Make-Believe War Is Easier on Military’s Budget : Latest Technology Puts Classroom-Bound GIs in the Middle of the Action

There is little time to think. An enemy attack plane comes roaring across the horizon from behind a distant hill.

A soldier in full combat gear raises a portable anti-aircraft missile launcher to his shoulder, picks up the attacking jet and fires off a Stinger missile. The action is fast--it all happens in a matter of seconds. The infrared-seeking missile locks on its target, and a hit is marked by an exploding ball of fire.

The screen goes dark, the lights come on and there are cheers of congratulations from fellow GIs who witnessed the action, which didn’t take place in the Fulda Gap region of West Germany, but in a classroom at a military base in the United States.

The high cost of training military personnel and keeping their skills keen--it costs about $60,000 to fire off a real Stinger missile--is forcing the Department of Defense to rely more on simulators--make-believe war game machines--to keep its real-world budget under control.

The Stinger air defense training simulator, made by AAI Corp. in Cockeysville, Md., is just one example of the military’s growing use of computer-driven training devices. Simulators are used for a wide variety of training, ranging from teaching aerial combat maneuvers to instructing new recruits to shoot the M-16 rifle.

While Pentagon officials can’t seem to put their fingers on the exact amount spent on simulators, they say it is a growth industry even at a time the defense budget is tightening. An Army officer estimated that the military is spending billions of dollars for the electronic equipment each year.

Mark Lawrence, a technology research analyst with the Prudential Bache Securities office in Toronto, said expenditures for all simulation and training programs are growing at a 21% annual rate. The total market, which was estimated to be $2.49 billion in 1987, is expected to approach $6.23 billion in three years.

Rounds Add Up

“We simulate more each year as the state of the art improves,” said Maj. Timothy McKeever of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command at Ft. Monroe, Va. The driving force, he said, is economics.

Take the training of GIs to fire their rifles: McKeever said each bullet costs about 17 cents. “That doesn’t sound like much,” he said, “but when you are talking about a couple of hundred rounds a man and you have 200,000 trainees passing through, it adds up.”

To get more bull’s-eyes for the dollar, the Army takes new recruits to the real firing range and has them squeeze off about 10 rounds each. “From this we can identify those that have got it--those who have had some hunting skills when they were young--and those who don’t.

“We take this latter group and have them work with the simulator, which is like an M-16 built into a box.” The simulator imitates the sound of the rifle as well as its recoil. It can also pick up the flaws in the soldier’s firing procedure so they can be corrected by the instructor.

“Once they master the skills on the simulator, we take them back to the range to fire live rounds,” McKeever said.

The M-16 simulator is on the low side of the technology scale, according to McKeever. “At the other end are complex simulators used to train tank crews”--$16-million units made by Perceptronic Inc. and Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc. that fill entire buildings at Ft. Knox, Ky., and Ft. Rucker, Ala.

As many as 50 tank crews do battle at once, housed in boxes that replicate the interior of the M-1 Abrams tank. The simulator reproduces the terrain, and when a crew member looks out he sees what he would see on a battlefield.

When a tank goes up a hill, the box tilts accordingly. “Shooting” is accomplished with beams of light, and a hit is marked by an explosion.

As if that were not enough, McKeever said, it is also possible to have the “tanks” at Ft. Knox battle those at Ft. Rucker, via a satellite link between the two simulator buildings.

The machines are expensive, but the Army compares them to the cost of tank shells, which can cost several hundred dollars each, and the high price of field maneuvers using the real thing.

Civilians Bothered

Money is a major factor in the increased use of simulators, but it is not the only factor, said Maj. Barry Bomier, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.

He said the civilian population in the United States and abroad is becoming intolerant of artillery fire and having fighter jets buzz over their homes. He said the number of places in the United States and in Europe where military forces can engage in mock-war exercises are shrinking each year.

These and other factors spur development of quieter--and cheaper--alternatives. Companies in many areas are working on the problem.

In Maryland, after winning a contract to build a shipboard missile-launching system for the Navy, the Martin Marietta Corp. plant at Middle River designed and built a simulator to train crews in loading missiles into the launchers.

It is a large platform that duplicates the rolling motion of a ship at sea as crew members use a crane to try to lower dummy missiles into the canister that are used to store and eventually launch the weapons.

AAI is well known for its production of artillery shells, a lightweight tank, smoke grenades and a lift trailer used to mount cruise missiles onto the wings of B-52 bombers, but about 30% of its total sales of $273 million last year came from producing simulation and training equipment, according to Stuart M. Macht, AAI’s president.

One simulator made at the company’s Cockeysville complex is designed to allow the crew of a Navy guided-missile frigate to “fight” a sea battle in Mediterranean while docked at Baltimore’s inner harbor.

In an advertisement to potential buyers, AAI promotes its pier-side trainer as the “Great Pretender” and as an economical alternative to at-sea exercises.

The simulator is mounted in a tractor-trailer truck, “and we plug into the ship’s radar and electronic warfare sensors,” said Lawrence J. Rytter, director of training.

“As far as the crew members are concerned,” he added, “it’s the real thing. There are airplanes, surface ships and submarines coming from all directions. They think they are fighting a war” as they take the necessary evasive action and go on the offense, including the “firing” of missiles at the attackers.

Rytter said the company has built eight units, which sell for about $10 million each, for the Navy and one for the Australian government.

Helicopters Spared

AAI also makes simulators used in training crews of the B-52 bomber, A-10 attack plane and F-14 and F-16 fighters in the art of electronic warfare.

UNC Inc. in Annapolis, Md., also has a piece of the simulation business. Under a $70-million contract starting the first of the year, UNC uses simulators for the primary training of the Army’s UH-1H helicopter pilots.

David L. Dragics, director of investor relations, noted that the simulator does not need the maintenance required of the Army’s fleet of helicopters each time one spends an hour in flight.

“And if something goes wrong in the training,” he added, “you don’t lose an expensive helicopter.”