Carson doesn’t treat simulators like a game
In the bowels of a Fort Carson warehouse, dozens of soldiers were battling roadside bombs, hunting insurgents and driving tanks across Iraqi battlefields.
Just don’t tell them it’s all a video game.
“We don’t treat this like a game,” said Staff Sgt. Robert Pagan, who was leading his soldiers through the elaborate computer simulation that uses realistic interiors from M-1 tanks and M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to allow whole companies of troops to hone battle skills. “For us, it’s real life.”
The system, including 30 simulators, cost the Army about $50 million, but soldiers and the civilians who manage the simulator training say it saves money and lives in the long run.
“Nothing beats going down range, but this is as close as it gets,” said Jim Kwasniewski, a retired soldier who now works in a civilian Army job overseeing the simulator program.
Training on real equipment is incredibly expensive, with one Government Accountability Office estimate pegging the operating cost of an M-1 Abrams at $181 per mile traveled.
The expense has forced the Army for decades to limit livefire training. Besides that, training has its own limitations: Live action can’t be stopped and doesn’t come with animated replays that illustrate battlefield mistakes.
So the Army packed what look like shipping containers at Fort Carson with real tank and Bradley interiors, sporting all the controls. Even the sounds of operation are replicated.
“The only thing they don’t have is the smell,” Kwasniewski said.
Computers and video screens bring in the outside world and connect the simulators across a common battlefield, so just over 100 soldiers can join in the same war game.
Staff Sgt. Gerard Rodriguez, who helped run a recent simulation, said crews can learn the tactics they’ll need in Iraq.
Everything from the precombat checks and radio procedures to gunnery are drilled, he said. The simulations also incorporate computer-generated aircraft and artillery fire.
Pfc. Lance Anderson said the biggest advantage to the simulators is that vehicle crews can learn to work as a team without the pressures of the battlefield.
“You get familiar with your crew,” he said. “You learn how they react.”
Anderson said that level of understanding can save lives by helping crews operate seamlessly in Iraq.
And, despite some soldiers’ protests that the multimilliondollar simulators are all work and no play, most soldiers get a kick out of them.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Spc. Daniel Huffman said.