contingency forces receive at Fort Polk is perhaps the most sophisticated in the world.

“The MOUT and JRTC are stressful environments,” he says. “[The soldiers] go in there with their hearts in their throats. Mentally and physically, at the end of the training those troops are wrung out. And the video and the AARs are an absolutely critical part of the learning process. They help ensure that we take the proper lessons out of the training.”

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.